Barbara turned appealingly to Eugenia. “Do make Mildred hush and not take the fine flavor from my romance,” she begged. “The young soldier may not have known where the young dancing girl lives, but I do. Indeed, we all passed her home this afternoon. Didn’t you see a little scarlet cap on the bayberry bush outside the old hut in the woods? Well, Nicolete has been living there recently, with an old grandmother, or an old woman of some kind. She is the adopted daughter of some mysterious person, I am told. You recall that Nicolete was a slave girl owned by a viscount?”
Eugenia got up slowly out of her chair.
“I don’t mean to be rude, child, but really I have to attend to some things before I go to bed and your story seems rather far fetched. Tell us who Nicolete’s adoring lover is and wait until tomorrow for the rest.”
Barbara shrugged her shoulders petulantly.
“Of all the disagreeable audiences this is the worst!” she asserted. “I thought maybe you might be interested in something except horrors. The story is that this little gypsy girl is really very much in love with Captain Castaigne, whom we saw this afternoon. That is, she may not be exactly in love with him, but the soldiers think she is. His mother is terribly angry, because, of course, they belong to one of the oldest families in France while she is ‘Poor Little Miss Nobody of Nowhere.’ Then another romantic point is that the little blond soldier who gave us the flowers is enamored of Nicolete. Monsieur Bebé is what the other soldiers call him, so I wasn’t so far wrong in thinking he looked like a baby.”
Barbara did not observe that Eugenia was frowning majestically and that Mildred Thornton looked rather bored.
Nona, however, was smiling good-humoredly.
“Hurry up and finish, Barbara. Is Captain Castaigne pining away for the fair Nicolete, refusing to be a knight or to bear arms for his country? I thought he was supposed to be an extraordinary young officer,” Nona questioned.
Undoubtedly Barbara was crestfallen.
“I suppose that is the weakest part of the story,” she confessed. “I don’t know whether Captain Castaigne cares for this particular Nicolete in the least. He does not care for anything but his beloved country, I believe. But if you won’t be interested in my romance, please listen to the first part of my poem,” Barbara begged, picking up her discarded book. “There is a translation here of the first verse: