liked. That
was a pair of sabots on the mat at the foot of the staircase. Pausing 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 school was
situated. A little casement window to the left of the wide entrance-door
showed a red cross. We looked at it silently, wondering.
[Illustration: The Red Cross in the Window]
In response to our ring the portal opened mysteriously at touch of the
unseen concierge, and we entered. A conference with Monsieur le
Directeur, kindly, voluble, tactfully complimentary regarding our
halting French, followed. The interview over, we crossed the courtyard
our hearts beating quickly. At the top of a little flight of worn stone
steps was the door of the school hospital, and under the ivy-twined
trellis stood a sweet-faced Franciscan Soeur, waiting to welcome us.
[Illustration: Enter M. Le Docteur]
Passing through a tiny outer room--an odd combination of dispensary,
kitchen, and drawing-room with a red-tiled floor--we reached the
sick-chamber, and saw the Boy. A young compatriot, also a victim of
the disease, occupied another bed, but for the first moments we were
oblivious of his presence. Raising his fever-flushed face from the
pillows, the Boy eagerly stretched out his burning hands.
"I heard your voices," his hoarse voice murmured contentedly, "and I
knew you couldn't be ghosts." Poor child! in the semidarkness of the
lonely night-hours phantom voices had haunted him. We of the
morning were real.
The good Soeur buzzed a mild frenzy of "Il ne faut pas toucher" about
our ears, but, all unheeding, we clasped the hot hands and crooned over
him. After the dreary months of separation, love overruled wisdom.
Mere prudence was not strong enough to keep us apart.
Chief amongst the chaos of thoughts that had assailed us on the
reception of the bad news, was the necessity of engaging an English
medical man. 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 vanished, ousted by complete confidence; a confidence that
our future experience of his professional skill and personal kindliness
only strengthened.
It was with sore hearts that, the prescribed cinq minutes ended, we
descended the little outside stair. Still, we had seen the Boy; and though
we could not nurse him, we were not forbidden to visit him. So we
were thankful too.
CHAPTER II
OGAMS
[Illustration: Perpetual Motion]
Our hotel was distinctively French, and immensely comfortable, in that
it had gleaned, and still retained, the creature comforts of a century or
two. Thus it combined the luxuries of hot-air radiators and electric light
with the enchantment of open wood fires. Viewed externally, the
building presented that airy aspect almost universal in Versailles
architecture. It was white-tinted, with many windows shuttered without
and heavily lace-draped within.
A wide entrance led to the inner courtyard, where orange trees in green
tubs, and trelliswork with shrivelled stems and leaves still adhering,
suggested that it would be a pleasant summer lounge. Our hotel boasted
a grand salon, which opened from the courtyard. It was an elaborately
ornate room; but on a chilly December day even a plethora of
embellishment cannot be trusted to raise by a single degree the
temperature of the apartment it adorns, and the soul turns from a cold
hearth, however radiant its garnish of artificial blossoms. A private
parlour was scarcely necessary, for, with most French bedrooms, ours
shared the composite nature of the accommodation known in a certain
class of advertisement as "bed-sitting-room." So it was that during
these winter days we made ourselves at home in our chamber.
The shape of the room was a geometrical problem. The three windows
each revealed different views, and the remainder of the walls curved
amazingly. At first sight the furniture consisted mainly of draperies and
looking-glass; for the room, though of ordinary dimensions, owned
three large mirrors and nine pairs of curtains. A stately bed, endowed
with a huge square down pillow, which served as quilt, stood in a
corner. Two armchairs in brocaded velvet and a centre table were
additions to the customary articles. A handsome timepiece and a
quartette of begilt candelabra decked the white marble mantelpiece, and
were duplicated in the large pier glass. The floor was of well-polished
wood, a strip of bright-hued carpet before the bed, a second before the
washstand, its only coverings. Need I say that the provision for
ablutions was one basin and a liliputian ewer, and that there was not a
fixed bath in the establishment?
It was a resting-place full of incongruities; but apart from, or perhaps
because of, its oddities it had a cosy attractiveness. From the moment
of our entrance we felt
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