"You have not yet thought, Mr. Ibbetson—you have not realized what life may have in store for you if—if all you have said about your affection for me is true. Oh, it is too terrible for me to think of, I know, that you, scarcely more than a boy, should have to spend the rest of your life in miserable confinement and unprofitable monotonous toil. But there is another side to that picture.
"Now listen to your old friend's story—poor little Mimsey's confession.
I will make it as short as I can.
"Do you remember when you first saw me, a sickly, plain, sad little girl, at the avenue gate, twenty years ago?
"Le Père François was killing a fowl—cutting its throat with a clasp-knife—and the poor thing struggled frantically in his grasp as its blood flowed into the gutter. A group of boys were looking on in great glee, and all the while Père François was gossiping with M. le Curé, who didn't seem to mind in the least. I was fainting with pity and horror. Suddenly you came out of the school opposite with Alfred and Charlie Plunket, and saw it all, and in a fit of noble rage you called Père François a 'sacred pig of assassin'—which, as you know, is very rude in French—and struck him as near his face as you could reach.
"Have you forgotten that? Ah, I haven't! It was not an effectual deed, perhaps, and certainly came too late to save the fowl. Besides, Père François struck you back again, and left some of the fowl's blood on your cheek. It was a baptism! You became on the spot my hero—my angel of light. Look at Gogo over there. Is he beautiful enough? That was you, Mr. Ibbetson.
"M. le Curé said something about 'ces Anglais' who go mad if a man whips his horse, and yet pay people to box each other to death. Don't you really remember? Oh, the recollection to me!
"And that little language we invented and used to talk so fluently! Don't you rappel it to yourself? 'Ne le récollectes tu pas?' as we would have said in those days, for it used to be thee and thou with us then.
"Well, at all events, you must remember how for five happy years we were so often together; how you drew for me, read to me, played with me; took my part in everything, right or wrong; carried me pickaback when I was tired. Your drawings—I have them all. And oh! you were so funny sometimes! How you used to make mamma laugh, and M. le Major! Just look at Gogo again. Have you forgotten what he is doing now? I haven't…. He has just changed the musée des familles for the Penny Magazine, and is explaining Hogarth's pictures of the 'Idle and Industrious Apprentices' to Mimsey, and they are both agreed that the idle one is much the less objectionable of the two!
"Mimsey looks passive enough, with her thumb in her mouth, doesn't she? Her little heart is so full of gratitude and love for Gogo that she can't speak. She can only suck her thumb. Poor, sick, ungainly child! She would like to be Gogo's slave—she would die for Gogo. And her mother adores Gogo too; she is almost jealous of dear Madame Pasquier for having so sweet a son. In just one minute from now, when she has cut that last curl-paper, poor long-dead mamma will call Gogo to her and give him a good 'Irish hug,' and make him happy for a week. Wait a minute and see. There! What did I tell you?
"Well, all that came to an end. Madame Pasquier went away and never came back, and so did Gogo. Monsieur and Madame Pasquier were dead, and dear mamma died in a week from the cholera. Poor heartbroken Mimsey was taken away to St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Leipsic, Venice, all over Europe, by her father, as heart-broken as herself.