"Is anything the matter?" was Mrs. Barclay's first question.
"Yes, a great deal is the matter," Madame Duburg began, vehemently. "You and your English husband are mad. Your wretched boys are mad. They have made my sons mad, also; and--my faith--I believe that my husband will catch it. It is enough to make me, also, mad."
Notwithstanding the trouble in which Mrs. Barclay was, at the resolution of her sons, she could scarcely help smiling at the excitement of Madame Duburg; the cause of which she at once guessed. However, she asked, with an air of astonishment:
"My dear sister-in-law, what can you be talking about?"
"I know what I say," Madame Duburg continued. "I always said that you were mad, you and your husband, to let your boys go about and play, and tear and bruise themselves like wild Indians. I always knew that harm would come of it, when I saw my boys come in hot--oh, so unpleasantly hot, to look at--but I did not think of such harm as this. My faith, it is incredible. When I heard that you were to marry yourself to an Englishman, I said at once:
"'It is bad, harm will come of it. These English are islanders. They are eccentric. They are mad. They sell their wives in the market, with a cord round their neck.'"
"My dear sister-in-law," Mrs. Barclay interrupted, "I have so often assured you that that absurd statement was entirely false; and due only to the absolute ignorance, of our nation, of everything outside itself."
"I have heard it often," Madame Duburg went on, positively. "They are a nation of singularities. I doubt not that it is true, he has hidden the truth from you. True or false, I care not. They are mad. For this I care not. My faith, I have not married an Englishman. Why, then, should I care for the madness of this nation of islanders?
"This I said, when I heard that you were to marry an Englishman. Could I imagine that I, also, was to become a victim? Could I suppose that my husband--a man sensible in most things--would also become mad; that my boys would grow up like young savages, and would offer themselves to go out to sleep without beds, to catch colds, to have red noses and coughs, perhaps even--my faith--to be killed by the balls of German pigs? My word of honor, I ask myself:
"'Am I living in France? Am I asleep? Am I dreaming? Am I, too, mad?'