Page:Possession (1926).pdf/263

 Then she addressed the boy again and he translated her speech. "She says she is blind and will you come near so that she may touch your face?"

Ellen drew her chair closer so that it disturbed the fatter of the two dogs and allowed Madam Gigon to pass her thin hands in a fluttering gesture over her handsome throat and the fine arch of her nose.

"Ah," said the old woman triumphantly. "Le nez . . . the nose. . . . C'est le nez de vôtre tante . . . le même nez . . . précisement. C'est un nez fier . . . distingué."

"It is a proud nose," echoed the interpreter gravely. . . . "A high distinguished nose. . . . A nose like your aunt's."

And the old woman, wagging her head, fell suddenly into a silent train of old memories.

"My name is Jean," said the boy shyly. "I am ten years old. Would you like to see my book? It is in English. I can read English just as well as French." And he brought her Tom Brown's School Days and showed her the picture of the boys climbing the tree to rob the rook's nest. Ellen, leaning over his shoulder, was softened and showed a warm enthusiasm over the other illustrations. She even listened while he told the long story of Tom Brown.

Presently Madame Gigon joined their talk and for a long time they held a conversation, translated always by the boy, that was animated and illumined by a warm friendliness. It was this which presently filled Ellen with a passionate desire to weep. She took off her hat and sat on the floor with Jean and the dogs, while Madame Gigon and the boy asked questions about America and old Julia Shane whom Jean called "grandmère" and whom he had never seen. And presently the Breton maid appeared with tea (for Madame Gigon, though she was French, had learned the custom of tea among the English) and over Ellen there swept slowly a strange feeling that, at last, after having been away a long time, she had come home. It was here that she belonged,