THE MISSION

By Hugh B. Cave

First published in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, March 14, 1959
Later published as a book by Doubleday & Company, INC., 1959

All rights are those of Hugh B. Cave.

I thank Hugh B. Cave for the special permission to post the story The Mission. After I read his marvelous HAITI, HIGH ROAD TO ADVENTURE back in 1983 I managed to make contact with him through his friend, Sister Joan Margaret of Ecole St. Vincent. Since then Hugh and I have been friends and correspondents. I was utterly delighted when Hugh, at age 89, got on line just two years ago. Hugh is still writing and published two novels in 2000. He currently resides in Florida. It is with special thanks and appreciation to my friend Hugh B Cave that I present this story

The child's feet were bare and dusty. In Haiti, between rains, the country roads are always dusty. She wore only a faded, blue denim dress and inexpensive hoop earrings which she was proudly certain were made of gold. Manfully she marched along the road's edge under the pulsing midday sun, chewing on sugar cane to quiet the ache in her stomach.

Her name was Marie Therese Yolande St. Juste, and she called herself Yolande. Her face was a cherub's face with bright brown eyes; soft, trembling lips and a great deal of sadness. She was six years old.

In a ditch beside the road two women from a nearby village slapped away at their family wash with flat wooden paddles, creating a rhythmic clatter that carried far in the noon stillness. They were hot and tired. Their talk was querulous.

"Watch what you're doing, can't you? You're splashing dirt on my clean clothes. I think you're doing it on purpose. Yes, I'm sure you are!"

"I am not doing it on purpose. If you're foolish enough to put your things where they'll get splashed, don't blame me for it. Blame yourself!"

"I don't know why I allowed you to come with me!" "I didn't come with you: you came with me. And I'm sorry you did!"

Yolande halted and looked down at them "Hello," she said. Her voice was a song--a sad one, true, but still a song.

One of the women sullenly looked up, flipping soap from long black fingers. "Hello, yourself. What do you want?"

"I don't want anything, thank-you. Just--would you tell me if this is the road to Port-au-Prince, please?"

"The road to where?"

"Port-au-Prince. You know, the capital."

"Mes amis!" the woman exclaimed in wonder, and thrust out a bare foot to nudge her companion. "Did you hear that? The child wants to know if this is the road to the capital!"

Her companion stopped work and frowned a Yolande. "You are thinking of going to the capital, ti-fi?"

"I have to. My papa lives there and I have to find him. Maman died yesterday."

"Oh-oh. Where do you live?"

"Nowhere now. I did live in Aquin. Maman kept house for some people there."

"Well, little one, you have come sixteen miles and have seventy-five more to go."

"That far?"

"That far, yes."

I'd better hurry then." Yolande said, and put her dusty feet in motion again. Then, remembering her manners, she turned her head. "Thank you very much." The women watched her go down the road, then looked at each other in silence and returned to their washing. As the paddles flew, a gob of soap sailed through the air and splashed against a dress spread out to dry.

"Oh-oh, that was clumsy of me," the culprit said. "I shouldn't have let that happen, no. I'll wash it over for you."

"A little soap won't break a friendship," the other replied.

"Get on with your work so we can walk home together."

Darkness falls about six o'clock in Haiti the year round, a soft, warm darkness that frightens only those people who believe in werewolves and certain malevolent voodoo mysteries. Yolande was not afraid. When her shadow grew long on the road she looked for a place to sleep. Soon after she was settled in the deep grass by the roadside, a man with a lantern came along and discovered her.

"Oh-oh," he said, "What are you doing here , child?"

"Sleeping," she told him, sitting up with a frown. "It's all right to sleep here , isn't it?"

"Who are you?"

She told him who she was, and he came closer to peer into her face. "Have you eaten today?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, thank you. A lady gave me some peanut candy, and I found some mangoes."

"That isn't much for a little girl who has walked all day," he said. "Would you like to come home with me and some supper?"

Yolande hesitated, then stood up. "Yes, I would."

"First I have to find my children." He had two children he explained. They had left the house an hour ago to get water. He was annoyed with them. "Why is it," he sighed, "that children always..."

Voices could be heard on the dark road coming toward them. The children were quarreling. The girl, it seemed, had splashed the boy and the boy had pushed her into the stream. Their voices were shrill, and the man groaned when he heard them.

