Rose à Charlitte

CHAPTER IV.
AN UNKNOWN IRRITANT.

Two or three weeks went by, and, although Bidiane's headquarters were nominally at the inn, she visited the horseshoe cottage morning, noon, and night.

Rose always smiled when she heard the rustling of her silk-lined skirts, and often murmured:

"I wonder how long she is going to stay here?" said Agapit, one day, to his cousin.

"She does not know,—she obeys Mr. Nimmo blindly, although sometimes she chatters of earning her own living."

"I do not think he would permit that," said Agapit, hastily.

"Nor I, but he does not tell her so."

"He is a kind of Grand Monarque among you women. He speaks, and you listen; and now that Bidiane has broken the ice and we talk more freely of him, I may say that I do not approve of his keeping your boy any longer, although it is a foolish thing for me to mention, since you have never asked my advice on the subject."

"My dear brother," said Rose, softly, "in this one thing I have not agreed with you, because you are not a mother, and cannot understand. I feared to bring back my boy when he was delicate, lest he should die of the separation from Mr. Nimmo. It was better for me to cry myself to sleep for many nights than for me to have him for a few weeks, and then, perhaps, lay his little body in the cold ground. Where would then be my satisfaction? And now that he is strong, I console myself with the thought of the fine schools that he attends, I follow him every hour of the day, through the letters that Mr. Nimmo sends to Bidiane. As I dust my room in the morning, I hold conversations with him.

"I say, 'How goes the Latin, little one, and the Greek? They are hard, but do not give up. Some day thou wilt be a clever man.' All the time I talk to him. I tell him of every happening on the Bay. Naturally I cannot put all this in my letters to him, that are few and short on account of—well you know why I do not write too much. Agapit, I do not dare to bring him back. He gives that dear young man an object in life; he also interests his mother, who now loves me, through my child. I speak of the schools, and yet it is not altogether for that, for have we not a good college for boys here on the Bay? It is something higher. It is for the good of souls that he stays away. Not yet, not yet, can I recall him. It would not seem right, and I cannot do what is wrong; also there is his father."

Agapit, with a resigned gesture, drew on his gloves. He had been making a short call and was just about to return home.

"Are you going to the inn?" asked Rose.

"Why should I call there?" he said, a trifle irritably. "I have not the time to dance attendance on young girls."

Rose was lost in gentle amazement at Agapit's recent attitude towards Bidiane. Her mind ran back to the long winter and summer evenings when he had come to her house, and had sat for hours reading the letters from Paris. He had taken a profound interest in the little renegade. Step by step he had followed her career. He had felt himself in a measure responsible for the successful issue of the venture in taking her abroad. And had he not often spoken delightedly of her return, and her probable dissemination among the young people of the stock of new ideas that she would be sure to bring with her?

This was just what she had done. She had enlarged the circle of her acquaintance, and every one liked her, every one admired her. Day after day she flashed up and down the Bay, on the bicycle that she had brought with her from Paris, and, as she flew by the houses, even the old women left their windows and hobbled to the door to catch a gay salutation from her.

Only Agapit was dissatisfied, only Agapit did not praise her, and Rose on this day, as she stood wistfully looking into his face, carried on an internal soliloquy. It must be because she represents Mr. Nimmo. She has been educated by him, she reveres him. He has only lent her to the Bay, and will some day take her away, and Agapit, who feels this, is jealous because he is rich, and because he will not forgive. It is strange that the best of men and women are so human; but our dear Lord will some day melt their hearts; and Rose, who had never disliked any one and had not an enemy in the world, checked a sigh and endeavored to turn her thoughts to some more agreeable subject.

Agapit, however, still stood before her, and while he was there it was difficult to think of anything else. Then he presently asked a distracting question, and one that completely upset her again, although it was put in a would-be careless tone of voice.

"Does the Poirier boy go much to the inn?"

Rose tried to conceal her emotion, but it was hard for her to do so, as she felt that she had just been afforded a painful lightning glance into Agapit's mind. He felt that he was growing old. Bidiane was associating with the girls and young men who had been mere children five years before. The Poirier boy, in particular, had grown up with amazing rapidity and precociousness. He was handsomer, far handsomer than Agapit had ever been, he was also very clever, and very much made of on account of his being the most distinguished pupil in the college of Sainte-Anne, that was presided over by the Eudist fathers from France.

"Agapit," she said, suddenly, and in sweet, patient alarm, "are we getting old, you and I?"

"We shall soon be thirty," he said, gruffly, and he turned away.

Rose had never before thought much on the subject of her age. Whatever traces the slow, painful years had left on her inner soul, there were no revealing marks on the outer countenance of her body. Her glass showed her still an unruffled, peaceful face, a delicate skin, an eye undimmed, and the same beautiful abundance of shining hair.

"But, Agapit," she said, earnestly, "this is absurd. We are in our prime. Only you are obliged to wear glasses. And even if we were old, it would not be a terrible thing—there is too much praise of youth. It is a charming time, and yet it is a time of follies. As for me, I love the old ones. Only as we grow older do we find rest."

"The follies of youth," repeated Agapit, sarcastically, "yes, such follies as we have had,—the racking anxiety to find food to put in one's mouth, to find sticks for the fire, books for the shelf. Yes, that is fine folly. I do not wonder that you sigh for age."

Rose followed him to the front door, where he stood on the threshold and looked down at the river.

"Some days I wish I were there," he said, wearily.

Rose had come to the end of her philosophy, and in real alarm she examined his irritated, disheartened face. "I believe that you are hungry," she said at last.

"No, I am not,—I have a headache. I was up all last night reading a book on Commercial Law. I could not eat to-day, but I am not hungry."

"You are starving—come, take off your gloves," she said, peremptorily. "You shall have such a fine little dinner. I know what Célina is preparing, and I will assist her so that you may have it soon. Go lie down there in the sitting-room."

"I do not wish to stay," said Agapit, disagreeably; "I am like a bear."

"The first true word that you have spoken," she said, shaking a finger at him. "You are not like my good Agapit to-day. See, I will leave you for a time—Jovite, Jovite," and she went to the back door and waved her hand in the direction of the stable. "Go take out Monsieur LeNoir's horse. He stays to dinner."

After dinner she persuaded him to go down to the inn with her. Bidiane was in the parlor, sitting before a piano that Vesper had had sent from Boston for her. Two young Acadien girls were beside her, and when they were not laughing and exchanging jokes, they sang French songs, the favorite one being "Un Canadien Errant," to which they returned over and over again.

