Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/38

10 He would have liked to prove to the little tease that one may wear a blouse puffed out like a bag, a coat both too long and too wide, made to last for two years, that clung to one's legs and made one look knock-kneed, a starched collar from which emerged a face as childish and blank as that of John the Baptist after his decapitation, a cap with grotesque lace trimming badly concealed by a mourning band, buttons of jet and velvet, useless buckles and cumbersome tassels, that one may, in short, be dressed like a peasant's son and yet not be more silly and ungainly than a Gaston or Athanasius Saint-Fardier!

His good nurse Siska was not a model tailor, but at least she knew how to make the most of the material. And then, too, Jacques Paridael had liked these clothes so well upon his little Laurent. On the day of his first communion the dear man had repeated, as he embraced him, "You are as handsome as a prince, my Lorki!"

And even now he was wearing that same holiday suit, just as it had been then, with the exception of the crape wound about his cap and replacing, upon his right arm, the glorious band of moire trimmed with silver.

The tease was suddenly seized with a good impulse. While running through the flower beds she picked a China-aster with poppy colored petals and golden heart.

"Here, Peasant," she cried, "put this flower in your buttonhole!"

She might call him Peasant all she wanted! He forgave her freely. This flower stuck in his black blouse was the first smile that illumined his grief. Even less able to put into words his joy than he had been able to express his bitterness of heart, he would,