posed
of these Parisian shopkeepers."

"Don't, Mr. Hartington," she said, appealingly, "I don't feel equal to
fighting now."

"Then we won't fight. Good-bye! If we are not lucky enough to light upon
some empty cottages to sleep in I fancy the gloss will be taken out of
this uniform before I see you again." He picked up his cap, shook hands,
and was gone.

Madame Michaud woke up as the door closed.

"He has gone? your tall countryman."

"Yes, he is going out to-morrow to the outposts. I think it is very
silly of him and very wrong mixing up in a quarrel that does not concern
him, especially when there are tens of thousands here in Paris who,
instead of fighting for their country, are content to sit all day in
cafes and talk."

"They will fight when the time comes," Madame Michaud said,
complacently. "They will fight like heroes. The Prussians will learn
what Frenchmen are capable of doing."

But Mary had no patience just at present to listen to this sort of
thing, and with the excuse that her head ached went at once to her room.

"I do not understand these English," Madame Michaud thought, as she drew
the lamp nearer and resumed her knitting, "here are a young woman and a
young man who are more like comrades than lovers. She was angry, more
angry than I thought she could be, for she is generally good-tempered,
when I asked her, the first time he came, if they were _affiances_, 'We
are old friends, madame,' she said, 'and nothing but friends. Cannot a
girl have a man as a friend without there being any thought of love? In
England people are friends, they can talk and laugh to each other
without any silly ideas of this sort occurring to them. This is one of
the things that keeps woman back in the scale, this supposition that she
is always thinking of love.' I did not believe her then, but I have
listened to-night when they thought I was asleep, and I even peeped out
two or three times between my eyelids. I could not understand a word of
what they said, but one can tell things by the tone without
understanding the words. There was no love-making. She scolded him and
he laughed. He sat carelessly in his chair, and did not move an inch
nearer to her. She was as straight and as upright as she always is.

"That is not the way lovers act when one is going out to fight. I peeped
out when he shook hands with her. He did not hold her hand a moment, he
just shook it. They are strange people, these English. It would be wro