Several shy young captains from schooners in the Bay were sitting tilted back on chairs on the veranda, each one with a straw held between his teeth to give him countenance. Agapit joined them, while Rose went in the parlor and assisted the girls with their singing. She did not feel much older than they did. It was curious how this question of age oppressed some people; and she glanced through the window at Agapit's now reasonably contented face.

"I am glad you came with him," whispered Bidiane, mischievously. "He avoids me now, and I am quite afraid of him. The poor man, he thought to find me a blue-stocking, discussing dictionaries and encyclopædias; he finds me empty-headed and silly, so he abandons me to the younger set, although I admire him so deeply. You, at least, will never give me up," and she sighed and laughed at the same time, and affectionately squeezed Rose's hand.

Rose laughed too. She was becoming more light-hearted under Bidiane's half-nonsensical, half-sensible influence, and the two young Acadien girls politely averted their surprised eyes from the saint who would condescend to lay aside for a minute her crown of martyrdom. All the Bay knew that she had had some trouble, although they did not know what it was.

CHAPTER V.
BIDIANE PLAYS AN OVERTURE.

Addison.

A few days later, Bidiane happened to be caught in a predicament, when none of her new friends were near, and she was forced to avail herself of Agapit's assistance.

She had been on her wheel nearly to Weymouth to make a call on one of her numerous and newly acquired girl friends. Merrily she was gliding homeward, and being on a short stretch of road bounded by hay-fields that contained no houses, and fancying that no one was near her, she lifted up her voice in a saucy refrain, "L'homme qui m'aura, il n'aura pas tout ce qu'il voudra" (The man that gets me, will not get all he wants).

"La femme qui m'aura, elle n'aura pas tout ce qu'elle voudra" (The woman that gets me, she'll not get all she wants), chanted Agapit, who was coming behind in his buggy.

Suddenly the girl's voice ceased; in the twinkling of an eye there had been a rip, a sudden evacuation of air from one of the rubber tubes on her wheel, and she had sprung to the road.

"Good afternoon," said Agapit, driving up, "you have punctured a tire."

"Yes," she replied, in dismay, "the wretched thing! If I knew which wicked stone it was that did it, I would throw it into the Bay."

"What will you do?"

"Oh, I do not know. I wish I had leather tires."

"I will take you to Sleeping Water, mademoiselle, if you wish."

"But I do not care to cause you that trouble," and she gazed mischievously and longingly up and down the road.

"It will not be a trouble," he said, gravely.

"Anything is a trouble that one does not enjoy."

"But there is duty, mademoiselle."

"Ah, yes, duty, dear duty," she said, making a face. "I have been instructed to love it, therefore I accept your offer. How fortunate for me that you happened to be driving by! Almost every one is haying. What shall we do with the wheel?"

"We can perhaps lash it on behind. I have some rope. No, it is too large. Well, we can at least wheel it to the post-office in Belliveau's Cove,—or stay, give me your wrench. I will take off the wheel, carry it to Meteghan River, and have it mended. I am going to Chéticamp to-night. To-morrow I will call for it and bring it to you."

"Oh, you are good,—I did not know that there is a repair shop at Meteghan River."

"There is,—they even make wheels."

"But the outside world does not know that. The train conductor told that if anything went wrong with my bicycle, I would have to send it to Yarmouth."

"The outside world does not know of many things that exist in Clare. Will you get into the buggy, mademoiselle? I will attend to this."

Bidiane meekly ensconced herself under the hood, and took the reins in her hands. "What are you going to do with the remains?" she asked, when Agapit put the injured wheel in beside her.

"We might leave them at Madame LeBlanc's," and he pointed to a white house in the distance. "She will send them to you by some passing cart."

"That is a good plan,—she is quite a friend of mine."

"I will go on foot, if you will drive my horse."

They at once set out, Bidiane driving, and Agapit walking silently along the grassy path at the side of the road.

The day was tranquil, charming, and a perfect specimen of "the divine weather" that Saint-Mary's Bay is said to enjoy in summer. Earlier in the afternoon there had been a soft roll of pearl gray fog on the Bay, in and out of which the schooners had been slipping like phantom ships. Now it had cleared away, and the long blue sweep of water was open to them. They could plainly see the opposite shores of long Digby Neck,—each fisherman's cottage, each comfortable farmhouse, each bit of forest sloping to the water's edge. Over these hills hung the sun, hot and glowing, as a sun should be in haying time. On Digby Neck the people were probably making hay. Here about them there had been a general desertion of the houses for work in the fields. Men, women, and children were up on the slopes on their left, and down on the banks on their right, the women's cotton dresses shining in gay spots of color against the green foliage of the evergreen and hardwood trees that grew singly or in groups about the extensive fields of grass.

Madame LeBlanc was not at home, so Agapit pinned a note to the bicycle, and left it standing outside her front gate with the comfortable assurance that, although it might be the object of curious glances, no one would touch it until the return of the mistress of the house.

Then he entered the buggy, and, with one glance into Bidiane's eyes, which were dancing with merriment, he took the reins from her and drove on briskly.

She stared at the magnificent panorama of purple hills and shining water spread out before them, and, remembering the company that she was in, tried to concentrate her attention on the tragic history of her countrymen. Her most earnest effort was in vain; she could not do so, and she endeavored to get further back, and con over the romantic exploits of Champlain and De Monts, whose oddly shaped ships had ploughed these waters; but here again she failed. Her mind came back, always irresistibly back, from the ancient past to the man of modern times seated beside her.

She was sorry that he did not like her; she had tried hard to please him. He really was wiser than any one she knew; could she not bring about a better understanding with him? If he only knew how ignorant she felt, how anxious she was to learn, perhaps he would not be so hard on her.

It was most unfortunate that she should have had on her bicycling dress. She had never heard him speak against the wheel as a means of exercise, yet she felt intuitively that he did not like it. He adored modest women, and in bicycling they were absolutely forced to occasionally show their ankles. Gradually and imperceptibly she drew her trim-gaitered feet under her blue skirt; then she put up a cautious hand to feel that her jaunty sailor hat was set straight on her coils of hair. Had he heard, she wondered, that six other Acadien girls, inspired by her example, were to have wheels? He would think that she had set the Bay crazy. Perhaps he regarded it as a misfortune that she had ever come back to it.

