: The Little French Girl by Sedgwick Anne Douglas - Love stories; British France Fiction; French England Fiction

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The Little French Girl

BY ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK

Boston and New York HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

SECOND IMPRESSION, AUGUST, 1924 THIRD IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924 FOURTH IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1924

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE ? MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

The Little French Girl

PART I

Two women, pausing on their way out to look at her, drew her mind back from Montarel. She knew that she might look younger than her years. Her bobbed hair was cut straight across her forehead and her skirt displayed a childish length of leg. It was no wonder that, seeing her there, alone, they should speak of her with curiosity, perhaps with solicitude; for there was kindness in their eyes. But she did not like pity, and, drawing herself up more straightly, wrapping her arms in the scarf that muffled her shoulders, she fixed her eyes blankly above their heads until they had passed on. They were kind women; but very ugly. Like jugs. All the people that she had seen since landing on this day of grey and purple flesh-tones had made her think of the earthenware jugs that old Marthe used to range along her upper shelves in the little dark shop that stood on the turn of the road leading down from the ch?teau to the village. Their eyes were joyless yet untragic. Their clothes expressed no enterprise. She did not think that they could feel ecstasy, ever, or despair. Yet they were the people of Captain Owen, and she could not be really forgotten, for Captain Owen's family were to come for her. It was only some mistake; but more than the strokes of the clock the women's eyes had made her feel how late it was, how young she was, and how hungry.

M?lanie, mute, grim, inscrutable, helped the gentleman from Paris to take them down, one by one, and wrap them up and carry them across the courtyard to the waiting car: and Alix had watched it all, knowing that a final disaster had fallen upon her house.

"Have you had anything to eat?" monsieur Giles almost shouted at her. "Where's your box? Is this all? I'm so horribly sorry."

"Yes, this is all. It has not been so long, really. I have not eaten. I was afraid to go to the restaurant lest I should miss you."

Her English was so good that she saw him at once a little reassured. He had shouted like that partly from embarrassment and partly because he thought she might only understand if he talked loud. His face, as he seized her box in his other hand, echoed her smile as it had echoed her distress. It was a kind face. It echoed people's feelings easily.

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