She ran up to me with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, Phil, I was so afraid I was not to see you! And you are going away? How big you're getting! How long will you be away?"
This was very delightful, for I had been fearing that the little touch of stiffness, which I had experienced the last time I saw her, and which I now quite understood, might have grown out of knowledge.
"We are going first to the West Indies and then on to Canada. It may be a long time before I'm back, and I did want to see you once more before I went. I began to fear I was not going to."
"'Oh, we're very strict here, you know, and we have rules. Oh, heaps of rules! But I knew dear Miss Maddy would manage it when she knew how I wanted to see you;" and she ran up to Miss Maddy and kissed the little brown ormer shells over her ears, and Miss Maddy patted them hastily lest the tiny kiss should have set them awry.
"And how did you leave them all in Sercq? And when did you see Aunt Jeanne last? And who's taking care of my boat? And—"
"Wait!" I laughed, "or I shall forget some of them. I saw Aunt Jeanne this morning just before I left. She thought we sailed at once. She would have sent you her love, and maybe some gâche, if she had known—"
"Ah, ma fé! How I wish she had known!" sighed Carette longingly, for Aunt Jeanne Falla's gâche had a name all over Sercq.
"And everybody is well except old Père Guérin, and he is cutting a new tooth, they say, and it makes him sour in the temper."
"Why, he's over ninety!" exclaimed Carette.