If he were any other man she would be furiously angry with him. She would not speak to him again. And, with an abrupt shrug of her shoulders, she watched the squawking progress of a gull from the Bay back to the woods, and then said, impulsively, "It is going to rain."

Agapit came out of his reverie and murmured an assent. Then he looked again into her yellowish brown, certainly charming eyes when full of sunlight, as they were at present from their unwinking stare at the bright sky.

"Up the Bay, Digby Neck was our barometer," she said, thoughtfully. "When it grew purple, we were to have rain. Here one observes the gulls, and the sign never fails,—a noisy flight is rain within twenty-four hours. The old gull is telling the young ones to stay back by the lake in the forest, I suppose."

Agapit tried to shake off his dreaminess and to carry on a conversation with her, but failed dismally, until he discovered that she was choking with suppressed laughter.

"Oh, pardon, pardon, monsieur; I was thinking—ah! how delicious is one's surprise at some things—I am thinking how absurd. You that I fancied would be a brother—you almost as angelic as Mr. Nimmo—you do not care for me at all. You try so hard, but I plague you, I annoy. But what will you? I cannot make myself over. I talk all the Acadienism that I can, but one cannot forever linger on the old times. You yourself say that one should not."

"So you think, mademoiselle, that I dislike you?"

"Think it, my dear sir,—I know it. All the Bay knows it."

"Then all the Bay is mistaken; I esteem you highly."

"Actions speak louder than words," and her teasing glance played about his shining glasses. "In order to be polite you perjure yourself."

"Mademoiselle!"

"I am sorry to be so terribly plain-spoken," she said, nodding her head shrewdly, yet childishly. "But I understand perfectly that you think I have a feather for a brain. You really cannot stoop to converse with me. You say, 'Oh, that deceived Mr. Nimmo! He thinks he has accomplished a wonderful thing. He says, "Come now, see what I have done for a child of the Bay; I will send her back to you. Fall down and worship her."'"

Agapit smiled despite himself. "Mademoiselle, you must not make fun of yourself."

"But why not? It is my chief amusement. I am the most ridiculous mortal that ever lived, and I know how foolish I am; but why do you not exercise your charity? You are, I hear, kind and forbearing with the worst specimens of humanity on the Bay. Why should you be severe with me?"

Agapit winced as if she had pinched him. "What do you wish me to do?"

"Already it is known that you avoid me," she continued, airily; "you who are so much respected. I should like to have your good opinion, and, ridiculous as I am, you know that I am less so than I used to be."

She spoke with a certain dignity, and Agapit was profoundly touched. "Mademoiselle," he said, in a low voice, "I am ashamed of myself. You do not understand me, and I assert again that I do not dislike you."

"Then why don't you come to see me?" she asked, pointedly.

"I cannot tell you," he said, and his eyes blazed excitedly. "Do not urge the question. However, I will come—yes, I will. You shall not complain of me in future."

Bidiane felt slightly subdued, and listened in silence to his energetic remarks suddenly addressed to the horse, who had taken advantage of his master's wandering attention by endeavoring to draw the buggy into a ditch where grew some luscious bunches of grass.

"There comes Pius Poirier," she said, after a time.

The young Acadien was on horseback. His stolid, fine-featured face was as immovable as marble, as he jogged by, but there was some play between his violet eyes and Bidiane's tawny ones that Agapit did not catch, but strongly suspected.

"Do you wish to speak to him?" he inquired, coldly, when Bidiane stretched her neck outside the buggy to gaze after him.

"No," she said, composedly, "I only want to see how he sits his horse. He is my first admirer," she added, demurely, but with irrepressible glee.

"Indeed,—I should fancy that mademoiselle might have had several."

"What,—and I am only seventeen? You are crazy, my dear sir,—I am only beginning that sort of thing. It is very amusing to have young men come to see you; although, of course," she interpolated, modestly, "I shall not make a choice for some years yet."

"I should hope not," said her companion, stiffly.

"I say I have never had an admirer; yet sometimes gay young men would stare at me in the street,—I suppose on account of this red hair,—and Mr. Nimmo would be very much annoyed with them."

"A city is a wicked place; it is well that you have come home."

"With that I console myself when I am sometimes lonely for Paris," said Bidiane, wistfully. "I long to see those entrancing streets and parks, and to mingle with the lively crowds of people; but I say to myself what Mr. Nimmo often told me, that one can be as happy in one place as in another, and home is the best of all to keep the heart fresh. 'Bidiane,' he said, one day, when I was extolling the beauties of Paris, 'I would give it all for one glimpse of the wind-swept shores of your native Bay.'"

"Ah, he still thinks that!"

"Yes, yes; though I never after heard him say anything like it. I only know his feelings through his mother."

Agapit turned the conversation to other subjects. He never cared to discuss Vesper Nimmo for any length of time.

When they reached the Sleeping Water Inn, Bidiane hospitably invited him to stay to supper.

"No, thank you,—I must hurry on to Chéticamp."

"Good-by, then; you were kind to bring me home. Shall we not be better friends in future?"

"Yes, yes," said Agapit, hurriedly. "I apologize, mademoiselle," and jumping into his buggy, he drove quickly away.

Bidiane's gay face clouded. "You are not very polite to me, sir. Sometimes you smile like a sunbeam, and sometimes you glower like a rain-cloud, but I'll find out what is the matter with you, if it takes me a year. It is very discomposing to be treated so."

CHAPTER VI.
A SNAKE IN THE GRASS INTERFERES WITH THE
EDUCATION OF MIRABELLE MARIE.

—Aminta.

Bidiane, being of a practical turn of mind, and having a tremendous fund of energy to bestow upon the world in some way or other, was doing her best to follow the hint given her by Vesper Nimmo, that she should, as a means of furthering her education, spend some time at the Sleeping Water Inn, with the object of imparting to Mirabelle Marie a few ideas hitherto outside her narrow range of thought.

Sometimes the girl became provoked with her aunt, sometimes she had to check herself severely, and rapidly mutter Vesper's incantation, "Do not despise any one; if you do, it will be at a great loss to yourself."

At other times Bidiane had no need to think of the incantation. Her aunt was so good-natured, so forgiving, she was so full of pride in her young niece, that it seemed as if only the most intense provocation could justify any impatience with her.

