No one knew anything of an English girl in the least
answering to her description. Many smiled almost pityingly on the
eager little seekers, and thought the children a trifle mad to
venture on so hopeless a search.
But here, in the Landes, were villages innumerable--small villages,
sunny and peaceful, where simple and kind-hearted folks lived, and
barndoor-fowl strutted about happily, and the goats browsed, and
sheep fed; and the people in these tiny villages were very kind to
the little pilgrims, and gave them food and shelter gladly and
cheerfully, and answered all the questions which Cecile put through
her interpreter, Joe, about Lovedy. Though there were no tidings of
the blue-eyed girl who had half-broken her mother's heart, Cecile
felt that here surely, or in some such place as here, she should find
Lovedy, for were not these exactly the villages her stepmother had
described when she lay a-dying? So Cecile trudged on peacefully, and
each day dawned with a fresh desire. Joe, too, was happy; he had lost
his fear of Anton. Anton could never surely pursue him here. There
was no danger now of his being forced back to that old dreadful life.
The hardships, the cold, the beatings, the starvings, lay behind him;
he was a French boy again. Soon someone would call him by his old
forgotten name of Alphonse, and he should look into his mother's
eyes, and then go out among the vineyards with his brother Jean. Yes,
Joe was very happy, he was loved and he loved; he was useful, too,
necessary indeed to the children; and every day brought him nearer to
his beloved Pyrenees.
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