“Good-bye, papa! Come back! Come back soon!” until the boat was only a dim, shadowy outline.
The dreadful thought came to me that perhaps we would never see papa again! Suppose his people, who were rich and grand, should induce our father never to return to us!
I had kept back my tears. Mama had told us that none of us must let papa see us cry, as it might “unman” him, and she herself had heroically set the example of restraining her grief until after his departure. Now, however, the strain was loosened. I fancied I read in my brothers’ and sisters’ faces—we were all imaginative and sensitive and excitable—my own fears. Simultaneously we all began to cry.
Never will I forget that return home, all of us children crying and sobbing, and mama now weeping as unconcealedly as any of us, and the French people stopping us on the way to console or commiserate with us; but although they repeated over and over:
“Pauvre petites enfants! Pauvre petite mère!” I saw their significant glances, and I knew that in their minds was the same treacherous thought of my father.
But papa did return! He could have stayed in England, and, as my sister Ada extravagantly put it, “lived in the lap of luxury,” but he came back to his noisy, ragged little “heathens,” and the “painting, painting of pot-boilers to feed my hungry children.”
IV
“MONSIEUR DE ST. VIDAL is ringing the doorbell,” called Ellen, “why don’t you open the door, Marion? I believe he has a birthday present for you in his hand.”
It was my sixteenth birthday, and Monsieur de St. Vidal was my first beau! He was a relative of our neighbors, the Prefontaines, and I liked him pretty well. I think I chiefly liked to be taken about in his stylish little dogcart. I felt sure all the other girls envied me.
“You go, Ellen, while I change my dress.”