THE AMERICAN GUEST.
No; wishing 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 when Lucy used to ride off on her dream to
visit some wonderful place, there came a ring at the front door; a
quite real substantial ring, that did not sound at all like any of
the strange noises of the strange worlds that she had lately been
hearing, but had the real tinkle of Uncle Joe's own bell.
"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
air 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 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 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 from the cannons came in.
At last when Lucy's uncle and some other good gentlemen with the red
cross on their sleeves, obtained leave to enter Paris and take some
relief to the poor, sick people in the hospitals, the people Leonidas
was with, told the gentleman that there was a little American left
behind in their house.
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 city. He had been driven in a coach, 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
an officer 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 another
city 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
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?