At last the sergeant put down the book. “Wife,” he said, “it is half-past nine.”
“I will go to bed,” said Eugene, rising immediately. “Good-night, Mrs. Hardy.”
“Good-night, my dear boy,” she said, “my son.”
A curious look came over the boy’s face. He colored, looked confused, and she thought that his parted lips were forming the word “mother,” when suddenly her two cats, who were usually taken with a spirit of mischief about bedtime, sprang at her workbasket, and by upsetting it diverted her attention from Eugene.
He laughed in the merry way that he had learned since coming to her house; and at once he and the sergeant and the cats engaged in a frolic, and by turns chased each other and the spools of thread that went rolling all over the floor.
Mrs. Hardy stood looking at them with a smile on her face when, in the midst of their fun, they heard a ring at the door-bell.
Eugene jumped up. “Allow me to open the door,” he said in his pretty, courteous way; and Mrs. Hardy stood aside to let him pass.
The parlor door remained open; and to her surprise she heard from the hall, first an eager exclamation from Eugene, then a succession of rapid French sentences.
“Who is there?” said the sergeant, turning his red face toward her.