Jovial, these are our whole traveling expenses. I say nothing about food, because you two together don’t eat more than a mouse, and I have learnt in Egypt and Spain to be hungry only when it suits.”
“Not forgetting that, to save still more, you do all the cooking for us, and will not even let us assist.”
“And to think, good Dagobert, that you wash almost every evening at our resting-place. As if it were not for us to—”
“You!” said the soldier, interrupting Blanche, “I, allow you to chap your pretty little hands in soap-suds! Pooh! don’t a soldier on a campaign always wash his own linen? Clumsy as you see me, I was the best washerwoman in my squadron—and what a hand at ironing! Not to make a brag of it.”
“Yes, yes—you can iron well—very well.”
“Only sometimes, there will be a little singe,” said Rose, smiling.
“Hah! when the iron is too hot. Zounds! I may bring it as near my cheek as I please; my skin is so tough that I don’t feel the heat,” said Dagobert, with imperturbable gravity.
“We are only jesting, good Dagobert!”
“Then, children, if you think that I know my trade as a washerwoman, let me continue to have your custom: it is cheaper; and, on a journey, poor people like us should save where we can, for we must, at all events, keep enough to reach Paris. Once there, our papers and the medal you wear will do the rest—I hope so, at least.”
“This medal is sacred to us; mother gave it to us on her death-bed.”
“Therefore, take great care that you do not lose it: see, from time to time, that you have it safe.”
“Here it is,” said Blanche, as she drew from her bosom a small bronze medal, which she wore suspended from her neck by a chain of the same material. The medal bore on its faces the following inscriptions:
Victim of L. C. D. J. Pray for me! —— Paris February the, 13th, 1682. At Paris. Rue Saint Francois, No. 3,
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