The English family looked very much shocked, but the governess came to their rescue by asking in a thin throaty voice for the "attition," and presently they all walked out of the garden. Blanche judged the English to be a dull race, and, mounting on a table, began a rowdy dance. It happened that, just when the table cracked, the English governess came back for an umbrella she had left behind, and that Blanche, leaping wildly to save herself from falling, leaped on the governess and brought her to the ground in a general ruin of chairs and tables. Blanche picked up the victim and said that it was all very _rigolo_, which left miss as wise as she was before, her French not extending beyond the tea-table and the chaster portions of a bedroom. Blanche told Sylvia to explain to miss that she had displayed nothing more in her fall than had given much pleasure to all the world. Sylvia, who really felt the poor governess required such practical consolation, translated accordingly, whereat miss became very red and, snatching her umbrella, walked away muttering, "Impertinent little gipsy." When Blanche was told the substance of her last remark, she exclaimed, indignantly: _"Elles sont des vrais types, vous savez, ces gonzesses. Mince, alors! Pourquoi s'emballer comme ça? Elle portait un pantalon fermé! Quelle race infecte, ces Anglais! Moi, je ne peux pas les suffrir."_ Sylvia, listening to Blanche's tirade, wondered if all the English were like that. She thought of her father's books, and decided that life in France must have changed him somehow. Then she called to mind with a shiver the solemn light-blue eyes of the little girls. England must be a cold sort of a place where nobody ever laughed; perhaps that was why her father had come away. Sylvia decided to remain in France, always in a caravan if possible, where no English miss could poke about with bony fingers in one's bread and butter. Sylvia acquired a good deal of worldly wisdom from being so continuously in the society of Blanche, and for a child of eleven she was growing up somewhat rapidly. Yet it would have been hard to say that the influence of her noisy friend was hurtful, for it never roused in Sylvia a single morbid thought. Life in those days presented itself to her mostly as an amusing game, a game that sometimes caused tears, but tears that were easily dried, because, after all, it was only a game. Such was the situation created on one occasion by the unexpected arrival of Blanche's _fiancé_ from his regiment, the 717th of the line. The company was playing at St.-Nazaire at the time, and Louis Moreau telegraphed from Nantes that he had been granted a _congé_ of forty-eight hours.