"Bon Gyu, Phil Carré! And we thought you dead! And Helier Le Marchant! Where do you come from? Where have you been all the time?"
"Prisoners of war. We came across from France there. There's à boat in the harbour, Elie, that we borrowed and promised to return. Will you see to it for us?" and we sped on, to meet many such welcomes, and staring eyes and gaping mouths, till we came to Beaumanoir, and walked into the kitchen.
"Oh, bon Dieu!" gasped Aunt Jeanne, and sat down suddenly on the green-bed at sight of us, believing we were spirits bearing her warning.
But I flung my arms round her neck and kissed her heartily, and asked only, "Carette?—and my mother?"
And she said, "But they are well, mon gars," and regarded me with somewhat less of doubt, but no less amazement. And I kissed her again, and said, "Helier will tell you all about it, Aunt Jeanne," and ran off across the knoll, past Vieux Port, to Belfontaine.
I looked across at Brecqhou as I came in sight of the western waters, and said to myself, "In an hour I will be over there to see Carette," and my heart leaped with joy. Away up towards Rondellerie I thought I saw my grandfather in the fields. I jumped over the green bank and came down to the house through the orchard. The door stood wide and I went in. My mother looked up in quick surprise at a visitor at so unusual an hour, and in a moment she was on my neck.
"My boy! my boy!" she cried. "Now God be praised!" and sobbed and strained me to her, and I felt all her prayers thrill through her arms into my own heart.
It was quite a while before we could settle to reasonable talk, for, in spite of her repeated assertions that she had never really given me up, she could still hardly realise that I was truly alive and come back to her, and every other minute she must fling her arms round my neck to make sure.
Then up she jumped and set food before me, in quantity equal almost to the time I had been away, as though she feared I had eaten nothing since I left home. And I had an appetite that almost justified her, for the night had been a wasteful one.
And while I ate, I told her briefly where I had been, and what had kept me so long, and touched but lightly on the matter of Torode, for I saw that was not what she would care to hear.