was a very quick, diminutive person seen from behind, with rather
short skirts for the fashion of the day; and a scanty brown shawl, and a
high Paimpol _coiffe_. She, too, hanging on his arm, turned towards him
with an affectionate glance.

"A trifle old was his sweetheart!"

That's what the others called after him, we say, but without spite, for
any one could see that she was his old granny, come up from the country.
She had come, too, in a hurry, suddenly terrified at the news of his
sudden departure; for this Chinese war had already cost Paimpol many
sailors. So she had scraped together all her poor little savings, put
her best Sunday dress and a fresh clean _coiffe_ in a box, and had set
out to kiss him once again.

She had gone straight to the barracks to ask for him; at first his
adjutant had refused to let him go out.

"If you've anything to say, my good woman, go and speak to the captain
yourself. There he is, passing."

So she calmly walked up to him, and he allowed himself to be won over.

"Send Moan to change his clothes, to go out," said he.

All in hot haste Moan had gone to rig up in his best attire, while the
good old lady, to make him laugh, of course, made a most inimitably
droll face and a mock curtsey at the adjutant behind his back.

But when the grandson appeared in his full uniform, with the inevitable
turned-down collar, leaving his throat bare, she was quite struck with
his beauty; his black beard was cut into a seamanly fashionable point by
the barber, and his cap was decked out with long floating ribbons, with
a golden anchor at each end. For the moment she almost saw in him her
son Pierre, who, twenty years before, had also been a sailor in the
navy, and the remembrance of the far past, with all its dead, stealthily
shadowed the present hour.

But the sadness soon passed away. Arm-in-arm they strolled on, happy to
be together; and it was then that the others had pretended to see in her
his sweetheart, and voted her "a trifle old."

She had taken him, for a treat, to dine in an inn kept by some people
from Paimpol, which had been recommended to her as rather cheap. And
then, still arm-in-arm, they had sauntered through Brest, looking at the
shop-windows. There never were such funny stories told as those she told
her grandson to make him laugh; of course all in Paimpol Breton, so that
the passers-by might not understand.

CHAPTER VIII--OLD AND YOUNG

She stayed three days with