One morning Champar turned to them, his eye cocked severely.
"If no one asks me once to-day if we'll see the others surely, and if they really are safe in the barn, and if I am sure that Grigge was able to find Anastasius Grubb, I'll tell you all something!"
They were all growing used to Champar, and Marie Josephine and Rosanne answered at once, "Tell us, Champar, hurry, tell us!" Lisle and Dian were walking beside the cart, and they came close to the side of it when Champar spoke, but he calmly urged his horse on and seemed suddenly lost in thought.
"What is it, Champar? Tell us!" Lisle put his hand on the side of the coach and looked up at the driver. Lisle was pale and tired and covered with dust. He had driven all night, so that Dian and Champar, who had had the brunt of the journey, could rest. "Shall we see our mother? Tell us, Champar." Lisle's lips quivered ever so slightly as he spoke. "Tell us," he repeated, and there was the old imperious ring in his voice as he spoke.
So Champar told them. At noon they would meet the cart that had taken their mother out of Paris. It would be waiting for them at a farmhouse he knew well. It had had a day's start and was lightly loaded and there had been no reason for making détours as their mother's passport was en règle and no one would suspect Henri Berier's sister of being an aristocrat! They would see their mother by noon that day!
Marie Josephine and Rosanne jumped out at the next hill and walked up it together. Toward the top they were joined by Lisle. Marie Josephine picked a bunch of wild lilies, putting them in the buttonhole of her jacket. Jean was on the box talking to Champar as on that night that Champar had given the two runaways a lift. Now and then the driver put his hands over his ears as Jean plied him with questions.
"It's been so wonderful! Sometimes it seems like a terrible, interesting dream--but we won't see Dian after we go to England." Marie Josephine turned her face away from the others toward a sweep of golden wild lilies which gleamed like flakes of racing sunshine through the wood on their right. She did not want them to see her tears. They fell unseen on the lilies she had gathered.
"Maman! Maman! Maman!" The next moment she was screaming in an agony of joy, all her acting forgotten, all her poise and self-control lost. The coach had stopped by a lane which led from a farmhouse, and there stood a dark-eyed, slovenly woman in a faded homespun dress--her maman!