Mirabelle Marie loved Bidiane almost as well as she loved her own children, and it was only some radical measure, such as the changing of her sneaks at sundown for a pair of slippers, or the sitting in the parlor instead of the kitchen, that excited her rebellion. However, she readily yielded,—these skirmishes were not the occurrences that vexed Bidiane's soul. The renewed battles were the things that discouraged her. No victory was sustained. Each day she must contend for what had been conceded the day before, and she was tortured by the knowledge that so little hold had she on Mirabelle Marie's slippery soul that, if she were to leave Sleeping Water on any certain day, by the next one matters would at once slip back to their former condition.

"Do not be discouraged," Vesper wrote her. "The Bay was not built in a day. Some of your ancestors lived in camps in the woods."

This was an allusion on his part to the grandmother of Mrs. Watercrow, who had actually been a squaw, and Bidiane, as a highly civilized being, winced slightly at it. Very little of the Indian strain had entered her veins, except a few drops that were exhibited in a passion for rambling in the woods. She was more like her French ancestors, but her aunt had the lazy, careless blood, as had also her children.

One of the chief difficulties that Bidiane had to contend with, in her aunt, was her irreligion. Mirabelle Marie had weak religious instincts. She had as a child, and as a very young woman, been an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, and had obtained some grasp of its doctrines. When, in order to become "stylish," she had forsaken this church, she found herself in the position of a forlorn dog who, having dropped his substantial bone, finds himself groping for a shadow. Protestantism was an empty word to her. She could not comprehend it; and Bidiane, although a Protestant herself, shrewdly made up her mind that there was no hope for her aunt save in the church of her forefathers. However, in what way to get her back to it,—that was the question. She scolded, entreated, reasoned, but all in vain. Mirabelle Marie lounged about the house all day Sunday, very often, strange to say, amusing herself with declamations against the irreligion of the people of Boston.

Bidiane's opportunity to change this state of affairs at last came, and all unthinkingly she embraced it.

The opportunity began on a hot and windy afternoon, a few days after her drive with Agapit. She sat on the veranda reading, until struck by a sudden thought which made her close her book, and glance up and down the long road, to see if the flying clouds of dust were escorting any approaching traveller to the inn. No one was coming, so she hastily left the house and ran across the road to the narrow green field that lay between the inn and the Bay.

The field was bounded by straggling rows of raspberry bushes, and over the bushes hung a few apple-trees,—meek, patient trees, their backs bent from stooping before the strong westerly winds, their short, stubby foliage blown all over their surprised heads.

There was a sheep-pen in the corner of the field next the road, and near it was a barred gate, opening on a winding path that led down to the flat shore. Bidiane went through the gate, frowned slightly at a mowing-machine left out-of-doors for many days by the careless Claude, then laughed at the handle of its uplifted brake, that looked like a disconsolate and protesting arm raised to the sky.

All the family were in the hay field. Two white oxen drew the hay wagon slowly to and fro, while Claudine and the two boys circled about it, raking together scattered wisps left from the big cocks that Claude threw up to Mirabelle Marie.

The mistress of the house was in her element. She gloried in haying, which was the only form of exercise that appealed in the least to her. Her face was overspread by a grin of delight, her red dress fluttered in the strong breeze, and she gleefully jumped up and down on top of the load, and superimposed her fat jolly weight on the masses of hay.

Bidiane ran towards them, dilating her small nostrils as she ran to catch the many delicious odors of the summer air. The strong perfume of the hay overpowered them all, and, in an intoxication of delight, she dropped on a heap of it, and raised an armful to her face.

A squeal from Claudine roused her. Her rake had uncovered a mouse's nest, and she was busily engaged in killing every one of the tiny velvety creatures.

"But why do you do it?" asked Bidiane, running up to her.

Claudine stared at her. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood as she stood in the blazing light of the sun, and Bidiane, even in the midst of her subdued indignation, thought of some lines in the Shakespeare that she had just laid down:

Claudine was carrying on a vigorous line of reasoning. She admired Bidiane intensely, and she quietly listened with pleasure to what she called her rocamboles of the olden times, which were Bidiane's tales of Acadien exploits and sufferings. She was a more apt pupil than the dense and silly Mirabelle Marie.

"If I was a mouse I wouldn't like to be killed," she said, presently, going on with her raking; and Bidiane, having made her think, was satisfied.

"Now, Claudine," she said, "you must be tired. Give me your rake, and do you go up to the house and rest."

"Yes, go, Claudine," said Mirabelle Marie, from her height, "you look drug out."

"I am not tired," said Claudine, in French, "and I shall not give my rake to you, Bidiane. You are not used to work."

Bidiane bubbled over into low, rippling laughter. "I delicate,—ah, that is good! Give me your rake, Claude. You go up to the barn now, do you not?"

Claude nodded, and extended a strong hand to assist his wife in sliding to the ground. Then, accompanied by his boys, he jogged slowly after the wagon to the barn, where the oxen would be unyoked, and the grasping pitcher would lift the load in two or three mouthfuls to the mows.

Bidiane threw down her rake and ran to the fence for some raspberries, and while her hands were busy with the red fruit, her bright eyes kept scanning the road. She watched a foot-passenger coming slowly from the station, pausing at the corner, drifting in a leisurely way towards the inn, and finally, after a glance at Mirabelle Marie's conspicuous gown, climbing the fence, and moving deliberately towards her.

"H'm—a snake in the grass," murmured Bidiane, keeping an eye on the new arrival, and presently she, too, made her way towards her aunt and Claudine, who had ceased work and were seated on the hay.

"This is Nannichette," said Mirabelle Marie, somewhat apprehensively, when Bidiane reached them.

"Yes, I know," said the girl, and she nodded stiffly to the woman, who was almost as fat and as easy-going as Mirabelle Marie herself.

Nannichette was half Acadien and half English, and she had married a pure Indian who lived back in the woods near the Sleeping Water Lake. She was not a very desirable acquaintance for Mirabelle Marie, but she was not a positively bad woman, and no one would think of shutting a door against her, although her acquaintance was not positively sought after by the scrupulous Acadiens.

"We was gabbin' about diggin' for gold one day, Nannichette and I," said Mirabelle Marie, insinuatingly. "She knows a heap about good places, and the good time to dig. You tell us, Biddy,—I mean Bidiane,—some of yer yarns about the lake. Mebbe there's some talk of gold in 'em."

