“Mademoiselle asks nothing about the pension?” Margoton dismissed the unfortunate Gruyère with a wave of the hand, and turned smiling to Honor. “These other demoiselles are in a despair till they behold her; as I said. M. le Professeur, when he came yesterday—for the lesson of French history, as Mademoiselle knows—actually his venerable countenance was to make weep when he found no M’lle. Honor. ‘Where is my Fair One with golden locks?’ demands that poor gentleman. ‘I have prepared a genealogy of the Merovingians for her; she has the historical sense, that young person.’ I heard it with my ears, Mademoiselle.”
“What is that, Merovingian?” asked Gretli. “It sounds like a cheese, but I know of no such.”
“They were early kings of France!” said Honor, brightening a little. “First the Merovingians, then the Carlovingians, then the Capets. St. Louis was a Capet, you know.”
Both sisters nodded vigorously. “That was a very holy saint!” said Gretli. “His goodness to the poor was well known. He also washed the feet of holy pilgrims. Also there was Louis XVI, a martyr, as every child knows. Ah! that unhappy France! what terrible histories! To be Swiss,” she added; “that is to pray for, if these things were in our hands, which the good God has in nowise permitted. M’lle Stephanie found herself not too ill, Margoton, after the attack of that thoughtless animal?”
“Oh, yes!” Honor’s heart smote her. What a selfish creature she was! she had not thought of poor Stephanie all these days.
“Do tell us how Stephanie is, Margoton! I hope she was not really hurt.”
It was Gretli who answered, a shade of asperity in her kind voice.
“She was hurt, Mademoiselle, as much as a flea is hurt that falls on a featherbed. Precisely so much, and no more. Did she not knock you down and descend upon your prostrate form? I ask you! Not of her free will, I grant you, but so it was. She was frightened, she rent the air with her shrieks, the mountains rang with them; but of injury—ah! for example! not one particle of that, believe me!”
Margoton demurred; was not her sister perhaps a trifle severe? There was a bruise on the child’s forehead, that was visible to the eye. There was no doubt that Bimbo was an evil beast. To attack from behind like that; Margoton asked you, was that well-conducted?
“He had provocation!” cried Gretli. “I do not wholly defend our Bimbo; he has the faults of youth, and of his nature. A goat, that is not a philosopher, hein? But, it is a fact that he had provocation. Who in her senses would bring a scarlet parasol to a châlet of the Alps? No! my faith, that was not well done. A bruise on the forehead? That is a small matter indeed; while behold our little Mademoiselle here a prisoner for a whole week, deprived of her studies, of her companions, of—”