“But it will be a long time yet,” said Lucie, “won’t it?”
“Not so very long,” said Paul. “In four years I shall go to the cavalry school, and then in four years more I shall be graduated, and then I shall be a lieutenant, and have a sword, and wear a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it.”
The picture which Paul unconsciously drew of himself was very attractive to the imaginative Lucie. She looked at him meditatively, and wondered how he would look when he was grown up, with his sword and horse-hair plume. Paul was not particularly handsome, but his somewhat stocky figure was well-knit, and he looked unqualifiedly clean and honest—two great recommendations in any man or boy.
“By the time you are a lieutenant with a sword,” she continued, “I shall be a young lady with a long train and I shall be very rich. Harper told me so, and then I am coming to Bienville, and I will buy the commandant’s house, and have the finest carriage in Bienville, and have a ball every night.”
Paul listened to this with a sudden sinking of the heart. The realization came to him, as much as if he had been twenty instead of twelve years old, that this splendid picture which Lucie drew of her future did not accord with his, the son of a Bienville advocate, who lived in a modest house and whose mother made most of her own gowns. And besides that, he did not like, and did not understand Lucie’s innocent bragging. He was a sweet, sensible boy, with a practical French mind, who never bragged about anything in his life, and who did heroic, boyish things in the most matter-of-fact manner in the world, and never thought they were heroic. But Lucie was so charming! Like many a grown up man his judgment and his heart went different ways. Lucie had his heart—there was no question about it.
Lucie would have liked to stay a long time with Paul, and Paul would have enjoyed staying with Lucie, but, looking up, he saw his father and mother approaching, on their way to the terrace, where, like all the other inhabitants of Bienville, they spent their summer afternoons having ices or drinking tea and listening to the music. The Verneys were a comfortable-looking couple, fond of each other and adoring Paul. They smiled when they saw Paul seated on the bench and the charming little girl talking to him. They knew it was none of Paul’s doing, for he was afraid of girls and always ran away from them.
As his father and mother drew nearer, Paul’s impulse to rush away, in order to avoid being seen with Lucie, almost overpowered him, but he was at heart a courageous boy, and a chivalrous one, and he thought it would be cowardly to run off; so he stood, or rather sat his ground with apparent boldness, but his face was reddening and his heart thumping as his father and mother approached. Lucie, however, was not at all timid, and when she saw Monsieur and Madame Verney coming so close, asked Paul who they were.
“It is my father and mother,” said Paul in a shaky voice, opening his book with much embarrassment and turning over its pages.