"La fin du jour
Sauve les fleurs et rafraîchit les belles;
Je veux, en galant troubadour,
Célébrer, au nom de l'amour,
Chanter, au nom des fleurs nouvelles
La fin du jour."
The message was given later, and as Mistress Gainor came in to his mother's room she was a striking figure, with the beaver hat tied under her chin and the long, dark-green pelisse cast open so as to reveal the rich silk of her gown. It was not unfit for her age and was in entire good taste, for as usual she was dressed for her rôle. Even her goddaughter was slightly surprised, well as she knew her. This was not the Gainor that Chovet knew, the woman who delighted to excite the too easily irritated Dr. Rush, or to shock Mrs. Adams, the Vice-President's wife, with well embroidered gossip about the Willing women and the high play at Landsdowne, where Mrs. Penn presided, and Shippens, Chews, and others came. This was another woman.
Margaret, curious, lingered behind Miss Wynne, and stood a moment, a hand on the door. Miss Wynne came forward, and saying in French which had amazed two generations, "Bon jour, madame," swept the entirely graceful courtesy of a day when even the legs had fine manners, adding, as the vicomtesse would have risen, "No, I beg of you."
"The settle is on the balcony," said the hostess, "and Cicero will come up by and by and carry thee out. Not a step—not a step by thyself," she added, gently despotic.
As Miss Wynne passed by, the girl saw her courtesy, and, closing the door, said to herself, "I think I could do it," and fell to courtesying on the broad landing. "I should like to do that for Friend Nicholas Waln," and gaily laughing, she went out and down the garden to deliver her message to the young vicomte.
Neither man, woman nor the French tongue dismayed Mistress Wynne. "C'était un long calembourg, my son," the vicomtesse said later—"a long conundrum, a long charade of words to represent le bon Dieu knows what. Ah, a tonic, truly. I was amused as I am not often." In fact, she was rarely receptively humorous and never productively so. Now she spoke slowly, in order to be understood, comprehending the big woman and knowing her at once for a lady of her own world with no provincial drawbacks, a woman at her ease, and serenely unconscious of, or indifferent to, the quality of the astounding tongue in which she spoke.
She talked of London and of the French emigrant nobles in Philadelphia, of the Marquis de la Garde, who taught dancing; of the Comte du Vallon, who gave lessons in fencing; of De Malerive, who made ice-cream. Madame, interested, questioned her until they got upon unhappy France, when she shifted the talk and spoke of the kindness of Mr. Wynne.
"It will soon be too hot here," said Gainor, "and then I shall have you at the Hill—Chestnut Hill, and in a week I shall come for you to ride in my landau,"—there were only four in the city,—"and the vicomte shall drive with you next Saturday. You may not know that my niece Mrs. Wynne was of French Quakers from the Midi, and this is why her son loves your people and has more praise for your son than he himself is like to hear from my nephew. For my part, when I hate, I let it out, and when I love or like, I am frank," which was true.
Just then came the old black servant man Cicero, once a slave of James Logan the first, and so named by the master, folks said, because of pride in his fine translation of the "De Senectute" of Cicero, which Franklin printed.
"Cicero will carry thee out," said Mrs. Swanwick.