The sergeant usually spent his evenings at home. All day long he was on his feet, and it was a pleasure to him when he came in at night to settle himself in a comfortable armchair, after he had his supper, and devote himself to some interesting book until bedtime.

He often read aloud to his wife, who sat and sewed beside him; and one evening, after he had been reading for some time, he laid his book face downward on the small table before him, and said, “Where is the boy?”

Mrs. Hardy dropped her work, and moved aside the lamp that partly hid her husband’s face from her. “He is in his room,” she said.

“He usually listens to me,” said the sergeant; “he isn’t moping, is he, or offended at anything?”

[Pg 141]

“Oh, no! he never does that now,” laughed Mrs. Hardy. “He is as cheerful as possible.”

“Queer, isn’t it,” said the sergeant, “how any one gets used to anything? Does he ever speak to you about hearing from France?”

“Not now; he used to when he first came. He thinks of it, though.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh! I can tell. I understand him so well.”

“How long is it since he came here?”

“Five weeks last Wednesday.”

“It doesn’t seem as long as that,” said the sergeant thoughtfully.

“The time passes more quickly with a child in the house,” observed his wife.

“I believe it does. I’m not sorry we took him, Bess.”

“I know you are not, Stephen. I would send him away if I thought you were.”

Her husband sent her an affectionate glance, but made no remark for some time. Then he said, “What are you doing?”

“Darning a pillow-case; it is getting old.”

“Why don’t you buy some new ones?”

[Pg 142]

“I must economize now,” she said. “It takes more to keep us since the boy came.”

“But you will have plenty by and by.”

“We haven’t it yet, Stephen. One can’t count on the future.”

“I believe it is a pleasure to you,” he said under his breath.

His wife caught the word pleasure, and said, “What did you say, Stephen?”

“I believe you like to scrimp yourself for any one you like.”

“Of course I do,” she said, laughing, and tossing her white head. “I should only be half a woman if I didn’t.”

“He is a handsome lad, isn’t he?” said the sergeant.

“Indeed he is. Every one looks at him in the street. Wasn’t it a joke that old Mrs. Purdy should think he was our boy? I shall never forget the way Eugene looked at her when she fell on his neck, and said he was the image of his father.”

“She is getting old and stupid,” said the sergeant indulgently, “and forgets things.[Pg 143] Hello, here’s our young man,” as Eugene came quietly into the room. “What have you been doing, son?”

“I was reading,” said Eugene; “that is,” he added hesitatingly, as he met Mrs. Hardy’s scrutinizing glance, “I was looking beyond my history lesson for to-morrow.”

“Your first statement is true,” said Mrs. Hardy quietly. “If you were only reading, you were not studying. I don’t care to have him learn lessons in the evening,” she said in an explanatory tone to her husband, “because it tires him.”

“No child should study in the evening,” said the sergeant gruffly.

“I wished to find out what Washington did when he became a man,” said Eugene.

“You like to read about the father of this country, don’t you?” asked Mrs. Hardy.

“I do. I admire him. He was a great man,” said the boy.

“Greater than Napoleon?” inquired the sergeant mischievously.

Mrs. Hardy gently pushed his foot under[Pg 144] the table when she saw Eugene’s disturbed face, but the sergeant would not recall his question.

“No, no, not greater,” said the boy at length, “not greater; I cannot forget my emperor; but General Washington was better. He loved more his fellow-men.”

“Bravo!” said the sergeant; “you’ll make a first-class citizen of the United States yet.”

“Never,” said Eugene abruptly.

The sergeant and his wife looked earnestly at him.

“I shall be a Frenchman always,” said Eugene vehemently. “I may never see my country again; but I love her—I would die for her;” and he grew deathly pale, as he always did when he was much moved.

“That’s right,” said the sergeant. “The world wants more boys like you. Always stand up for your own country, but be charitable to others. France is a wide world, my boy, but there’s a wider.”

“You mean America?”

“No; I mean the world.”

[Pg 145]

“I like America,” said Eugene; “but I detest England.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” said the sergeant. “If I hated England, I should feel like a child hating my mother. They’re a magnificent nation over there; though sometimes they provoke us, and sometimes we provoke them. However, they’ll stand more goading from us than they will from any other people on the face of the earth. Just you make a note of that, my boy. You’ll find it’s true some day, and then you will appreciate them.”

