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 “Some gentlemen have just come, Miss Lucy, and they are very anxious to make your acquaintance,” said the judge’s wife.

“Our administrator, and our judge, and my husband,” the burgomistress hastened to add.

Lucy walked back silently, and with bowed head.

“That fellow there,” the burgomistress pointed to him, “is a dangerous fool, a Jacobin, a runaway student, a good-for-nothing. Has he not done you any harm?”

Lucy only turned her head.

“What an unlucky woman his old mother is!” the burgomistress said, pityingly. “She wanted to have a doctor! His father was but a blacksmith’s apprentice. Well, blood will out. What is mob, remains mob. His consumption, I always say, is her good fortune.”

Excited, laughing, singing, the picnickers