Does Madame, thy mother, think to leave us? My mother would
miss her."

"And you? Would not you a little?"

"Yes, of course; and so would friend Schmidt. There, my basket will hold
no more. How pretty they are! But thou hast not answered me."

"We are not thinking of any such change."

"Well, so far that is good news. But I am still curious. Mr. Schmidt did
once say the autumn has no answers. I think thou art like it." She rose
as she spoke.

"Ah, but the spring may make reply in its time--in its time. Let me
carry thy basket, Miss Margaret." She gave it to him with the woman's
liking to be needlessly helped.

"I am very gay with red and gold," she cried, and shook the leaves from
her hair and gown. "It is worse than the brocade and the sea-green
petticoat my wicked cousins put on me." She could laugh at it now.

"But what would Friends say to the way the fine milliner, Nature, has
decked thee, Mademoiselle? They would forgive thee, I think. Mr. Schmidt
says the red and gold lie thick on the unnamed graves at Fourth and
Mulberry streets, and no Quaker doth protest with a broom."

"He speaks in a strange way sometimes. I often wonder where he learned
it."

"Why dost thou not ask him?"

"I should not dare. He might not like it."

"But thou art, it seems, more free to question some other people."

"Oh, but that is different; and, Monsieur," she said demurely, "thou
must not say thou and thee to me. Thy mother says it is not proper."

He laughed. "If I am thou for thee, were it not courteous to speak to
thee in thy own tongue?"

She colored, remembering the lesson and her own shrewd guess at the
lady's meaning, and how, as she was led to infer, to _tutoyer_, to say
thou, inferred a certain degree of intimacy. "It is not fitting here
except among Friends."

"And why not? In France we do it."

"Yes, sometimes, I have so heard." But to explain further was far from
her intention. "It sounds foolish here, in people who are not of
Friends. I said so--"

"But are we not friends?"

"I said Friends with a big F, Monsieur."

"I make my apologies,"--he laughed with a formal bow,--"but one easily
catches habits of talk."

"Indeed, I am in earnest, and thou must mend thy habits. Friend
Marguerite Swanwick desires to be excused of the Vicomte de Courval,"
and, smiling, she swept the courtesy of reply to his bow as the autumn
leaves fell from the gathered skirts.

"As long as thou art thou, it will be hard to o