Perhaps if I should tell of our conversation on this day it might recount something that would show how things were with me. In our meeting there was nothing but the friendship of two lads, to put the case as it really appeared to be, and when she had climbed up on the top rail of the fence beside me, and hooked the hollows of her feet behind the bar to keep her balance, the way I was doing, we began, as children do, to speak without preliminaries of any kind in the way of greetings.
"Why weren't you here this morning?" she said, as if accusing me.
"He had one of his fits on and kept me at work," I replied. "First I had to practise with the small sword for two hours. If I don't look out he will run me through some day. I almost wish he would."
"I heard you shooting," said the girl.
"Yes, he wouldn't let me off until I had placed three pistol balls inside a horseshoe nailed to the side of the barn; but I'd rather do that than go through the fencing."
"Down in the village and at our house every one says you're all crack-brained up here," the girl said, making a grasp in the air at a yellow butterfly that flittered over her head. "What else did you do?"
I was ashamed to say that I had been at my dancing-lesson, so I said: "I had to translate four odes of Horace and learn all about a lot of stupid people named De Brissac. I'm glad they had their heads cut off."
"Why did that happen to them?" asked the girl. "What did they cut their heads off for?"
"Because they were nobles and offended the French Republicans by being polite and well dressed and clean, my uncle says."
"Tell me all about it."