Bidiane sat down on the hay. If she talked, it would at least prevent Nannichette from pouring her nonsense into her aunt's ear, so she began. "I have not yet seen this lake of L'Eau Dormante, but I have read of it. Long, long ago, before the English came to this province, and even before the French came, there was an Indian encampment on the shores of this deep, smooth, dark lake. Many canoes shot gaily across its glassy surface, many camp-fires sent up their smoke from among the trees to the clear, blue sky. The encampment was an old, old one. The Indians had occupied it for many winters; they planned to occupy it for many more, but one sweet spring night, when they were dreaming of summer roamings, a band of hostile Indians came slipping behind the tree-trunks. A bright blaze shot up to the clear sky, and the bosom of Sleeping Water looked as if some one had drawn a bloody finger across it. Following this were shrieks and savage yells, and afterward a profound silence. The Indians left, and the shuddering trees grew closer together to hide the traces of the savage invaders—no, the marks of devastation," she said, stopping suddenly and correcting herself, for she had a good memory, and at times was apt to repeat verbatim the words of some of her favorite historians or story-tellers.

"The green running vines, also," she continued, "made haste to spread over the blackened ground, and the leaves fell quietly over the dead bodies and warmly covered them. Years went by, the leaf-mould had gathered thick over the graves of the Indians, and then, on a memorable day, the feast of Sainte-Anne's, the French discovered the lovely, silent Sleeping Water, the gem of the forest, and erected a fort on its banks. The royal flag floated over the trees, a small space of ground was cleared for the planting of corn, and a garden was laid out, where seeds from old France grew and flourished, for no disturbing gales from the Bay ever reached this sanctuary of the wildwood.

"All went merrily as a marriage bell until one winter night, when the bosom of the lake was frosted with ice, and the snow-laden branches of the trees hung heavily earthward. Then, in the hush before morning, a small detachment of men on snowshoes, arrayed in a foreign uniform, and carrying hatchets in their hands—"

"More Injuns!" gasped Mirabelle Marie, clapping her hand to her mouth in lively distress at Bidiane's tragic manner.

"No, no! I didn't say tomahawks," said Bidiane, who started nervously at the interruption; "the hatchets weren't for killing,—they were to cut the branches. These soldiers crept stealthily and painfully through the underbrush, where broken limbs and prickly shrubs stretched out detaining arms to hold them back; but they would not be held, for the lust of murder was in their hearts. When they reached the broad and open lake—"

"You jist said it was frozen," interrupted the irrepressible Mirabelle Marie.

"I beg your pardon,—the ice-sealed sheet of water,—the soldiers threw away their hatchets and unslung their guns, and again a shout of horror went up to the clear vault of heaven. White men slew white men, for the invaders were not Indians, but English soldiers, and there were streaks of crimson on the snow where the French soldiers laid themselves down to die.

"There seemed to be a curse on the lake, and it was deserted for many years, until a band of sorrowing Acadien exiles was forced to take refuge in the half-ruined fort. They summered and wintered there, until they all died of a strange sickness and were buried by one man who, only, survived. He vowed that the lake was haunted, and would never be an abode for human beings; so he came to the shore and built himself a log cabin, that he occupied in fear and trembling until at last the time came when the French were no longer persecuted."

"Agapit LeNoir also says that the lake is haunted," exclaimed Claudine, in excited French. "He hates the little river that comes stealing from it. He likes the Bay, the open Bay. There is no one here that loves the river but Rose à Charlitte."

"But dere is gold dere,—heaps," said the visitor, in English, and her eyes glistened.

"Only foolish people say that," remarked Claudine, decidedly, "and even if there should be gold there, it would be cursed."

"You not think that," said Nannichette, shrinking back.

"Oh, how stupid all this is!" said Bidiane. "Up the Bay I used to hear this talk of gold. You remember, my aunt?"

Mirabelle Marie's shoulders shook with amusement. "Mon jheu, yes, on the stony Dead Man's Point, where there ain't enough earth to fricasser les cailloux" (fricassee the pebbles); "it's all dug up like graveyards. Come on, Nannichette, tell us ag'in of yer fantome."

Nannichette became suddenly shy, and Mirabelle Marie took it upon herself to be spokeswoman. "She was rockin' her baby, when she heard a divil of a noise. The ceiling gapped at her, jist like you open yer mouth, and a fantome voice says—"

"'Dere is gole in Sleepin' Water Lake,'" interrupted Nannichette, hastily. "'Only women shall dig,—men cannot fine.'"

"An' Nannichette was squshed,—she fell ag'in the floor with her baby."

"And then she ran about to see if she could find some women foolish enough to believe this," said Bidiane, with fine youthful disdain.

A slow color crept into Nannichette's brown cheek. "Dere is gole dere," she said, obstinately. "De speerit tell me where to look."

"That was Satan who spoke to you, Nannichette," said Claudine, seriously; "or maybe you had had a little rum. Come now, hadn't you?"

Nannichette scowled, while Mirabelle Marie murmured, with reverent admiration, "I dessay the divil knows where there is lots of gold."

"It drives me frantic to hear you discuss this subject," said Bidiane, suddenly springing to her feet. "Oh, if you knew how ignorant it sounds, how way back in the olden times! What would the people in Paris say if they could hear you? Oh, please, let us talk of something else; let us mention art."

"What's dat?" asked Nannichette, pricking up her ears.

"It is all about music, and writing poetry, and making lovely pictures, and all kinds of elegant things,—it elevates your mind and soul. Don't talk about hateful things. What do you want to live back in the woods for? Why don't you come out to the shore?"

"Dat's why I wan' de gole," said Nannichette, triumphantly. "Of'en I use to hunt for some of Cap'en Kidd's pots."

"Good gracious!" said Bidiane, with an impatient gesture, "how much money do you suppose that man had? They are searching for his treasure all along the coast. I don't believe he ever had a bit. He was a wicked old pirate,—I wouldn't spend his money if I found it—"

Mirabelle Marie and Nannichette surveyed each other's faces with cunning, glittering eyes. There was a secret understanding between them; no speech was necessary, and they contemplated Bidiane as two benevolent wild beasts might survey an innocent and highly cultured lamb who attempted to reason with them.

Bidiane dimly felt her powerlessness, and, accompanied by Claudine, went back to her raking, and left the two sitting on the hay.

While the girl was undressing that night, Claudine tapped at her door. "It is all arranged, Bidiane. They are going to dig."

Bidiane impatiently shook her hanging mass of hair, and stamped her foot on the floor. "They shall not."

