"Well, supposing that's not so!" she said, as with a grin she pushed me out
of the door.
Mademoiselle Virtud came over that very afternoon. I hadn't been mistaken.
She and Teresa went immediately across the road to see the empty house, the
owner having left the key with us. At the end of a half-hour they returned.
"It's all arranged," and Teresa beamed. "She's coming to live here right
across the road. I've thought of the thing for a long time, and now at last
the house I wanted is empty. Monsieur Bouche has promised to fix the fence
and put a new coat of paint on the house, and with some of our plants
placed in the front garden, it will be a fitting place for your dear
teacher and her Gabriel to live in."
"You'll certainly spoil us!" said Mlle. Virtud. "What a joy it will be to
leave that stuffy apartment in town. And Gabriel is so pale and weak! This
lovely air of the open country will make a new boy of him!"
It was a wonderful time we had, arranging things before our new neighbors
moved in. Teresa bought some neat linen curtains for the windows of the
little house. Paula and I gathered quantities of flowers from our garden
and placed them over the chimney-piece, and on the bedroom shelves and in
the window-seats--and how the floors and windows did shine after we had
finished polishing them!
When our teacher arrived in a coach with Gabriel packed in among the usual
quantity of small household things of all kinds, great was her gratitude
and surprise to find, in the transformed house, such signs of our care and
affection for her.
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