"Oh, I don't mean tongue like that," she said, "I mean talking—language. When I was little like you I could talk nothing but French, just like you now, who can talk only English."
"And can't everybody in France talk English too?" asked Gladys, opening her eyes.
"Oh dear no!" said Léonie.
Gladys and Roger looked at each other. This was quite a new and rather an alarming idea.
"It is a very good thing," Gladys remarked at last, "that Papa is to be at the station. If we got lost over there," she went on, nodding her head in the direction of an imaginary France, "it would be even worse than in London."
"But you're not going to get lost anywhere," said Léonie, smiling. "We'll take better care of you than that."
And then she went on to tell them a little story of how once, when she was a very little girl, she had got lost—not in Paris, but in a much smaller town—and how frightened she was, and how at last an old peasant woman on her way home from market had found her crying under a hedge, and had brought her home again to her mother. This thrilling adventure was listened to with the greatest interest.
"How pleased your mother must have been to see you again!" said Gladys. "Does she still live in that queer old town? Doesn't she mind you going away from her?"
"Alas!" said Léonie, and the tears twinkled in her bright eyes, "my mother is no longer of this world. She went away from me several years ago. I shall not see her again till in heaven."
"That's like us," said Gladys. "We've no Mamma. Did you know?"