child, then stooped, caught him up in his arms and said: "He's grown.
Es-tu gentiment?" he added to the child--"es-tu gentiment, m'sieu'?"

The child did not quite understand. "Please?" it said in true Jersey
fashion--at which the mother was troubled.

"O Guilbert, is that what you should say?" she asked. The child looked
up quaintly at her, and with the same whimsical smile which Guida had
given to another so many years ago, he looked at Ranulph and said:
"Pardon, monsieur."

"Coum est qu'on etes, m'sieu'?" said Ranulph in another patois greeting.

Guida shook her head reprovingly. The child glanced swiftly at his
mother as though asking permission to reply as he wished, then back at
Ranulph, and was about to speak, when Guida said: "I have not taught him
the Jersey patois, Ranulph; only English and French."

Her eyes met his clearly, meaningly. Her look said to him as plainly as
words, The child's destiny is not here in Jersey. But as if he knew that
in this she was blinding herself, and that no one can escape the
influences of surroundings, he held the child back from him, and said
with a smile: "Coum est qu'on vos portest?"

Now the child with elfish sense of the situation replied in Jersey
English: "Naicely, thenk you."

"You see," said Ranulph to Guida, "there are things in us stronger than
we are. The wind, the sea, and people we live with, they make us sing
their song one way or another. It's in our bones."