“Oh, Susie, Susie!”
“What is the matter?”
“A man with a red flag in his hand; he saw me, and he looked so astonished.”
“You are so irrational!”
“Yes, it is true, to have called out of the window like that, but not to be happy at thinking that we are going to live alone, ‘en garcons’.”
“Alone! alone! Not exactly that. To begin with, we shall have two people to dinner to-night.”
“Ah! that is true. But those two people, I shall not be at all sorry to see them again. Yes, I shall be well pleased to see the old Cure again, but especially the young officer.”
“What! especially?”
“Certainly; because what the lawyer from Souvigny told us the other day is so touching, and what that great artilleryman did when he was quite little was so good, so good, that this evening I shall seek for an opportunity of telling him what I think of it, and I shall find one.”
Then Bettina, abruptly changing the course of the conversation, continued: