THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
so I flattened myself against the wall and was obliged to hear it all. I’m not going to give them away; but if any girl will love me as she does that young fellow she can have my bank account. And he was so manly and square about it all—no snivelling, no making a poor face. ‘It is nothing, Mignon—I am all right. Don’t cry,’ he kept saying. ‘Everything will come out our way in the end.’ By Jove!—I wish some girl loved me like that!”
Such an expression of happiness had settled, too, on Leà’s face as she brought our coffee, that Herbert caught up his sketch-book and made her stand still until he had transferred her dear old head in its white cap to paper. Then, the portrait finished—and it was exactly like her—what a flash of joy suffused Mignon’s face when he called to her and whispered in her ear the wonderful tale of why he had drawn it and who was to be its proud possessor; and when it was all to take place, a bit of information that sent her out of the room and skipping across the court, her tiny black kitten at her heels.
It was, indeed, a joyous day, with every one in high good humor, culminating in the wild-
184
