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 great pink-and-white bedquilt up hill and down dale. Glorious! I want a whole tree, full of blossoms, remember—just as I wrote you—none of your mean little chopped-off twigs, but a cart-load of branches. Let me have that old apple-tree out in the lot in front—the apples were never any good, and Mignon may as well have the blossoms as those thieving boys. Did you send word to the school children? Yes, of course you did. Oh, I tell you, Herbert, we are going to have a bully time—Paul and Virginia are not in it. Hello! Leà, you up there, you blessed old carved root of a virgin!—where’s the adorable Mignon?”

“Good-morning, Monsieur Louis—and you too, Monsieur Herbert,” came her voice in reply from the rail of the gallery above our heads. “Mignon is inside,” and she pointed to the closed door behind her. “Gaston’s mother is helping her. Madame la marquise will be here any minute, and so will Monsieur Le Blanc and everybody from Buezval. Oh!—you should see my child! You wouldn’t know her in the pretty clothes madame has sent.”

And now while Herbert is digging out from under the motor seats various packages tied with white ribbons, including the drawing he