The Flower of the Chapdelaines Part 38

"Permanently?"

"Ah, only whiles we live!"

The coterie adjourned.

Already the sisters had begun to move in. Mrs. Chester helped them "marvellouzly." Also Aline. Also Cupid--that was now his only name.

The cat really couldn't; she was too preoccupied. The sisters touched Mrs. Chester's arm and drew a curtain.

"Look! . . . Eight! Ah, thou unfaithful, if we had ever think you are going to so forget yo'seff like that, we woul'n' never name you Marie Madeleine! And still ad the same time you know, Mrs. Chezter, we are sure she's trying to tell us, right now, that this going to be the laz'

time!"

"And me," Yvonne added, "I feel sure any'ow that, as the poet say--I'm prittie sure 'tis the poet say that--she's mo' sin' ag-ainz' than sinning."

At length one evening so many relics of the Chapdelaine infancy had been gathered in the new home that the sisters went over there to pa.s.s the night, and took puss and her offspring along. But not a wink did either of them sleep the night through, and the first living creature they espied the next morning was Marie Madeleine, with a kitten in her teeth, moving back.

"Aline," they sobbed as soon as they could find her, "we are sorry, sorry, sorry, to make you such unhappinezz like that, and so soon; continue, you and Geoffry, to live in that new 'ouse; but whiles we live any plaze but heaven we got to live in that home of our in-fancy."