“I have no brother.”
“Ah, then, your sweetheart? Your fiancé?”
“I—I—sometime he might—that is, we were not fiancéd, not exactly.”
The old man drew her down on the bench beside him:
“Now tell me all about it, ma pauvre petite.”
And Judy told him of her friends in Kentucky. Of Molly Brown and her brother Kent; of her own stubbornness in not leaving France when the war broke out; and then she translated Mrs. Brown’s letter for him.
“Ah, but the good lady does not think he is drowned!”
“Yes, but she is so wonderful, so brave.”
“Well, are you not wonderful and brave, too? You must go on with your courage. If a mother can write as she has done and have faith in le bon Dieu, then you must try, too—that will make you worthy of such a belle mère. Does she not say that two passengers were seen to be saved by the enemy?”
“Oh, Père Tricot, you are good, good! I will try—if Kent’s own mother can be so brave, why surely I must be calm, too, I, who am nothing to him.”