At the sight of him the children halted. The girl was a year or two older than Yolande and the boy about twelve. Both were wet and dirty.

"I have been looking for you." the man said.

The children began talking again, both at once.

"Wait! Wait!" the man said. "Must you always make my head ache?" They were silent, peering curiously at Yolande.

"That's better," the man said wearily. "Now let's go home."

Yolande said, "Please, could I go to the stream first? If it's not too far?"

The man looked at her and rubbed his nose. His mouth shaped the word "Why?" but left it unspoken. "All right," he said, I'll show you."

The stream ran under the road and he showed her a path leading down to it, then stood at the edge of the road holding the lantern high so she could find her way. Yolande descended to the water, took off her dress and stepped in. She washed her legs, her arms, her cherub's face, her small dark body, then sloshed the dress up and down in a pool and put it back on, shivering as the wet cloth clung to her.

The man and his children watched her in silence.

"Thank you," she said when she had climbed back up to the road. " I feel better now, I won't get your house dirty."

The house was thatch-roofed, with no more than the usual few sticks of homemade furniture. "This is Yolande St. Juste," the man said to his wife. "She will eat with us."

His wife put her hands on her hips the way the market women do when they are preparing to argue. "Are we suddenly rich?" she demanded.

"The little girl has walked all the way from Aquin. She is tired and hungry."

"Whatever you say. You earn the money, what little there is of it."

There was a table in the room, set for four. The woman slapped a fifth plate down and snapped at her son to bring an extra chair. On the table she put a platter of red beans and boiled plantains, some slabs of cassava bread and a dish of hard red jelly made from guavas. All this was accomplished with a great deal of angry muttering, while she gazed at her in silence. The man motioned his family to be seated.

Yolande, sliding onto her chair, folded her hands over her plate and closed her eyes. The others looked at her curiously. The woman said, "Now what does she think she's doing if I may ask."

"I believe she is thanking God for the food," the man said. "Is that what you are doing, Yolande?"

"Yes."

"A lot we've got to be thankful for!" the woman said.

Yolande looked at her in surprise. The meal was eaten in silence except when the boy and girl fought over the last slab of cassava bread. The man did not stop them: he only gazed at them thoughtfully and then glanced at Yolande, who sat beside him. When Yolande slid from her chair and said, "May I wash the dishes?" he did not hear her and she had to say it again. He nodded. She washed the dishes and dried them. "Thank you very much," she said to them, "I'd better go now."

"Would you like to stay here tonight?" the man asked.

"No, thank you, I'd be in the way."

"Tell me something," the man said. "Do you really think you can walk all the way to the capital on those two small feet?"

"Of course, I only have to keep on walking, don't I?"

"Very well, Yolande. Good night and thank you."

"Why do you thank me? What have I done?"

"For me a great deal," the man said and when Yolande had gone out of the house and down the road and he had watched her out of sight, he shut the door and faced his own two children. They were just about to quarrel over a chair that both wanted to sit on, but at sight of the expression on his face they desisted. It was an expression they were not familiar with. It puzzled them.

"Take a lantern," the man said, "and go to the river and wash yourselves. You're dirty. Come straight back without fighting or you'll regret it. Don't tell me it's dark outside and you're afraid. That little girl isn't afraid. Furthermore no, the rest can wait until tomorrow. GO!"

The children peered fearfully out the door, but when they turned their heads in hope of a reprieve, the man was standing by the table with his arms folded, gazing at them with the same expression. They looked at each other, trembling. The girl whimpered. The boy caught hold of her hand. They went out together. The man turned to his wife. "Celeste." She, too, was puzzled by the change in him. She came and stood before him, gazing up into his face.

"Have you ever been hungry?" he asked. "Or alone, with no one to look after you?"

"Well, no," she said. "You've always looked after me, Antoine. The best you can, anyway."

"The best I can, yes. Celeste, and a man's best is a big thing. I'll thank you from now on to stop nagging me and give me a little help when I need it. Do that and before long we won't be so poor. You heard what that little girl said: to get to Port-au-Prince one only has to keep on walking."

"Yes, Antoine."

"One step at a time and you get there, wherever it is you're going. But a man's wife should not keep knocking him down."

"Yes, Antoine."

"Well?"

"Antoine, you're right, yes, and I'm sorry." The woman bit her lip and reached for his hands. "Go after her, Antoine! Bring her back!"

