ecstatic kisses,
many of them tear-moistened but all of them glad. As for Mme.
Alexandre and Beloiseau, they announced nothing, but every one knew,
and said so in the smiling fervency of their hand-grasps.

All of which made the evening too hopelessly old-fashioned to be dwelt
on, though one point cannot be overlooked. It was the last
proclamation of the joyous hour, and was Chester's. He had bought--on
wonderfully easy terms--_vieux carre_ terms--the large house and
grounds opposite the Chapdelaine cottage, and there the aunts were to
dwell with the young pair.

"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 pass
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."

End of Project Gutenberg's The Flower of the Chapdelaines, by George W. Cable

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