We did not travel very rapidly, the roads being bad, even at this time of the year, and such as in many places forbade our travelling otherwise than in single file. The weather was charming—that was one comfort—and the air as delicious as any I ever breathed in my life. As we crossed the high moors, we saw abundance of those old heathen monuments which abound in Normandy, and still more in Brittany, and once we passed one almost exactly like that above our orchard, where my father and I had our memorable conversation.
We stopped for rest and refreshment in little country towns, and sometimes at lonely inns standing by themselves, such as would not have been considered very safe abiding-places in France, and where we should have been at a loss to make ourselves understood but for Andrew and the sailor whom he had taken along from Plymouth. The Cornish tongue, which is now fallen greatly into disuse, was at that time generally spoken among the common people. I picked up a good deal of it afterward, but at that time it was all heathen Greek to me, though my mother could speak it a little.
I must needs say that, though we must have appeared as outlandish to them as they did to us, the good folks were most kind to us, especially when they had heard something of our story. They would express their sympathy by sighs and tears, and by bringing out to us the best that they had; and the men would often leave their work and walk miles beside us to guide us on our way.
Simon kept up his courage very well, and indeed he enjoyed the journey; but poor Jeanne's spirits sank lower and lower, and I think she would have given out altogether had we not come, on the fifth day, to cultivated fields and orchards. The sight of these last revived her drooping courage, and when at last we reached the village of Tre Madoc, always a neat little place, and passing it came to the brow of the hill from which we looked down on the house of Tre Madoc, nestling amid great trees in its south-land valley, with the clear stream falling in a cascade at the upper end and rushing down to the sea, she was quite another woman.
"Is this not beautiful, Jeanne?" said my mother, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed on the old home, unseen for so many years.
"It is, madame; I won't deny it, though the house is nothing in grandeur to the Tour d'Antin. And the cottages do look snug and comfortable; but after all it is not France!"
"No, it is not France: don't you wish it were?" said I. "How nice it would be to see a party of dragoons coming after us over the hill, and to be afraid to pass yonder tumbling old cross lest some one should see that we did not bow to it!"
I am conscious that I spoke these words all the more sharply because I was myself dreadfully homesick—not for France so much as for London, with which I had fallen in love, though I had begun by disliking it so much. I had had a taste of that life of which I had so often dreamed, and I found the cup too sweet to wish to have that taste the only one.
My mother looked at me in surprise, but she had no time to speak the reproof which her eyes uttered. It seemed that we were expected and watched for. We saw a little lad, who had been sitting with his dog and clapper watching the birds, leave his occupation and run down toward the house, and presently an elderly lady, surrounded by three or four young ones, came out upon the porch.
"There are my mother and sisters," said Andrew "and," he added to me, in a lower tone, "your mother, too, Vevette! I hope you will love her."