“I suppose there is no one watching us?” said Brent, feeling strangely happy at being included in the conspiracy.
She looked round the garden, remembering that it was hidden on three sides by its high stone wall.
“It is not likely. I saw no one in Beaucourt.”
Brent replaced the crock, and shovelled back the earth, and Manon helped him to pile the stones over the spot. She appeared to be thinking, but her silence was without embarrassment or constraint. Her face had become the face of a serious child, a child who was neither afraid nor unhappy.
“How is it you speak French so well?” she asked him with a child’s abruptness.
“A Frenchman taught me, while I was a prisoner.”
She nodded, and the nod seemed to suggest that she understood that he had reasons, but that she was not worrying her head about them.
“Tiens! but I am hungry—I had my cup of coffee and a slice of bread at four. Since then I have walked from Ste. Claire.”
Brent threw on a last stone. There was a healthy zest in the way she spoke of her hunger.
“And Paul has not had even that,” he said; “but your house has a store-room and a larder.”