ersation.

She heard a heavy footstep outside the windows opening on the garden.
There was a rap at the knocker on the front-door. A minute later,
Victor, the man-servant, brought in the letters.

"Oh!" said Mme. Morestal. "A letter from the boy.... Open it, will you?
I haven't my spectacles.... I expect it's to say that he will arrive
this evening: he was to have left Paris this morning."

"Not at all!" cried M. Morestal, glancing over the letter. "Philippe and
his wife have taken their two boys to some friends at Versailles and
started with the intention of sleeping last night at the Ballon de
Colnard, seeing the sunrise and doing the rest of the journey on foot,
with their knapsacks on their backs. They will be here by twelve."

She at once lost her head:

"And the storm! What about last night's storm?"

"My son doesn't care about the storm! It won't be the first that the
fellow's been through. It's eleven o'clock. He will be with us in an
hour."

"But that will never do! There's nothing ready for them!"

She at once went to work, like the active little old woman that she was,
a little too fat, a little tired, but wide-awake still and so
methodical, so orderly in her ways that she never made a superfluous
movement or one that was not calculated to bring her an immediate
advantage.

As for him, he resumed his walk between the terrace and the
drawing-room. He strode with long, even steps, holding his body erect,
his chest flung out and his hands in the pockets of his jacket, a
blue-drill gardening-jacket, with the point of a pruning-shears and the
stem of a pipe sticking out of it. He was tall and broad-shouldered; and
his fresh-coloured face seemed young still, in spite of the fringe of
white beard in which it was framed.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "what a treat to set eyes upon our dear Philippe
again! It must be three years since we saw him last. Yes, of course, not
since his appointment as professor of history in Paris. By Jove, the
chap has made his way in the world! What a time we shall give him during
the fortnight that he's with us! Walking ... exercise.... He's all for
the open-air life, like old Morestal!"

He began to laugh:

"Shall I tell you what would be the thing for him? Six months in camp
between this and Berlin!"

"I'm not afraid," she declared. "He's been through the Normal School.
The professors keep to their garrisons in time of war."

"What nonsense are you talking now?"

"The school