"I wish you weren't such a very little boy, Jean. I wish you were old enough to plan and do things, and that you knew about something besides squirrels and jam and playing in the woods!"
Jean's eyes snapped and his lips trembled.
"I am not a baby, Little Mademoiselle, truly I'm not," he answered, but, as though in contradiction of his words, two big tears rolled down his cheeks.
Marie Josephine jumped up and came and sat down beside him, leaning back so that her hand rested on the grey stone base of the sundial. A field rabbit popped out from a clump of hedges near them, twinkled his ears, and vanished into the underbrush. Jean smiled through his tears, and wiped his eyes with his jacket.
"I didn't mean to be unkind. You can't help being young, of course, only you don't seem to wake up." Marie Josephine leaned toward him eagerly as she spoke. "I can't express what I mean. They all think I'm a baby, too, at Les Vignes--Le Pont and Hortense, all of them except Cécile--but I think more than they do and I know things that they don't know, things about which grandfather thought and told me. You and I have always been such friends and I know I can tell you anything. There is something that I may have to do sometime---- Oh, I don't know, probably not, but if I should do this thing, you are the only one who will know!"
Jean's tears disappeared. He smiled at his friend, and nodded his head vigorously when she asked, "You'll stand by me and keep my secret if I tell you what I may do, won't you?"
"You may trust me always, Little Mademoiselle. We are, as you say, great friends. We have had many good times together," he went on wistfully. "You do not forget me even in the great city."
"Of course I do not, stupide! What if one day we should have an adventure, you and I! What if we should be in great peril and have all sorts of thrilling escapes!"
"They did in the old days," put in Jean eagerly. "They were always being rescued. You know how it is in some of Dian's stories!"
"It must be time to go and meet Dian. We never want to miss that. See how the shadows have lengthened. Come, Jean!"
Jean picked up the little green basket and they went on through a long, straight wood path, looking back every now and then at the grey sundial in its patch of light.