But Yolande was not sleeping beside the road and Antoine could not find her. Now that she had eaten she was not tired any more. She had decided to walk a few more miles before resting.

She walked until her legs ached, them slept by the road until voices awakened her. It was still dark, but there was a streak of silver over the mountains, heralding the false dawn, and down the road came a string of lights. She stood up and brushed the dirt from her dress.

The women stopped. There were seven of them. They gathered around her and asked questions, then looked at one another and shook their heads. One, younger than the others, took Yolande by the hand.

"We're going as far as St. Michel," she said. "Walk along with us. If I get a fair price for my vegetables, I'll buy you some bread for your journey."

Emile Hector was a St. Michel merchant, seventy-one years old: a bent over man with a wart on his nose. His shop was a big one for a village that size. On one side he sold charcoal, hardware, cotton cloth, and feed bags for making work dresses. On the other, red beans and rice, canned goods from the capital, and fresh vegetables. He was a shrewd man and, for St. Michel, a wealthy one. He was weighing red beans into paper bags, making sure that each bag contained just a little less than the pound he would claim it contained, when Yolande and her new friend entered his shop. The young country woman lifted her basket of produce from her head and placed it on the counter.

"I have some potatoes and yams here that I wish to sell. Also some carrots and turnips."

"I have all of those things I need." Emile said with a shrug. The woman looked around the shop. "Have you, yes? I don't see any."

"Nevertheless, I have them. I don't need any more."

"Very well." She reached for her basket.

"But I will look at what you have, if you want me to." Emile said.

The woman emptied her basket in silence , arranging its contents on the counter, then stepped back, folded her arms and waited.

"H'mm." Emile said. "We'll, I don't need anything, as I have told you, but I can give you eighty cents. That's certainly generous of me. The town is full of fresh vegetables this morning."

"A dollar-sixty." the woman said. "These are the first carrots and potatoes from my district in over a week."

But she spoke with a sigh. If Emile said eighty cents, the most she could hope for was a dollar, and it would take half an hour of argument to get that. The vegetables were worth twice that amount.

She worked him up to a dollar and when he paid her, slapped some money on the counter. "Give the little girl some bananas and bread," she said. Emile glanced shrewdly at Yolande. He placed three small bread roles and four small overripe bananas on the counter and dropped the coin into a cigar box. The woman took in a breath and glared at him.

"What? Is that all, for ten cents?"

"Bananas are scarce and expensive today, "Emile said calmly.

"Who says they are scarce? You're a thief, that's what you are! Just a common thief, yes!"

"Believe me, I am being very generous."

The woman argued. She hit the counter with her fist and screamed insults at him. It did no good. Emile only shrugged. The woman at last turned to Yolande, sadly shaking her head.

"It is the best I can do, ti-fi", she said. "You see for yourself what kind of man we are dealing with. Take what the heartless thief gives you, and may God keep you safe on your journey."

Yolande shook her head. "Thank you, but it wouldn't be right. He's cheating you."

" I know he's cheating me! Does he ever do anything else?"

"I don't need anything, really." Yolande looked across the counter at Emile Hector, and her head was jest a little higher than the counter top, and her face was an indictment. "Please give back the money, m'sieu," she said. "I'm not hungry."

Then she turned to the woman and held out her hand. "Thank you very much," she said. "I'll go now, Good-by." And she went.

The woman and Emile Hector watched her go, then looked at each other. It was the woman who found her voice first. She said, "Do you know where that child is going, M'sieu Hector? To Port-au-Prince, on those two small feet of hers. She has come all the way from Aquin, where her mother died, and is walking to find her father, And she has nothing to eat and no money." The shopkeeper looked down at the bread and bananas on his counter.

"Give me my ten cents!" the woman said.

He took the coin from his cigar box and handed it over in silence.

"I hope the ti-fi thinks of you when she gets hungry!" the woman snapped. "I hope you are proud of yourself!" Angrily she marched out.

Emile Hector sat on the chair behind his counter and stared at the door. He was still sitting there twenty minutes later when his wife came into the shop from the house next door. She brought a tray with coffee and brown-sugar candy on it. Emile was very fond of brown-sugar candy.

When he only looked at the tray, making no move to touch it, his wife said with a frown. "What's the matter? Don't you feel well this morning?"