"Nannichette did not go away," continued Claudine. "She hung about the stable, and Mirabelle Marie took her up some food. I was feeding the pig, and I overheard whispering. They are to get some women together, and Nannichette will lead them to the place the spirit told her of."

"Oh, the simpleton! She shall not come here again, and my aunt shall not accompany her—but where do they wish to go?"

"To the Sleeping Water Lake."

"Claudine, you know there is no gold there. The Indians had none, the French had none,—where would the poor exiles get it?"

"All this is reasonable, but there are people who are foolish,—always foolish. I tell you, this seeking for gold is like a fever. One catches it from another. I had an uncle who thought there was a treasure hid on his farm; he dug it all over, then he went crazy."

Bidiane's head, that, in the light of her lamp, had turned to a dull red-gold, sank on her breast. "I have it," she said at last, flinging it up, and choking with irrepressible laughter. "Let them go,—we will play them a trick. Nothing else will cure my aunt. Listen,—" and she laid a hand on the shoulder of the young woman confronting her, and earnestly unfolded a primitive plan.

Claudine at once fell in with it. She had never yet disapproved of a suggestion of Bidiane, and after a time she went chuckling to bed.

CHAPTER VII.
GHOSTS BY SLEEPING WATER.

"Which apparition, it seems, was you."

—Tatler.

The next day Claudine's left eyelid trembled in Bidiane's direction.

The girl followed her to the pantry, where she heard, murmured over a pan of milk, "They go to-night, as soon as it is dark,—Mirabelle Marie, Suretta, and Mosée-Délice."

"Very well," said Bidiane, curling her lip, "we will go too."

Accordingly, that evening, when Mirabelle Marie clapped her rakish hat on her head,—for nothing would induce her to wear a handkerchief,—and said that she was going to visit a sick neighbor, Bidiane demurely commended her thoughtfulness, and sent an affecting message to the invalid.

However, the mistress of the inn had no sooner disappeared than her younger helpmeets tied black handkerchiefs on their heads, and slipped out to the yard, each carrying a rolled-up sheet and a paper of pins. With much suppressed laughter they glided up behind the barn, and struck across the fields to the station road. When half-way there, Bidiane felt something damp and cold touch her hand, and, with a start and a slight scream, discovered that her uncle's dog, Bastarache, in that way signified his wish to join the expedition.

"Come, then, good dog," she said, in French, for he was a late acquisition and, having been brought up in the woods, understood no English, "thou, too, shalt be a ghost."

It was a dark, furiously windy night, for the hot gale that had been blowing over the Bay for three days was just about dying away with a fiercer display of energy than before.

The stars were out, but they did not give much light, and Bidiane and Claudine had only to stand a little aside from the road, under a group of spruces, in order to be completely hidden from the three women as they went tugging by. They had met at the corner, and, in no fear of discovery, for the night was most unpleasant and there were few people stirring, they trudged boldly on, screaming neighborhood news at the top of their voices, in order to be heard above the noise of the wind.

Bidiane and Claudine followed them at a safe distance. "Mon Dieu, but Mirabelle Marie's fat legs will ache to-morrow," said Claudine, "she that walks so little."

"If it were an honest errand that she was going on, she would have asked for the horse. As it is, she was ashamed to do so."

The three women fairly galloped over the road to the station, for, at first, both tongues and heels were excited, and even Mirabelle Marie, although she was the only fat one of the party, managed to keep up with the others.

To Claudine, Bidiane, and the dog, the few miles to the station were a mere bagatelle. However, after crossing the railway track, they were obliged to go more slowly, for the three in front had begun to flag. They also had stopped gossiping, and when an occasional wagon approached, they stepped into the bushes beside the road until it had passed by.

The dog, in great wonderment of mind, chafed at the string that Bidiane took from her pocket and fastened around his neck. He scented his mistress on ahead, and did not understand why the two parties might not be amicably united.

A mile beyond the station, the three gold-seekers left the main road and plunged into a rough wood-track that led to the lake. Here the darkness was intense; the trees formed a thick screen overhead, through which only occasional glimpses of a narrow lane of stars could be obtained.

"This is terrible," gasped Bidiane, as her foot struck a root; "lift your feet high, Claudine."

Claudine gave her a hand. She was almost hysterical from listening to the groaning on ahead. "Since the day of my husband's death, I have not laughed so much," she said, winking away the nervous tears in her eyes. "I do not love fun as much as some people, but when I laugh, I laugh hard."

"My aunt will be in bed to-morrow," sighed Bidiane; "what a pity that she is such a goose."

"She is tough," giggled Claudine, "do not disturb yourself. It is you that I fear for."

At last, the black, damp, dark road emerged on a clearing. There stood the Indian's dwelling,—small and yellow, with a fertile garden before it, and a tiny, prosperous orchard at the back.

"You must enter this house some day," whispered Claudine. "Everything shines there, and they are well fixed. Nannichette has a sewing-machine, and a fine cook-stove, and when she does not help her husband make baskets, she sews and bakes."

"Will her husband approve of this expedition?"

"No, no, he must have gone to the shore, or Nannichette would not undertake it,—listen to what Mirabelle Marie says."

The fat woman had sunk exhausted on the doorstep of the yellow house. "Nannichette, I be dèche if I go a step furder, till you gimme checque chouse pour mouiller la langue" (give me something to wet my tongue).

"All right," said Nannichette, in the soft, drawling tones that she had caught from the Indians, and she brought her out a pitcher of milk.

Mirabelle Marie put the pitcher to her lips, and gurgled over the milk a joyful thanksgiving that she had got away from the rough road, and the rougher wind, that raged like a bull; then she said, "Your husband is away?"

"No," said Nannichette, in some embarrassment, "he ain't, but come in."

Mirabelle Marie rose, and with her companions went into the house, while Bidiane and Claudine crept to the windows.

"Dear me, this is the best Indian house that I ever saw," said Bidiane, taking a survey, through the cheap lace curtains, of the sewing-machine, the cupboard of dishes, and the neat tables and chairs inside. Then she glided on in a voyage of discovery around the house, skirting the diminutive bedrooms, where half a dozen children lay snoring in comfortable beds, and finally arriving outside a shed, where a tall, slight Indian was on his knees, planing staves for a tub by the light of a lamp on a bracket above him.

His wife's work lay on the floor. When not suffering from the gold fever, she twisted together the dried strips of maple wood and scented grasses, and made baskets that she sold at a good price.

