"Don't you see," she continued, "I have all this broken glass to pick up?
If you will do me a real kindness, you will step round to the glazier, the first thing in the morning, and get him to mend the window before breakfast." "I'll go at once," said I; but "No, no," was again the word.

My father laid his hand firmly on my right arm, and Madeleine hers on my left.
Though her touch was as light as a snow-flake, I would not have shaken it off for the world.
"The streets are unquiet to-night," said my father, "and I mean no one to go forth till the girls return home, when we will see them safely to their door; going out the back way." So we spent the next hour in a sober, subdued manner.

Madeleine shyly let me steal her hand and hold it some minutes, as though she knew it would calm me.

And so it did; there was much sweetness in that hour, after all.
At length it was time to see them home; my mother kissed and blessed them as if they were going further than into the next street.

We went out the back way, my father taking Gabrielle and I Madeleine, and we met with no evil by the way.