Free Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart Page B

voice said, as dry as the rustle of dead leaves: "You are forgetting the drops for Madame de Valmy." He was holding out the package across the counter.
    When I reached the sunny street the young man said curiously: "What's biting him? Was he being rude? You're-forgive my saying so-but you're as pink as anything."
    "Am I? Well, it's my own fault. No, he wasn't rude. It was just me being silly and getting what I deserved."
    "I'm sure you weren't. And thank you most awfully for being such a help. I'd never have managed on my own." He gave me his shy grin. "I still have to get the cognac. I wonder if you'd help me to buy that too?"
    "I thought you said you could ask for that yourself."
    "I-well, I rather hoped you'd come with me and let me buy you a drink to thank you for taking all that trouble."
    "That's very nice of you. But really, there's no need-"
    He looked down at me rather imploringly over his armful of packages. "Please," he said. "Apart from everything else, it really is wonderful to talk English to someone."
    I had a sudden vision of him up in his lonely hut at four thousand feet, surrounded by pills and boluses and thermometers in degrees Centigrade.
    "I'd like to very much," I said.
    He beamed. "That's fine. In here? It's Hobson's choice anyway-I think this is the only place apart from the Coq Hardi half-a-mile away."
    The
bistro
with its gay awning was next door to the pharmacy. Inside it looked dim and not very inviting, but on the cobbles outside there were two or three little metal tables, and some old cane chairs painted bright red. Two small clipped trees stood sentinel in blue tubs.
    We sat down in the sun. "What will you have?" He was carefully disposing his life-saving parcels on an empty chair.
    "Do you suppose they serve coffee?"
    “Surely." And it seemed, indeed, that they did. It arrived in large yellow cups, with three wrapped oblongs of sugar in each saucer.
    Now that we were facing one another more or less formally across a café table, my companion seemed to have retreated once more behind a rather English shyness. He said, stirring his coffee hard: 'My name's Blake. William Blake." On this last he looked up with a trace of defiance.
    I said: "That's a good name to have, isn't it? Mine's only Belinda Martin. Linda for short-or for pretty, my mother used to say."
    He smiled. "Thank you."
    "For what? Making you free of my name?"
    "Oh-yes, of course. But I meant for not making a crack about the
Songs of Innocence
."
    " 'Little lamb, who made thee?'"
    "That one exactly. You'd be surprised how many people can't resist it."
    I laughed. "How awfully trying! But me, I prefer tigers. No thank you, Mr. Blake"-this to a proffered cigarette-"I don't smoke."
    "Mind if I do?"
    "Of course not."
    Across the spluttering flare of a French match he was looking a question. "If one may ask-what are you doing in Soubirous? Not a holiday, I take it?"
    "No. I'm here on a job, too. I'm a governess."
    "Of course. You must be the English girl from the Château Valmy."
    "Yes. You know about me?"
    "Everybody knows everybody else hereabouts. Anyway I'm a near neighbour, as things go round here. I'm working on the next estate, in the plantations west of the Merlon."
    "Oh," I said, interested. "Dieudonné?"
    "That's it. The château-it's only a country-house really, a quarter the size of Valmy-lies in the valley a bit beyond the village. The owner's hardly ever there. His name's St. Vire. He seems to spend most of his time in Paris or down near Bordeaux. Like your boss, he gets a lot of his money from his timber and his vineyards."
    "Vineyards? Valmy?"
    "Oh, yes. They own chunks of Provence, I believe."
    "Of course," I said. "Bellevigne. But that's Monsieur de Valmy's own property, and Valmy isn't. Even he wouldn't spend its income on Valmy."
    "Even
he?"
    To my surprise my voice sounded defensive. "I believe he's an awfully good landlord."
    "Oh, that. Yes, second to none, I imagine. He's pretty highly thought of hereabouts, I can