A Versailles Christmas-Tide

be confessed that for several months our thoughts had constantly strayed across the Channel. F

at that very evening the Boy would be with us again. Across the breakfast-table we kept saying to each other, "It seems

nd dull. Any attempts at merry-making failed to restore its life. Now all was agog for his return. The house was in its most festive trim. Christmas presents were hidden securely away. There was rejoicing dow

ddenness. The messenger who brought the telegram whistled shrilly and shuffl

Scarlet fever," one of us

when can we go to him? When is

oon when the news came, and nightfall saw us dashing through the murk of a wild mid-December night toward

r carriage. "She was going to Marseilles. Would we kindly see that she got on all right?" We were only going as far as Paris direct. "Well, t

ore complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "à Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; f

way station she had lost her tam-o'-shanter. So perforce, she travelled in a large picture-hat wh

lves on to the carriage-steps as we drew up at Dover pier, and warned us not to leave the

, a sallow man with yellow whiskers, turned green with apprehension. Not so Placidia. From amongst her chaotic hand-baggage she extracted walnuts

"thought" she was a good sailor-though she acknowledged that this was her first sea-trip-and elected to remain on deck. But before the harbour lights had faded behind us a sym

she groaned when I offered her smelling-s

ing boat-ticket whose absence at the proper time had threatened complications. She burst into good-humoured laughter at the discovery. "Why, here's th

rkness. Yet the chill before dawn found us blinking sleepily at a blue-bloused po

candy adhering to it) from one of the multifarious pockets of her ulster, and finding that the luggage had been registered on to Marseilles. "Will

. I verily believe that, despite our haste, we would have ended by escorting Placidia across Paris, and ensconcing her in the Marseilles train, had not Providence intervened in the person of a

rs of the shops. Through the mysterious atmosphere figures loomed mistily, then vanished into the gloom. But we got no more than a vague impression of

In France no degradation attaches to open economies. Housewives on their way to fetch Gargantuan loaves or tiny bottles of milk for the matutinal café-au-lait cast searching glances as they passed, to see i

using only to remove the dust of travel, we set off to visit our son, walking with timorous haste along the grand old avenue where the sc

e, tactfully complimentary regarding our halting French, followed. The interview over, we crossed the courtyard our hearts beating quickly. At the top of a litt

sick-chamber, and saw the Boy. A young compatriot, also a victim of the disease, occupied another bed, but for the first moments w

w you couldn't be ghosts." Poor child! in the semidarkness of the lonely

l unheeding, we clasped the hot hands and crooned over him. After the dreary months of

. But at the first sight of the French doctor, as, clad in a long overall of white cotton, he entered the sick-room, our insular prejudice vani

ed the little outside stair. Still, we had seen the Boy; and though we coul