“When I am the Lady of Virelai, my poor Honor,” said Jacqueline, “you must visit me, you must indeed. I shall receive you with pleasure.”
The supper bell rang just then, and the future Lady of Virelai jumped up with more animation than she often showed.
“There are to be apple fritters for supper!” she cried. “Margoton told me so! Quick, Moriole, or those greedy children will get the top ones.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Honor, as they sped up the allée. “There’ll be plenty for every one.”
Jacqueline turned a look of surprise on her.
“The top ones,” she said, “are the last off the griddle; naturally, one desires them!”
CHAPTER III
THE MOUNTAINEERS
It was Madame’s birthday, a bright June day; it was also the feast of St. Zita.
Every girl, Catholic and Protestant alike, had laid a flower on the Saint’s shrine, the pretty little marble shrine at the end of the garden, with the yellow roses climbing over it. Every girl had presented her gift to Madame at breakfast, to the good lady’s unbounded astonishment. They had been making the gifts under her benevolent nose for a month past, but she had seen nothing; Soeur Séraphine said so, and she ought to know. The steel beads of Honor’s neck chain (Honor was not skilful with her needle, but she could string beads with the best!) had flashed in sun and lamp light, had dropped on the floor and been rescued from corners and cracks; Madame never noticed. She did not even notice when Maria Patterson’s handkerchief case fell into the soup, which, as Patricia said, served Maria right for tatting at table. Soeur Séraphine saw, and Maria got no pudding, but Madame Madeleine never so much as looked that way, and never faltered in her recital of the virtues and sufferings of St. Zita.