Simon kept up his courage very well, and indeed he enjoyed the journey; but poor Jeanne's spirits sank lower and lower, and I think she would have given out altogether had we not come, on the fifth day, to cultivated fields and orchards. The sight of these last revived her drooping courage, and when at last we reached the village of Tre Madoc, always a neat little place, and passing it came to the brow of the hill from which we looked down on the house of Tre Madoc, nestling amid great trees in its south-land valley, with the clear stream falling in a cascade at the upper end and rushing down to the sea, she was quite another woman. "Is this not beautiful, Jeanne?" said my mother, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed on the old home, unseen for so many years. "It is, madame; I won't deny it, though the house is nothing in grandeur to the Tour d'Antin. And the cottages do look snug and comfortable; but after all it is not France!" "No, it is not France: don't you wish it were?" said I. "How nice it would be to see a party of dragoons coming after us over the hill, and to be afraid to pass yonder tumbling old cross lest some one should see that we did not bow to it!" I am conscious that I spoke these words all the more sharply because I was myself dreadfully homesick—not for France so much as for London, with which I had fallen in love, though I had begun by disliking it so much. I had had a taste of that life of which I had so often dreamed, and I found the cup too sweet to wish to have that taste the only one. My mother looked at me in surprise, but she had no time to speak the reproof which her eyes uttered. It seemed that we were expected and watched for. We saw a little lad, who had been sitting with his dog and clapper watching the birds, leave his occupation and run down toward the house, and presently an elderly lady, surrounded by three or four young ones, came out upon the porch. "There are my mother and sisters," said Andrew "and," he added to me, in a lower tone, "your mother, too, Vevette! I hope you will love her." "I am sure I shall," I tried to answer graciously, though I felt inwardly vexed. I always was provoked when Andrew said any such thing implying a kind of property in me. I felt an unaccountable shyness of these new relatives, such as I had not been conscious of either in Jersey or London, and I wished the meeting with them could be postponed. But our tired beasts now put themselves into brisk motion, rejoicing, poor creatures, in the thought of rest and food. We descended the hill, passed through a short avenue of nut-trees, and came out before the same porch, overgrown with ivy and a groat Virginia vine, as we used to call it, and found ourselves in presence of our friends. Andrew sprang from his horse and assisted my mother and myself to dismount. The older lady clasped my mother in her arms.