She was a beautiful child. She had a great deal of Margharetta's own handsome, insolent beauty, but she had in addition a craft and ability for lying and deception astounding in one so young. Ten years old by the calendar she no doubt was; but by sundry other reckonings, she might have been ten thousand—a strange, pathetic, puzzling little girl.
For a time Margharetta's heart was staunched. But ere long it began to bleed afresh for the one who was, it was now clear, her dearest—Richard, the little Dauphin. She would stand looking out of the window, the picture of wretchedness. "He is such an angelic little fellow! I can't begin to tell you! Oh, if I could only see him! If I could only have him in my arms once more!"
I make no apology. I only tell the event, perhaps a little shamefacedly. It was not long after this that I went and fetched Richard also.
If his sister was ten thousand, Richard was, I think, of prehistoric origin. He had carried over from the Stone Age a strange ability for having his own way at heavy cost. He had never been in the country. His passion for flowers would have been a hopeful and poetic thing, had it but been accompanied by a knowledge of what flowers were. He would appear in full rapture, bearing a huge bouquet of young bean-plants or a large nosegay of freshly planted cabbages. Never, despite my faithful efforts, did he lose his passionate love of flowers, and never, despite my equally faithful endeavors, did he learn to know what flowers were. I think that they were to him anything that could be gathered with greatest ease in largest bunches. With this definition in mind, it will be seen that a vegetable garden offers superlative opportunities.
Margharetta could see in all this nothing but a newly interesting phase of her darling. I was there when he brought her his third generous bouquet. She took it into her gracious handsome hands, held it off a little, then appealed to me for appreciation:—
"Now, isn't that his mother's boy? He brings everything to me."
I had explained to Margharetta before, that, right as filial affection undoubtedly is, the gathering of young tomato-plants from the garden had come to be fearfully wrong. I now repeated this severely, then addressed the Dauphin direct.
"You are never, never to gather anything from the garden again; do you understand?"
Back went the Dauphin's head suddenly; his face became a purple mask of tragedy; his eyes rained intolerable tears; he broke forth into a most wild and tragic wail.
Margharetta stooped, gathered him to her bosom with one of her finest gestures, lifted him sobbing in her arms, laid his head against her shoulder, held it there with a possessive queenly hand, and with a colder look thrown at me, I am sure, than ever the Bourbons threw at the mob, carried him upstairs.