The Argosy — page 73: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 All Souls’ Eve. “Well, you have a talent for getting out of difficulties, Master Francis! Mother Coe has done nothing but grumble at the loneliness of her big house, since her daughters married, and at the easy life Babette leads of it. She might like somebody in it for company. Suppose you were to go and see, Master Francis?” ‘What a civil, gentlemanly young man!” exclaimed the lady, look- ing after him as he moved away. “I always took young Frenchmen to be nothing but monkeys. Ask who he 1s, Clara?” He was the young gentleman at the chateau, the landlady answered, Francois Latange, and owned a good bit of property in the commune— that is, his father did. Monsieur Latange was very old now, turned seventy, and sat in the chimney-corner all day, sucking tablettes,* Madame Latange was not fifty yet ; a scolding, never-quiet dame, who ruled despotically the house, and the village, and especially Master Francis. He was the only child, heir to all; but Madame had a niece who lived with her, Mademoiselle Anastasie, a demoiselle of six-and- twenty with a vinegar face and a cherry-coloured coiffure, who looked after the kitchen sharper than Madame did, and scolded the servants twice to her once. Master Francis was betrothed to Mademoiselle Anastasie, and they were to be married when he was twenty-one: that would be in another year. The landlady oped it would be a prosperous ménage: Madame had brought it all about: but some people had a notion that Master Francis was too fond of admiring pretty faces to put up exclusively with the plain one of Mademoiselle Anastasie. | She was interrupted by the return of Master Francis himself. He had seen Madame Coe (except in conversations of ceremony, like the present, that gentlewoman was familiarly styled la mére Coe), and thought matters might be arranged. Would the ladies allow him the honour of escorting them to her house? Matters were arranged. Madame Coe was not less pleased to have her solitary rooms occupied, and to afford an increase of employment to her lazy maid Babette, than the ladies were to agree to her very reasonable terms. And in a few days they arrived finally with their luggage from Calais, and took up their abode in St. Eloi. It was quite an event to the village, and everybody fell in love with Clara, who really was a very lovable young lady, with her charming beauty and her modest manners. Mrs. Fitzgerald at times got laughed at, and that was when she insisted on plunging wholesale into French. At first, a few styled them “English heretics,” but they proved to be stanch Roman Catholics, with not a taint of heresy about them. Madame Latange did not take quite kindly to them, She hated and despised the English. But she condescendingly in- 7A sweetmeat made of treacle and butter, answering somewhat to the English ** bull’s-eye,” much patronised by French people of all ages. Gomicbooks.co m |