“No, I’m not. They may take him away, but he’ll come back. I doubt if he even consents to leave this city.”
The sergeant was surprised. “You are a funny little woman,” he said shortly. “What makes you say that?”
“Because he loves us,” she said triumphantly. “I never was sure of it till this evening. There’s no one that he likes in France. He will stay where his heart is, or if he goes away he will come back to us.”
“Maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong,” said the sergeant sagely. “Time will tell; but I guess he’ll go to France and get used to it.”
CHAPTER X.
A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.
The sergeant was intensely amused and interested in the French priest. He obtained a few days’ leave from his duties, and occupied himself in showing his guest the sights of an American city. The innocence, the childishness, and the curiosity of his companion, and, above all, the attention that he attracted, provided the sergeant with the most agreeable sensation that he had had for many a day.
Eugene sometimes accompanied them, oftener he did not. He was no longer cheerful and contented, but had fallen into the reserved, quiet, almost sullen state in which he had been when Mrs. Hardy first knew him; and instead of mingling freely with the little family, he preferred to be left alone in his room, where he sat musing by the hour.
Occasionally he roused himself as the claims of hospitality asserted themselves in his mind, and he politely endeavored to entertain the priest by conversations about French matters. To these conversations the sergeant lent a most attentive ear. He had an immense curiosity on the subject of foreign countries; and the precocious remarks of Eugene with regard to the peasant vote, the political clubs, and the rural life of the nobility in France, with the almost infantile responses of the curé to the boy’s questions and unfathomable prejudices, formed subjects on which he would remember to inform himself after they were gone.