Of course my wife turned her face away indignantly on the conjugal pillow, and burst into tears. Of course upon that, "Mr." made his excuses, and "Mrs." had her own way.
Before the week was out we rode over to Underbridge, and duly offered to Francis Raven a place in our service as supernumerary groom.
At first the poor fellow seemed hardly able to realize his own extraordinary good fortune. Recovering himself, he expressed his gratitude modestly and becomingly. Mrs. Fairbank's ready sympathies overflowed, as usual, at her lips. She talked to him about our home in France, as if the worn, gray-headed hostler had been a child. "Such a dear old house, Francis; and such pretty gardens! Stables! Stables ten times as big as your stables here—quite a choice of rooms for you. You must learn the name of our house—Maison Rouge. Our nearest town is Metz. We are within a walk of the beautiful River Moselle. And when we want a change we have only to take the railway to the frontier, and find ourselves in Germany."
Listening, so far, with a very bewildered face, Francis started and changed color when my wife reached the end of her last sentence. "Germany?" he repeated.
"Yes. Does Germany remind you of anything?"
The hostler's eyes looked down sadly on the ground. "Germany reminds me of my wife," he replied.
"Indeed! How?"
"She once told me she had lived in Germany—long before I knew her—in the time when she was a young girl."
"Was she living with relations or friends?"
"She was living as governess in a foreign family."