"I have not been idling."
"Where have you been working, then?"
"Helping to put up a truckle-bed in Madame Grégoire's back-room. Her son Jules returned at five o'clock this morning from India."
"From India, child?" demanded the gouvernante, peeling the only slice of saucisson left in the dish, and insinuating it between lips as thin as itself.
"From Algiers in the Indies. Monsieur Jules serves in the twenty-third regiment of the line; and, having suffered considerably from the climate, has obtained his furlough."
"Another lazy useless hanger-on in the house! God help us!" ejaculated the housekeeper. "There, go and arrange your master's things in his dressing-room, while I put away breakfast. I will leave the china for you to wash up, outside the kitchen-door. Go!"
And he went,—neither whistling, however, nor with any want of thought. Between his discoveries concerning the Courson family, and the wonderful events he had just heard recited in the metaphorical military prose of Monsieur Jules, (alias the slang of the twenty-third regiment of the line,) Guguste had a forty-horse power of cogitation at that moment labouring in his brain!
(To be continued.)