“Will you not come and speak with us, Grigge? We have been talking of Dian the shepherd, and we wish that we could see him.”
Grigge had never spoken with the Little Mademoiselle before although he had seen her every summer, and she had always given him a pleasant greeting. He was so eager for news of Dian, that he came up to them at once.
“You have heard from him, Mademoiselle! Tell me that you have had word!” He came close to the gates and looked up eagerly at Marie Josephine.
She shook her head. “There is no news of him, but he has only been away a week. We are sure that he is happy, wherever he is. Nothing but good could happen to Dian.”
Grigge clasped his hands together in his eagerness.
“No, no, you are right. Nothing could happen. He will come back,” he exclaimed.
Marie Josephine nodded emphatically.
“Jean and I will walk with him across the meadows at sunset, and he will have so many wonderful things to tell us about his adventures!”
Grigge looked at her wonderingly, at the fineness of her blue cape, the delicate contour of her face, her carefully brushed curls, her straight black velvet frock. He had never been close up to any one like her before. She was so unlike anything in his own life that she might have come from another world. When she told him that no news had come from Dian, his face fell. All the week he had felt a weight of loneliness upon him. He had taken faithful care of the sheep and he had been proud of the task, but the one person who made life bearable for him had gone away.
Marie Josephine looked at Grigge with interest. What a pale, thin boy he was, and what big eyes he had! She felt a lump in her throat as she looked at him. Marie Josephine was beginning to wake up. She was beginning to realize that there was something in the world besides the house in Paris and Les Vignes, governesses and bals masqués. She was seeing Grigge for the first time, not just as a poor, ragged lad living in one of the hovels at the very gates of her home, but as some one who was unhappy and worried and in need of comfort, as she was herself. Feeling this way about Grigge was so new to her that she did not know what to make of it.