"No," he said. "As a matter of fact, I don't."

"Are you sick?"

He stood up, "Watch the shop for a while, I'm going out," he said, then quickly wrapped a dozen good bananas and a slab of bread rolls in a sheet of brown paper and hurried out the door.

But he was too late, or rather too old. His legs gave out when he was only half a mile beyond the village, and the road ahead of him was still empty of the small figure he hoped to overtake. He sat on a boulder beside the road, mopping his face with a handkerchief and shaking his head.

An ancient truck came up behind him, filled with limestone chunks and towing a long trail of dust. He stepped out and waved it to a halt.

"Friend," he said, thrusting the brown paper package at the driver, "do me a favor, please. You will find a little girl-about so big-walking along the road ahead somewhere. She is going to the capital, she will tell you. Give her this, please." Tell her the shopkeeper in St. Michel sent it, with his apologies." He fished a coin from hes pocket and dropped it in the man's hand. "This is for your trouble."

"All right," the driver said.

Emile Hector walked slowly and thoughtfully back to his shop in St. Michel, where he found his wife weighing red beans into paper bags. He watched her for a few minutes, them stepped forward and snatched the scoop out of her hand. "There should be a full pound in each bag!" he said angrily. "You're cheating! Don't you know it's wrong to cheat?"

The truck driver found Yolande trudging along the road's edge, and stopped. He handed her the package, "The old fellow said you are going to Port-au-Prince," he said, scowling. "Is that a fact?"

"Yes, I am." Yolande told him.

"Well, I'm not going very far, but I can save you a few miles of walking. Get in." Yolande climbed onto the seat beside him and the truck clattered on down the golden road. It was the first time she had ever ridden in a motor vehicle, and for a time she could only stare out through the dusty wind-shield or watch the driver's strong, sure hands on the wheel. But when the wonder of it wore off a little, she opened the brown paper package.

"Oh-oh," she said. "Look at all the food I have. Would you help me eat it, please?"

The driver glanced at her curiously. "What are you going to the capital for, ti-fi?" She told him.

He frowned. "I know Port-au-Prince pretty well. What's your father's name and where does he live?"

"His name is Armand St. Juste and I don't know where he lives. In a fine big house somewhere. He paints beautiful pictures. Maman told me all about him." The driver removed a hand from the wheel to tug at an ear.

"An artist, eh? Armand St. Juste? What does he look like?"

"Well, I've never seen him. He's been too busy to visit us. But he's tall and good-looking and..."

"You've never seen him? Never?"

"No, but he sent us things. He sent me these gold earrings I'm wearing." Yolande smiled happily at the man. "I won't have any trouble finding him. He's very rich and important. Are you going to help me eat this food?" The man scowled again, "Eat what you want and save the rest," he said. "You have a long way to go yet. I'm not hungry."

He let her off in the town of Petit-Goave, which is forty-five miles from the capital. Standing at the roadside was a big orange and red bus bound for Port-au-Prince, packed solid with peasants and their belongings, with a noisy crowd standing around it. The truck driver pushed his way through the crowd and asked the bus driver if he could make a place for Yolande--he himself would pay the fare--but the bus driver threw up his hands and said helplessly. "Mes amis! Do you know what you ask? These people all want a place on my bus and my passengers are sitting on top of one another now! No, no, no. I can't do it! They would tear me to pieces!"

"She is only a little girl," the truck driver protested.

"I couldn't take her if she were a mouse!"

The truck driver said sadly to Yolande, "I'm sorry, little one, but here is a small amount of money to buy food with. I hope you find your father." He lifted her in his strong arms, put his lips against her cheek and set her down again. Then he climbed back into his truck and drove off, shaking his head. Yoland stopped to rest when she was tired, and ate bananas and bread rolls when her stomach ached. When the road grew dark she slept between the high, sheltering roots of mapou tree, and when daylight came she walked again. She washed herself in a stream. She ate the last of her food and bought more at a roadside shop with the coins the truck driver had given her. She spent a night in a field, with cicadas singing all about her. The road was paved now. The sun beat down on it and waves of heat shimmered from its hard black surface. Her feet hurt but she trudged on, peering ahead for her first sight of the capital.

