“And I hope you found Paris pleasant, Sir,” said the well-intentioned father. “I have often heard that it was a very fine city. It must have been a great advantage for Nancy, seeing it with one that knew it well. In my young days going to France was more of a business than going to America is now. Me and Mrs. Bates never had the benefit of foreign travel; but there are a many things you young people enjoy now that your fathers and your mothers didn’t have.” “You may speak for yourself, Mr. Bates,” said his wife. “I cannot say that I ever had any desire to go to foreign parts. There is plenty to learn in England if one would make a good use of what one knows; and Nancy, poor child, don’t seem to have enjoyed it. Look how thin she is, and so pale. She quite frightened me when I saw her first. ‘Is that my blooming Nancy?’ I said to myself--not meaning to throw any reflection upon Arthur. What does man know of such things? She’s been doing too much. I feel sure that’s what it is, rattling about here and there and everywhere, and engagements in the evening--” “We didn’t have many engagements in the evening,” said Nancy. “We used to go to the theatres at first; but we soon got tired. The acting was so bad, not like English acting; and such queer French, not a bit like anything I ever learnt. For one thing, they talk so fast. But I could not understand a bit, and what was the good of going to a play and not understanding a word? And we never saw anybody, except an aunt of Arthur’s, a person--but I won’t speak of her, for she was rude to me--and Sir John Denham, who used to come and sit of an evening, and who brought us tickets for places. It was very kind of him; and there was a lot of places to see, and a whole lot of old pictures and things that Arthur thought I was to go crazy over; but I never did. One place was where some prison was knocked down (I never remembered the names) and, another was where the Queen had her head cut off.” “Oh, la!” cried Sarah Jane. “Yes, that was a pleasant thing to be interested in, wasn’t it? Oh, the lots and lots of people that had their heads cut off, if you could put any faith in it! As if that was what one wanted to see! I never believed one quarter of what they said.” “And quite right,” said her mother; “they do make up stories; but didn’t you go to see something a little livelier, Nancy? I thought there was everything that was gay in Paris. But if that was all, my poor child, I don’t wonder if you felt low, away from everybody you knew. But things will be quite different now,” she said, encouragingly. “You will settle down, you and Arthur, in a nice snug little English ’ome. There is no place like ’ome, as the song says. And you’ll fall into each other’s ways; and you’ll have us close at hand if anything’s wrong. Oh, you’ll see everything will go as smooth as velvet! and me, or Sarah Jane, or Matty always to help you to put things straight.”