“Ah, mademoiselle, such a difference! I am too ignorant to explain; one feels it, one does not know how to describe. _Tenez_! if mademoiselle knew the young persons up-stairs--Ursule, who is as good as a little saint; she has her mind full of religion, she is always serious. Mademoiselle knows that she has a _vocation_, and but for that old Père Goudron, who is Voltairian, who is--hush! he has ears that go over all the house. _Bien!_ Ursule talks, _elle parle_; but her sister, little Blanchette, who is the little merry one, she who is always singing, she who chatters, chatters all day long, and never is quiet--_elle cause_. Now mademoiselle will see the difference. And perhaps the English, too, _causent_, though we never hear them, when they are at home, as we are here.” “It is because we only know a few words,” said Helen. “I should like to _causer_ like Mademoiselle Blanchette, but----” “Ah!” cried Margot, “here is a beginning! Mademoiselle is ten times more pretty when her face lights up. When we allow ourselves to criticise, this is what we say of the English--‘They are too serious; they have what we call _figures de bois_.’ When one chatters, when one smiles, all is changed. She is charming, _la petite_.” “What is she saying about _la petite_?” said Janey. “_La petite_, that is me! I want to know what she says.” “Je dis que vous êtes charmante, mademoiselle,” cried Margot, with a laugh. “You see I understand the English. If the little demoiselle will condescend to amuse herself with my little Marion and Petit-Jean, she will soon learn to chatter like the rest. Monsieur your father speaks very good French, and I hear that he knows himself in affairs to perfection, mademoiselle. They say he had the best bargain of all in the ‘_vente des bois_,’ and that he will make enormously by it. Ah, the English, they are the people for affairs!” said Margot, admiringly. “But to imagine that one like monsieur should have taken the trouble to come all this way to little Latour for the ‘_vente des bois_!’ That shows how the English always have their wits about them, while we, who are on the spot, and who ought to know, we are so _bête_, we let those good bargains slip out of our hands.” “We did not hear of it in England,” said Helen; “we were travelling----” “Ah! and one knows how to join affairs to one’s pleasure when one is English. It is extraordinary; they never forget themselves,” Margot said. “But monsieur is rich?” she added interrogatively. “It makes nothing to him to gain a little, to take the profits out of another’s hands. It is _pour s’amuser_, to distract himself, to forget the _ennui_ which is peculiar to the English.” “We were once rich,” said Helen, “but we are not rich now; papa says so. And we have no _ennui_, as you call it, in England,” she cried indignantly.