“You are teasing me, Petite Mère. Tell me, is the family coming?”
Jean tugged at the blue apron. He was small for his thirteen years, and had a quaint, babylike face.
“Some of them are coming!” His mother was teasing now.
Jean frowned but he smiled almost at the same time, so that a dimple showed in his thin cheek.
“You know it is of Mademoiselle Marie Josephine I would hear. Tell me, is she coming?” he asked breathlessly.
Jean
His mother nodded, and he began to jump up and down, up and down, until he could not jump any more. Then he threw himself down upon the mound of grass from which he had emerged and flung his broad, torn straw hat up in the air, shouting as loud as he could shout, which was very loud indeed. His mother put both her hands over her ears.
“Hush, you are like a wild animal to-day. Little Mademoiselle will not wish to speak with you if you are rough. Come, I’ve no time to stand idle here. There is so much to do, the apartments to make ready. It is different indeed from the old days, for only the governess and one maid, the little, fat Proté, are to accompany the young ladies. None of the other servants of the Paris household are to come. There will only be the cook and scullery servants, an upstairs maid or two, and two men servants at Les Vignes—no state, no ceremony, no gaiety of any kind. The messenger who brought the news says that some of the Paris servants have left, and others are going. He says that they are storming the Tuileries palace—the people I mean, thousands of them. Madame la Comtesse became alarmed at the sound of battle and the cannonading, and late last night she sent a rider here. He arrived at mid-afternoon, and would only stay for a glass of wine and a bite of bread. He said he must make haste back again.” As Mother Barbette talked, she went inside her cottage door and Jean followed her, giving whoops of delight as he did so. His mother looked at him gravely.
“You need not make so much noise, my child. It is because of bad times that the young demoiselles are coming. We are so out of the way here in Pigeon Valley, without so much as an inn or a shop. Jacques, the rider, says we may be thankful that we are away from the towns. We are better off, he says, just to be here by ourselves in the valley, but we are bad enough off, some of us!” Mother Barbette sighed as she went over to her white wood table which, having been freshly scrubbed, shone in the late sunshine. “Jacques told many things and I know he spoke the truth, but it is hard to believe them.” She wrapped two loaves of bread, which stood on the table, in a clean towel which she took from a table drawer.