“Ah, il est naïf, le petit,” she commented. “Et très gentil.”
“Oh, maman,” chimed in the child, “je serais heureuse si vous vouliez me permettre de jouer avec ce joli garçon.”
“Attendez, ma belle. Pas si vite.... Now, Martin Court, take me to your mother.”
Not knowing exactly what to do with his cap, the boy had kept it in his hand. The foregoing conversation was, of course, so much Greek in his ears. He realized that they were talking about him, and was fully alive to the girl’s demure admiration. The English words came with the more surprise, seeing that they followed so quickly on some remark in an unknown tongue.
He led the way at once, hoping that his mother had regained her normal condition of busy cheerfulness.
Silence reigned in the front kitchen when he pressed the latch. The room was empty, but the clank of pattens in the yard revealed that the farmer’s thrifty wife was sparing her skirts from the dirt while she crossed to the pig tub with a pailful of garbage.
“Will you take a seat, ma’am?” said Martin politely. “I’ll tell mother you are here.”
With a slight awkwardness he pulled three oaken chairs from the serried rank they occupied along the wall beneath the high-silled windows. Feeling all eyes fixed on him quizzically, he blushed.
“Ah, v’là le p’tit. Il rougit!” laughed the nurse.
“Don’t tease him, nurse!” cried the child in English. “He is a nice boy. I like him.”