"Ah, vous ne la comprenez pas, cette enfant; vous verrez un jour quand
ca ira mieux! vous verrez! elle est comme sa mere ... elle a toutes les
intelligences de la tete et du coeur!" and he would wish it had pleased
Heaven that he should be her grandfather--on the maternal side.

_L'art d'etre grandpere!_ This weather-beaten, war-battered old soldier
had learned it, without ever having had either a son or a daughter of
his own. He was a _born_ grandfather!

Moreover, Mimsey and I had many tastes and passions in common--music,
for instance, as well as Bewick's wood-cuts and Byron's poetry, and
roast chestnuts and domestic pets; and above all, the Mare d'Auteuil,
which she preferred in the autumn, when the brown and yellow leaves were
eddying and scampering and chasing each other round its margin, or
drifting on its troubled surface, and the cold wet wind piped through
the dishevelled boughs of the forest, under the leaden sky.

She said it was good to be there then, and think of home and the
fireside; and better still, when home was reached at last, to think of
the desolate pond we had left; and good, indeed, it was to trudge home
by wood and park and avenue at dusk, when the bats were about, with
Alfred and Charlie and Mimsey and Madge and Medor; swishing our way
through the lush, dead leaves, scattering the beautiful, ripe
horse-chestnut out of its split creamy case, or picking up acorns and
beechnuts here and there as we went.

And, once home, it was good, very good, to think how dark and lonesome
and shivery it must be out there by the _mare_, as we squatted and
chatted and roasted chestnuts by the wood fire in the school-room before
the candles were lit--_entre chien et loup_, as was called the French