Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/128

102 that ordinarily would have brought out a spirited reply. But with the beautiful bonbonnière in her hand, she ran out of the room and took a post at a window where she could see Napoleon. Her tears continued to flow and she found that she could not bear to look longer at the departing Emperor. At last she had to run to her own room, where, throwing herself on a bed, she wept bitterly for a long time.

It was true, as Betsy knew, that Longwood was not so very far from The Briars, and that it was not likely that she would be restrained from going there sometimes. Yet in spite of this knowledge the little girl realized that she had lost a great deal by the departure of the Emperor from her father's house.

Friends, and enemies too, of Napoleon in Europe would have been amazed at that moment to know that the man who so short a time before had been dreaded as the commander of one of the world's greatest armies, was now bewailed by a little girl as a lost playmate, for as playmate and friend Betsy had certainly come to regard him, and she