THE AMERICAN GUEST.
[Illustration: "What can that be, coming at this time of day?"
_Page 126._]
NO; supposing very hard did not bring poor little French Coralie home
with Lucy; but something almost as wonderful happened. Just at the time
in the afternoon, blind man's holiday, when Lucy had been used to ride
off on her dream to visit some wonderful place, there came a knock at
the front door; a quite real substantial English knock and ring, that
did not sound at all like any of the strange noise of the strange worlds
that she had lately been hearing, but had the real tinkle of Uncle Joe's
own bell.
[Illustration: "Good morning. Where do you come from?"
_Page 131._]
"Well," said Mrs. Bunker, "what can that be, coming at this time of day?
It can never be the doctor coming home without sending orders!
Don't you be running out, Miss Lucy; there'll be a draught of cold right
in."
Lucy stood still; very anxious, and wondering whether she should see
anything alive, or one of her visitors from various countries.
"There is a letter from Mr. Seaman," said a brisk young voice, that
would have been very pleasant if it had not gone a little through the
nose; and past Mrs. Bunker there walked into the full light a little
boy, a year or two older than Lucy, holding out one hand as he saw her
and taking off his hat with the other. "Good morning," he said, quite at
his ease; "is this where you live?"
"Good morning," returned Lucy, though it was not morning at all; "where
do you come from?"
"Well, I'm from Paris last; but when I'm at home, I'm at Boston. I am
Leonidas Saunders, of the great American Republic."
"Oh, then you are not real, after all?"
"Real! I should hope I was a genuine article."
"Well, I was in hopes that you were real, only you say you come from a
strange country, like the rest of them, and yet you look just like an
English boy."
"Of course I do! my great grandfather came from England," said Leonidas;
"we all speak English as well, or better, than you do in the old
country."
"I can't understand it!" said Lucy; "did you come like other people, by
the train, not like the children in my dreams?"
And then Leonidas explained all about it to her: how his father had
brought him last year to Europe and had put him to school at Paris; but
when the war broke out, and most of the stranger scholars were taken
away, no orders came about him, because his father was a merchant and
was away from home, so that no one ever knew whether the letters had
reached him.
So Leonidas had gone on at school without many tasks to learn, to be
sure, but not very comfortable: it was so cold, and there was no wood to
burn; and he disliked eating horses and cats and rats, quite as much as
Coralie did, though he was not in a part of the town where so many
shells came in.
At last, when Lucy's uncle and some other good gentlemen with the red
cross on their sleeves, obtained leave to go and take some relief to the
poor sick people in the hospitals, the people Leonidas was with told
them that he was a little American left behind. Mr. Seaman, which was
Uncle Joe's name, went to see about him, and found that he had once
known his father. So, after a great deal of trouble, it had been managed
that the boy should be allowed to leave the town. He had been driven in
an omnibus, he told Lucy, with some more Americans and English, and with
flags with stars and stripes or else Union Jacks all over it; and
whenever they came to a French sentry, or afterwards to a Prussian,
they were stopped till he called his corporal, who looked at their
papers and let them go on. Mr. Seaman had taken charge of Leonidas, and
given him the best dinner he had eaten for a long time, but as he was
going to Blois to other hospitals, he could not keep the boy with him;
so he had put him in charge of a friend who was going to London, to send
him down to Mrs. Bunker.
Fear of Lucy's rash was pretty well over now, and she was to go home in
a day or two; so the children were allowed to be together, and they
enjoyed it very much. Lucy told about her dreams, and Leonidas had a
good deal to tell of what he had really seen on his travels. They wished
very much that they could both see one of these wonderful dreams
together, only--what should it be?