The Indian did not move an eyelid, but he plainly saw Bidiane and Claudine, and wondered why they were not with the other women, who, in some uneasiness of mind, stood in the doorway, looking at him over each other's shoulders.

After his brief nod and taciturn "Hullo, ladies," his wife said, "We go for walk in woods."

"What for you lie?" he said, in English, for the Micmacs of the Bay are accomplished linguists, and make use of three languages. "You go to dig gold," and he grunted contemptuously.

No one replied to him, and he continued, "Ladies, all religions is good. I cannot say, you go hell 'cause you Catholic, an' I go heaven 'cause I Protestant. All same with God, if you believe your religion. But your priesties not say to dig gold."

He took up the stave that he had laid down, and went on with his work of smoothing it, while the four "ladies," Mirabelle Marie, Suretta, Mosée-Délice, and his wife, appeared to be somewhat ashamed of themselves.

"'Pon my soul an' body, there ain't no harm in diggin' gold," said Mirabelle Marie. "That gives us fun."

"How many you be?" he asked.

"Four," said Nannichette, who was regarding her lord and master with some shyness; for stupid as she was, she recognized the fact that he was the more civilized being, and that the prosperity of their family was largely due to him.

The Indian's liquid eyes glistened for an instant towards the window, where stood Bidiane and Claudine. "Take care, ladies, there be ghosties in the woods."

The four women laughed loudly, but in a shaky manner; then taking each a handful of raspberries, from a huge basketful that Nannichette offered them, and that was destined for the preserve pot on the morrow, they once more plunged into the dark woods.

Bidiane and Claudine restrained the leaping dog, and quietly followed them. The former could not conceal her delight when they came suddenly upon the lake. It lay like a huge, dusky mirror, turned up to the sky with a myriad stars piercing its glassy bosom.

"Stop," murmured Claudine.

The four women had paused ahead of them. They were talking and gesticulating violently, for all conversation was forbidden while digging. One word spoken aloud, and the charm would be broken, the spirit would rush angrily from the spot.

Therefore they were finishing up their ends of talk, and Nannichette was assuring them that she would take them to the exact spot revealed to her in the vision.

Presently they set off in Indian file, Nannichette in front, as the one led by the spirit, and carrying with her a washed and polished spade, that she had brought from her home.

Claudine and Bidiane were careful not to speak, for there was not a word uttered now by the women in front, and the pursuers needed to follow them with extreme caution. On they went, climbing silently over the grassy mounds that were now the only reminders of the old French fort, or stumbling unexpectedly and noisily into the great heap of clam shells, whose contents had been eaten by the hungry exiles of long ago.

At last they stopped. Nannichette stared up at the sky, down at the ground, across the lake on her right, and into the woods on her left, and then pointed to a spot in the grass, and with a magical flourish of the spade began to dig.

Having an Indian husband, she was accustomed to work out-of-doors, and was therefore able to dig for a long time before she became sensible of fatigue, and was obliged mutely to extend the spade to Suretta.

Not so enduring were the other women. Their ancestors had ploughed and reaped, but Acadiennes of the present day rarely work on the farms, unless it is during the haying season. Suretta soon gave out. Mosée-Délice took her place, and Mirabelle Marie hung back until the last.

Bidiane and Claudine withdrew among the trees, stifling their laughter and trying to calm the dog, who had finally reached a state of frenzy at this mysterious separation.

"My unfortunate aunt!" murmured Bidiane; "do let us put an end to this."

Claudine was snickering convulsively. She had begun to array herself in one of the sheets, and was transported with amusement and anticipation.

Meanwhile, doubt and discord had reared their disturbing heads among the members of the digging party. Mirabelle Marie persisted in throwing up the spade too soon, and the other women, regarding her with glowing, eloquent looks, quietly arranged that the honorable agricultural implement, now perverted to so unbecoming a use, should return to her hands with disquieting frequency.

The earth was soft here by the lake, yet it was heavy to lift out, for the hole had now become quite deep. Suddenly, to the horror and anger of Nannichette and the other two women, both of whom were beginning to have mysterious warnings and impressions that they were now on the brink of discovery of one pot of gold, and perhaps two, there was an impatient exclamation from Mirabelle Marie.

"The divil!" she cried, and her voice broke out shrilly in the deathly silence; "Bidiane was right. It ain't no speerit you saw. I'm goin'," and she scrambled out of the hole.

With angry reproaches for her precipitancy and laziness, the other women fell upon her with their tongues. She had given them this long walk to the lake, she had spoiled everything, and, as their furious voices smote the still air, Bidiane, Claudine, and the dog emerged slowly and decently from the heavy gloom behind them like ghosts rising from the lake.

"I will give you a bit of my sheet," Bidiane had said to Bastarache; consequently he stalked beside them like a diminutive bogey in a graceful mantle of white.

"Ah, mon jheu! chesque j'vois?" (what do I see), screamed Suretta, who was the first to catch sight of them. "Ten candles to the Virgin if I get out of this!" and she ran like a startled deer.

With various expressions of terror, the others followed her. They carried with them the appearance of the white ethereal figures, standing against the awful black background of the trees, and as they ran, their shrieks and yells of horror, particularly those from Mirabelle Marie, were so heartrending that Bidiane, in sudden compunction, screamed to her, "Don't you know me, my aunt? It is Bidiane, your niece. Don't be afraid!"

Mirabelle Marie was making so much noise herself that she could scarcely have heard a trumpet sounding in her ears, and fear lent her wings of such extraordinary vigor in flight that she was almost immediately out of sight.

Bidiane turned to the dog, who was tripping and stumbling inside his snowy drapery, and to Claudine, who was shrieking with delight at him.

"Go then, good dog, console your mistress," she said. "Follow those piercing screams that float backward," and she was just about to release him when she was obliged to go to the assistance of Claudine, who had caught her foot, and had fallen to the ground, where she lay overcome by hysterical laughter.

Bidiane had to get water from the lake to dash on her face, and when at last they were ready to proceed on their way, the forest was as still as when they had entered it.

"Bah, I am tired of this joke," said Bidiane. "We have accomplished our object. Let us throw these things in the lake. I am ashamed of them;" and she put a stone inside their white trappings, and hurled them into Sleeping Water, which mutely received and swallowed them.

"Now," she said, impatiently, "let us overtake them. I am afraid lest Mirabelle Marie stumble, she is so heavy."

