were suggestive to him also, and carried
with them their own train of ideas.

"Yes, and I will too," says Madelon, in one brief moment
conceiving, weighing, and forming a great resolution. "Ah, I
know how to do it--I know, and I will; I promise you, and I
always keep my promises, you know. I promised papa that I
would never become a nun, and I never will."

"Indeed, I cannot fancy you a nun at all," said Graham,
rousing himself, and getting up. "Don't you think we had
better be going back to the hotel now? It is getting quite
late."

"And when your fortune is made, may I come and live with you?"
said Madelon, without moving.

"We shall see about that afterwards," he answered, smiling,
"there is time enough to think about it, you may be sure.
Come, Madelon, we must be going."

"Ah, you do not know, and I will not tell you," said Madelon,
jumping up as she spoke.

"What do I not know?" asked Graham, taking her hand in his, as
they walked off together.

"What I will do--it is my secret, but you will see--yes, you
will see, I promise you that."

She almost danced with glee as she walked along at Graham's
side. He did not understand what she was talking about; he had
missed the first sentence that might have given him the clue,
and merely supposed that it was some childish mystery with
which she was amusing herself.

But Madelon understood full well, and her busy little brain
was full of plans and projects as she walked along. Make a
fortune! how many fortunes had she not seen made in a day--in
an hour! "Give me only ten francs, _et je ferai fortune!_" The
old speech that she had quoted years ago to Horace Graham--
though, indeed, she had no remembrance of having done so--was
familiar to her now as then. Ah! she knew how fortunes were
made, and Monsieur Horace did not--that was strange, but it was
evident to her--and she would not tell him. Her superior
knowledge on this point was a hidden treasure, for a great
ambition had suddenly fired our ten-year-old Madelon. Not only
in maturer years are great plans laid, great campaigns
imagined, great victories fought for; within the narrow walls
of many a nursery, on the green lawns of many a garden, the
mimic fort is raised, the siege-train laid, the fortress
stormed; and in many a tiny head the germs of the passions and
ambitions and virtues of later years are already working out
for themselves such paths as surrounding circumstances will
allow them to find. But M