It would be a big city: she knew that. There would be ever so many houses, shops, people and a wonderful white palace where the president lived. At noon she arrived on the outskirts and was frightened. Both sides of the road were packed with people wearing strange costumes and even stranger masks: people dancing and shouting and beating on drums. Cars and trucks crawled through the crowds, trying to blast them apart with their horns.

Yolande tugged at a woman's dress. "Excuse me, please. I have never been here before. Is it always noisy and crowded like this?"

"Not always, little one. Today is Mardi Gras."

"Oh." She should have known. Mardi Gras was big affair in Aquin too. But there were ever so many more people here. It was going to be difficult, finding her father's house at such a time.

She had reached the city proper and it was much, much bigger than she had expected. The buildings were enormous. The streets ran every which way. She was caught up in the surging crowd and carried along like a leaf on a stream, stepped on, pushed, deafened by the din. But she would not let the tumult confuse her. Stubbornly she clutched at people's hands, forcing them to look down at her.

"Please, can you tell me where Armand St. Juste lives? The artist?"

"Who?"

"Armand St. Juste! You must know him. He is a very important man."

No one, it seemed, knew him. A woman knew a Marcel St. Juste who was a baker. A man knew an Alfred St. Juste who worked at a bank. But no one knew Armand St. Juste, the famous artist. It was a puzzling thing. They were confused, perhaps, by all the noise.

She had reached a great park filled with people. All the people of the world were here, except, of course, those on the streets she had come through. Millions of people. They were watching a parade that wound through the park like an enormous colored snake. Musicians. Dancers. Beautiful dressed-up trucks and cars, with pretty girls on them blowing kisses. It was like a dream, but bewildering. She stopped to watch, because it was very hard to push her way through such a crowd.

A little girl stumbled against her, sobbing: a girl even younger, smaller than herself, but wearing shoes and a pretty pink dress. Yolande stooped to look into the tear-stained face.

"What's the matter, ti-fi, why are you crying?"

"I can't find my mother and father! I got out of the car to see the parade and can't find my way back!"

"I know how it is. Take hold of my hand and I'll help you find them."

They moved through the crowd together. Yolande creating the openings and drawing the child through after her. It was like swimming in a sea with waves so high that the shore was hidden. She could not ask about her father now. That would have to wait. The little girl was terrified. The thing to do was to get out of the crowd and look for the car.

They were out at last. She wiped the little girl's face with the hem of the pretty pink dress and said, "There now, we're all right. We'll find your mother and father, you'll see. What's your name?"

"M-marguerite Maxime."

"Well, Marguerite, you stop crying now. Big girls don't cry. I won't let anything happen to you, no."

They looked at cars, but none was the right one. They went from one street to another. They were standing on a sidewalk, hand in hand, when the little girl suddenly cried out, "There! There it is!" and pulled Yolande off the curb.

The street was a hill, and down the hill toward them rolled a float. Not part of the Mardi Gras parade. Just a single float, a big one, covered with shimmering white cloth to resemble a cloud. On the cloud stood a ten-foot-high angel with out-spread golden wings. The float seemed to be coming fast. Yolande said, "Wait, Marguerite," but the child in the pink dress tugged her across the street toward the car.

There was a woman in the car. She, too, saw the float.

She screamed. At the same time a man came striding around a corner a little distance away, saw the children in the middle of the street and shouted hoarsely,

"Marguerite! Look out!"

That was a mistake. Hearing the man's voice, Marguerite stopped. The hurtling cloud with its teetering ten-foot angel was almost upon her. But it was not a cloud now. At close range it was only an ugly battering ram of a truck out of control, moving too fast for its ancient brakes. Its driver clung to the wheel in terror, peering wide-eyed through a gap in the white cloth.

Yolande tried to pull her companion back to the curb they had come from, but the child, too, was frozen with fear. The woman in the car still screamed. The man covered his face with his hands.

Unable to pull the child, Yolande seized her around the waist and lifted her and tried to run: did run a few stumbling steps. It was almost enough. The truck roared past, missing them. But a wing of the ten foot angel struck Yolande and knocked them to the street.

Marguerite scrambled to her feet unharmed and sped to the car. Yolande lay there unmoving. The truck went careening on down the hill to crash into a steel utility pole and overturn.

People came running not to the peasant girl lying motionless in the street, but to the more spectacular accident below. It was the man who picked Yolande up. He looked into her face and carried her to the car. Where the woman clung to the child in the pink dress.

