This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she would think she was flattering one of the seraphim if she had said to him, "You might have been a De Rancé!"
"Madame!" stammered Flint, "why, Madame!"
"Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame, since it would embarrass you to change. But I look upon you as my son, none the less. I claim you from this hour," said she firmly, as one not to be gainsaid.
"I'm beginning to believe in fairy-stories," said Flint. "The beggar comes home—and he isn't a beggar at all, he's a Prince. Because the Queen is his mother."
My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of his manner, and the unaffected feeling of his words, pleased her. But she said no more of what was in her heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the safe subject of housekeeping matters.
"I suppose," she mused, "that those children will remain with us to-day? Yes, of course. Armand, we shall have the last of your great-grandfather's wine. And I am going to send over for the judge. Let me see: shall I have time for a cake with frosting? H'm! Yes, I think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with whipped cream, John?"
He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his beard.
"Couldn't we have both!" he wondered hopefully. "Please! Just for this once?"
"We could! We shall!" said my mother, grandly, recklessly, extravagantly. "Adieu, then, children of my heart! I go to confer with Clélie." She waved her hand and was gone.
The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with his head between his paws and dozed and dreamed in it, every now and then opening his hazel eyes to make sure that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and singing and nest-building, and the budding of new green leaves and the blossoming of April boughs. Just such April hopes were theirs who had found each other again this morning. All of life at its best and fairest stretched sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that had for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for the loss that had been so imminent.