Then there's his daughter, Miss Meadows. She's about forty or fifty years old, I should think. Louis says her name is Yvonne. Certainly, that's a fascinating French name. She's very dark and handsome and quick in her ways, but she's very, very quiet and silent. I never had a _real_ conversation with her in my life, though I've talked to her a great many times. I do all the talking, and she nods or smiles or says "Yes" and "No," and that is absolutely all. I feel as if I'd never really _know_ her, if I talked to her a hundred years. They have one servant, a big French peasant from Normandy, who cooks the meals and takes care of the garden and house. All this doesn't sound very strange, however. And there _is_ something very mysterious about them,--at least, so Carol has always said. I never paid much attention to the thing before, or noticed it. The curious part of it all is the way they treat Louis. He isn't any real relative, so he says. His parents and their parents have just been dear friends from a long way back. It's plain that they think the world of him, too, just as much as if he were a relative. But there's something more. They are continually watching him with anxious eyes. They guard him as if he weren't able to take care of himself any more than a baby. They don't let him have half the liberty and fun that ordinary boys have. Lots of mothers and fathers, who love their children to distraction, aren't half as fussy and concerned about them as these two people are about a boy who isn't even a relative. It makes Louis awfully annoyed, for he hates like anything to be coddled. Once he fell out of an apple-tree and broke a rib, and they nearly went wild. He had a fever that night and lay in a sort of stupor. But when he was coming out of it he heard them talking awfully queerly about him and wringing their hands and whispering that "he would never, never forgive us if Monsieur Louis were to die." Who "he" was, or why his Aunt Yvonne and his Uncle Jean (as he calls them) should allude to him as "Monsieur Louis," was something Louis couldn't understand. And somehow, when he was better, he didn't like to ask. They have taught him French, and with them he always has to speak that language. But he doesn't like it, because he says he's an American citizen and would rather talk "United States" than anything else. He's awfully patriotic and proud of this country, and he can't understand why this should bother Mr. and Miss Meadows. But it somehow does. He's sure of it, for they won't let him talk about it, and are always telling him that his great grandfather was born in France and that he should be very proud of it.