"This one is hurt," he said. "Take her. I'll drive to Doctor Domond's."

The woman nodded. Without a word, but biting her lip, she put her own little girl on the back seat and took Yolande in her arms. The man drove. When he stopped, he carried Yolande into a house and watched, clenching and unclinching his hands, while the doctor examined her. The father of Marguerite Maxime was a young man, well dressed. The doctor addressed him with respect.

The doctor said, "She will be all right, I think, Henri. I find nothing broken. Take her home, eh? Tell me where she lives and I'll stop by to look at her tomorrow." Yolande opened her eyes and, when questioned, told them who she was. "I have to find my father," she said, "Perhaps you know where he lives?" She told them her father's name and all that she knew about him and how she had walked to the capital from Aquin to find him.

The two men looked at each other. "It will be hard to find him today, little one." Henri Maxime said gently. "I think I will take you home with me, and we'll look for Armand St. Juste tomorrow, eh? Will that be all right?"

"But you do know him, don't you?" Yolande asked anxiously.

Henri Maxime smiled and kissed her. "I will answer every one of your questions later. little one , after you've had something to eat and a good long sleep in a soft bed."

He took her to the kind of house she knew her father must live in; big, handsome house with tiled floors and gleaming mahogany furniture, set in the midst of a garden filled with flowers. There, after a bath in a great white tub, with warm water, she had supper with Henri Maxime and his wife and their little girl and them was put to bed. She was very tired. She fell asleep at once. She was still asleep when Henri lift the house in the morning. He took his car from the garage and drove downtown to the Centre d'Art.

"Can you tell me anything about an artist named Armand St. Juste?" he asked. The man in charge of the center said with a frown. "St. Juste? Armand St. Juste? An artist, m'sieu?"

"I thought so," Henri said with a sigh, and drove to the College St. Martial, where he spoke to a priest he knew well.

"It shouldn't be difficult, should it, Father?" he said. "You can telephone the cure in Aquin? He'll know?"

"I am sure he will, Henri. I'll call you at your office as soon as I have the information."

"I'll be at home, Father. Waiting."

The priest did not call: he came. In his white robe he settled himself on a chair in the Maxime living room. He put the tips of his long fingers together and frowned at them with a small shake of his head, while Henri Maxime and his young wife waited anxiously for him to speak.

"It is a strange story," he said. "As you suspected, the child has no father. The mother simply invented one. Yet the mother was a fine young woman, the cure in Aquin tells me. A most unusual woman. Which explains, perhaps, why she invented a father who was an artist, a lover of beauty, instead of, say , a politician. And which also explains, perhaps, why Yolande is the kind of child she is. She is very much loved, that youngster, by everyone who knows her." He looked up. "The whole town has been frantically searching for her since she disappeared."

Henri Maxime frowned. "This is awkward, Father."

"Yes, and very sad."

"There will have to be an Armand St. Juste. I see no other solution." Henri glanced at his wife.

His wife nodded. "Yolande is upstairs with Marguerite. I'll get her. "She stood up, then hesitated and turned to the priest. "The child would have left us when she awoke, Father. I kept her here only by telling her that Marguerite was still frightened and needed her. She will never stop looking for her father unless..." "The endless search for truth," the priest said. "For beauty. For love." He shook his head in sadness, but managed a smile. "From what the cure in Aquin tells, this one gives more of all three than she can ever hope to find."

The woman went upstairs. She came down with Yolande at her side, clinging to her hand. The child looked from Henri Maxime to the priest, waiting. Henri leaned forward on his chair.

"I have something to tell you, Yolande. Something I hadn't the courage to tell you yesterday, when you were hurt. Your father is dead."

Yolande returned his gaze without blinking. Only her mouth trembled.

"He died not long ago, here in the capital," Henri said. "I knew him well. He was, as you say, a great artist, a great man. He was also my best friend. When he died he asked me to take his place, if ever you needed me. He asked me to be your father. I said I would if you would let me."

The child turned to look at Henri Maxine's wife, who smiled at her through a mist of tears. She turned to the priest, who nodded. She looked at Henri again.

"You would live here," Henri said, "and Marguerite would be your sister. We have always wanted a sister for Marguerite. You would make us very happy, Yolande."

"I would make you happy?" Yolande said.

"Yes. You would make us happy."

"Then I will stay," Yolande said, nodding, "Thank you very much."

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