Cecile felt a strange fluttering at her heart; the place was so large, the streets so interminable. Where, how, should she find the lady with the English name?
Pericard was now of no further use. He must follow where she led. She walked on, her steps flagging—despondency growing at her heart.
Was her dream then not real after all? Ah, yes! it must, it must be a Heaven-sent warning. Was not Joseph warned of God in a dream? Was he not told where to go and what to do?—just as Cecile herself had been told by the blessed Lord Himself. Only an angel had come to Joseph, but Jesus Himself had counseled Cecile. Yes, she was now in the faubourg—she must presently find the lady bearing the English name.
The Faubourg St. G—— was undoubtedly a poor suburb, but just even when Pericard's patience began to give way, the children saw a row of houses taller and better than any they had hitherto come across. The English lady must live there. Cecile again, with renewed hope and confidence, walked down the street. At the sixth house she stopped, and a cry of joy, of almost rapture, escaped her lips. Amid all the countless foreign words and names stood a modest English one on a neat door painted green. In the middle of a shining brass plate appeared two very simple, very common words—"Miss Smith."
CHAPTER XII.
THE WINSEY FROCK.
Her voice almost trembling with suppressed excitement, Cecile turned to her little brother.
"Maurice, Miss Smith lives here. She is an English lady. I must see her. You will stay outside with Pericard, Maurice; and Toby will take care of you. Don't go away. Just walk up and down. I shan't be long; and, Maurice, you won't go away?"
"No," answered Maurice, "I won't run away. I will eat some of that nice breakfast without waiting for you, Cecile; for I am hungry, but I won't run away."