She nodded and when she sank down at last on a bank of moss she smiled and nodded again.
“I love Dian because grandfather thought so much of him. He once said, 'Some people in this world are different and Dian is one of them!’ That is the reason that we love to hear his stories!”
They sat facing the sundial. There was no place that they loved so well as this quiet nook in the heart of a dense wood. No one really knew exactly how the sundial came to be there. The story was that an ancestor had wished to be alone with time and had had this place made for himself, where he used to spend long hours writing who knows what, perhaps verses, soliloquies, essays. At any rate, the sundial still stood in the heart of the wood and the gardener kept the brush from growing too close to it.
“You have not told me one fairy story since you came this time,” Jean reproached his friend as he opened the little green basket and brought out the jam and the croissants.
“I told you of the noises of Paris and how I lay awake and listened to them, of how Rosanne and I went to the fancy dress ball and hid in the balcony and watched the others dance. I told you about the funny café in the old green mill and the dark woman who made us the omelette. Why do you want fairy stories when real things are so wonderful!”
Jean looked so meek and contrite as he sat there on the moss bank like a little brown gnome, that Marie Josephine laughed out loud. Jean was her good comrade and dear friend, but she loved to tease him.
“Let us talk about Neville while we eat the croissants and jam. I can just picture him riding in through the gates. You and I will run to meet him, Jean. He will be covered with dust because he has ridden so fast. He will have a big packet of letters in his pocket for us all and he will bring news of maman and Lisle. Oh, perhaps he will bring word that they are coming soon.” Marie Josephine clasped her hands together in her earnestness. Then she took a bite of the croissants and jam and said something to Jean which so surprised him that he sat bolt upright on the moss and stared at her.
“I wish you weren’t such a very little boy, Jean. I wish you were old enough to plan and do things, and that you knew about something besides squirrels and jam and playing in the woods!”
Jean’s eyes snapped and his lips trembled.
“I am not a baby, Little Mademoiselle, truly I’m not,” he answered, but, as though in contradiction of his words, two big tears rolled down his cheeks.