Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/70

52 such feats of agility as he performed, leaping down to gather flowers, or hurling himself over thorny hedges, to point out a dolmen or a menhir (they never could remember which was which). Alas, alas! for Flabeau's boy! Deeply was he wounded that day by the unconscious charmer, who would as soon have thought of inspiring love in the bosom of the broken-nosed saint by the wayside as in the heart that beat under the blue blouse.

I regret to say that "the infants," as Madame C. always called Miss Livy's charges, behaved themselves with less decorum than could have been wished. But the proud consciousness that they never could be disposed of as Pelagie had been had such an exhilarating effect upon them that they frisked like the lambs in the field.

One drove the bus in a retired spot and astonished the stout horses, by the way in which she bowled them along the fine, hard road. The other sang college songs, to the intense delight of the old ladies, who admired the "chants Amériques so gay," and to the horror of their duenna, who knew what they meant. A shower came up, and they would remain outside; so the boy put up a leathern hood,