“Possibly,” said Eugene; “in the day that tolerate the republic in France.”

“Queer little lad,” said the sergeant, affectionately laying a hand on Eugene’s smooth head. “You can’t look ahead and see yourself a tolerant man?”

Eugene rarely let a question go unanswered. He had been brought up to reply to every remark addressed to him; but seeing he had some difficulty in answering this, the sergeant went on. “I can. You have a fair start toward[Pg 146] making a first-class,—what is it they call those people that are at home among all nations,—oh, yes, a cosmopolite. Wife, suppose I go on with my reading?”

“Yes, do,” she replied, as the sergeant again took up his book.

Eugene sat down at a little distance from him, and listened attentively to a tale of far-away Africa. Mrs. Hardy listened, too, for a short time; then she laid down her work and gazed attentively, first at the boy on the sofa, and then at her husband beside her. Something stirred softly in her heart as she looked at these two beings,—her husband and her adopted son. For them she felt that she could endure any hardship, any privation. If the occasion should arise, she felt that she could even lay down her life for them.

“I used to think that I was happy, but I am happier now,” she murmured. “My love for my husband makes me love the boy more, and my love for the boy makes me love my husband more.”

Eugene, as if aware that her attention was[Pg 147] concentrated on him, began to fidget in a sensitive way, then he got up and moved to a chair next her. She took his hand in hers, and the boy leaned his head against her shoulder while he again listened to the reading.

At last the sergeant put down the book. “Wife,” he said, “it is half-past nine.”

“I will go to bed,” said Eugene, rising immediately. “Good-night, Mrs. Hardy.”

“Good-night, my dear boy,” she said, “my son.”

A curious look came over the boy’s face. He colored, looked confused, and she thought that his parted lips were forming the word “mother,” when suddenly her two cats, who were usually taken with a spirit of mischief about bedtime, sprang at her workbasket, and by upsetting it diverted her attention from Eugene.

He laughed in the merry way that he had learned since coming to her house; and at once he and the sergeant and the cats engaged in a frolic, and by turns chased each other and the spools of thread that went rolling all over the floor.

[Pg 148]

Mrs. Hardy stood looking at them with a smile on her face when, in the midst of their fun, they heard a ring at the door-bell.

Eugene jumped up. “Allow me to open the door,” he said in his pretty, courteous way; and Mrs. Hardy stood aside to let him pass.

The parlor door remained open; and to her surprise she heard from the hall, first an eager exclamation from Eugene, then a succession of rapid French sentences.

“Who is there?” said the sergeant, turning his red face toward her.

“I cannot imagine. Wait! Eugene is bringing the person in.”

At that minute the boy appeared in the doorway, ushering in a tall, very foreign-looking, brown-faced man, clad in a black cassock.

The boy’s cheeks were blazing, and his eyes were excited. “Mrs. Hardy,” he said in a repressed voice, “permit me to present to you monsieur le curé Déjoux of Chatillon-sur-Loir. I have told him in the hall that it is with you that I have found refuge. Enter, monsieur.”

[Pg 149]

The sergeant flashed a quick glance at his wife. How would she stand this? The priest probably came to take her darling back to France. To his relief she was perfectly calm, though clearly surprised. She looked without consternation into the grave, kindly, almost childish face of the stranger.

The sergeant pressed forward, and shook hands with his caller; then wondering that his cassock should be so handsome, and his boots so clumsy, and his bare, ungloved hands so brown, he pointed to a chair, and begged him to be seated.

The curé bowed once more in a paternal manner, and sitting down, looked at Eugene, who stood at his elbow with glittering eyes that scarcely moved from his face.

“You are here, I take it, from the boy’s grand-uncle,” said the sergeant, coming directly to the object of his caller’s visit.

The priest did not understand a word of what he said. He spread out his hands, then turned to Eugene, who had at last ceased to hover about him, and had dropped on a stool by his side.

[Pg 150]

“Monsieur understands English,” said the boy, “if you will speak slowly. Is it not so?”

The priest smiled, and showed a good set of white teeth. “Yes,” he said in a stumbling voice. “Vairy, vairy slow.”

“You—have—come—for—Eugene, I suppose,” said the sergeant spasmodically.

“............