"Remember him!" she repeated; "why it is only two years since he left us to go back to France."
"And what made him leave you, Cecille?" said I—then in an instant, feeling that my interest in Cecille had made me ask a question which it might be wrong in her to answer, I added, "Do not answer me, my child, if it was any thing which you think your father would not wish you to tell."
"Oh, no!" said Cecille, smiling, "it was only because some friends wrote to him to say that if he would come to France, they thought they could get the king to give him back an estate that had been unjustly taken from him."
"And should he get it, would you return to France, Cecille?"
"Yes, for papa and grandmamma love France so well, that they will never, I think, be quite happy anywhere else. My mamma is buried there too, on that same estate."
"Do you remember her, Cecille?"
"No—she died when I was a very little baby, and my grandmamma took care of me just as if she had been my own mamma. Papa told me all about it the night before he went away from us, and then he divided all the money that was left of what he had brought from France into two parcels, and he made me count what he took, and showed me that it was just enough to pay for his going back; and he told me how much was in the other parcel, that he was to leave with grandmamma. It seemed a great deal to me then, but papa said it was very little, and that it could not last long. Then he told me that he had taught me all he could himself, and had others teach me what he could not, in order that I might be able to work for grandmamma and myself, and I must do it when that money was gone, if I hoped for his blessing."
"And what made you leave N.?"
"Because it was such a little village that I could hardly get any work there. Mr. Logan advised us to go to New York; and we set out to go there, but the stage broke down with us here, and if it was not that poor grandmamma had suffered so much, I should be glad it did."
"You like your home here, then?"