Claudine, leaning against a tree and mopping her eyes, vowed that it was the best joke that she had ever heard of; then she joined Bidiane, and they hurriedly made their way to the yellow cottage.

It was deserted now, except for the presence of the six children of mixed blood, who were still sleeping like six little dark logs, laid three on a bed.

"We shall overtake them," said Bidiane; "let us hurry."

However, they did not catch up to them on the forest path, nor even on the main road, for when the terrified women had rushed into the presence of the Indian and had besought him to escort them away from the spirit-haunted lake, that amused man, with a cheerful grunt, had taken them back to the shore by a short cut known only to himself.

Therefore, when Bidiane and Claudine arrived breathlessly home, they found Mirabelle Marie there before them. She sat in a rocking-chair in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by a group of sympathizers, who listened breathlessly to her tale of woe, that she related with chattering teeth.

Bidiane ran to her and threw her arms about her neck.

"Mon jheu, Biddy, I've got such a fright. I'm mos' dead. Three ghosties came out of Sleepin' Water, and chased us,—we were back for gold. Suretta an' Mosée-Délice have run home. They're mos' scairt to pieces. Oh, I'll never sin again. I wisht I'd made my Easter duties. I'll go to confession to-morrer."

"It was I, my aunt," cried Bidiane, in distress.

"It was awful," moaned Mirabelle Marie. "I see the speerit of me mother, I see the speerit of me sister, I see the speerit of me leetle lame child."

"It was the dog," exclaimed Bidiane, and, gazing around the kitchen for him, she discovered Agapit sitting quietly in a corner.

"Oh, how do you do?" she said, in some embarrassment; then she again gave her attention to her distressed aunt.

"The dogue,—Biddy, you ain't crazy?"

"Yes, yes, the dog and Claudine and I. See how she is laughing. We heard your plans, we followed you, we dressed in sheets."

"The dogue," reiterated Mirabelle Marie, in blank astonishment, and pointing to Bastarache, who lay under the sofa solemnly winking at her. "Ain't he ben plumped down there ever since supper, Claude?"

"Yes, he's ben there."

"But Claude sleeps in the evenings," urged Bidiane. "I assure you that Bastarache was with us."

"Oh, the dear leetle liar," said Mirabelle Marie, affectionately embracing her. "But I'm glad to git back again to yeh."

"I'm telling the truth," said Bidiane, desperately. "Can't you speak, Claudine?"

"We did go," said Claudine, who was still possessed by a demon of laughter. "We followed you."

"Followed us to Sleepin' Water! You're lyin', too. Sakerjé, it was awful to see me mother and me sister and the leetle dead child," and she trotted both feet wildly on the floor, while her rolling eye sought comfort from Bidiane.

"What shall I do?" said Bidiane. "Mr. LeNoir, you will believe me. I wanted to cure my aunt of her foolishness. We took sheets—"

"Sheets?" repeated Mirabelle. "Whose sheets?"

"Yours, my aunt,—oh, it was very bad in us, but they were old ones; they had holes."

"What did you do with 'em?"

"We threw them in the lake."

"Come, now, look at that, ha, ha," and Mirabelle Marie laughed in a quavering voice. "I can see Claudine throwing sheets in the lake. She would make pickin's of 'em. Don't lie, Bidiane, me girl, or you'll see ghosties. You want to help your poor aunt,—you've made up a nice leetle lie, but don't tell it. See, Jude and Edouard are heatin' some soup. Give some to Agapit LeNoir and take a cup yourself."

Bidiane, with a gesture of utter helplessness, gave up the discussion and sat down beside Agapit.

"You believe me, do you not?" she asked, under cover of the joyful bustle that arose when the two boys began to pass around the soup.

"Yes," he replied, making a wry face over his steaming cup.

"And what do you think of me?" she asked, anxiously.

Agapit, although an ardent Acadien, and one bent on advancing the interests of his countrymen in every way, had yet little patience with the class to which Mirabelle Marie belonged. Apparently kind and forbearing with them, he yet left them severely alone. His was the party of progress, and he had been half amused, half scornful of the efforts that Bidiane had put forth to educate her deficient relative.

"On general principles," he said, coolly, "it is better not to chase a fat aunt through dark woods; yet, in this case, I would say it has done good."

"I did not wish to be heartless," said Bidiane, with tears in her eyes. "I wished to teach her a lesson."

"Well, you have done so. Hear her swear that she will go to mass,—she will, too. The only way to work upon such a nature is through fear."

"I am glad to have her go to mass, but I did not wish her to go in this way."

"Be thankful that you have attained your object," he said, dryly. "Now I must go. I hoped to spend the evening with you, and hear you sing."

"You will come again, soon?" said Bidiane, following him to the door.

"It is a good many miles to come, and a good many to go back, mademoiselle. I have not always the time—and, besides that, I have soon to go to Halifax on business."

"Well, I thank you for keeping your promise to come," said Bidiane, humbly, and with gratitude. She was completely unnerved by the events of the evening, and was in no humor to find fault.

Agapit clapped his hat firmly on his head as a gust of wind whirled across the yard and tried to take it from him.

"We are always glad to see you here," said Bidiane, wistfully, as she watched him step across to the picket fence, where his white horse shone through the darkness; "though I suppose you have pleasant company in Weymouth. I have been introduced to some nice English girls from there."

"Yes, there are nice ones," he said. "I should like to see more of them, but I am usually busy in the afternoons and evenings."

"Do not work too hard,—that is a mistake. One must enjoy life a little."

He gathered up the reins in his hands and paused a minute before he stepped into the buggy. "I suppose I seem very old to you."

She hesitated for an instant, and the wind dying down a little seemed to take the words from her lips and softly breathe them against his dark, quiet face. "Not so very old,—not as old as you did at first. If I were as old as you, I should not do such silly things."

He stared solemnly at her wind-blown figure swaying lightly to and fro on the gravel, and at the little hands put up to keep her dishevelled hair from her eyes and cheeks, which were both glowing from her hurried scamper home. "Are you really worried because you played this trick on your aunt?"

"Yes, terribly, she has been like a mother to me. I would be ashamed for Mr. Nimmo to know."

"And will you lie awake to-night and vex yourself about it?"

"Oh, yes, yes,—how can you tell? Perhaps you also have troubles."

Agapit laughed in sudden and genuine amusement. "Mademoiselle, my cousin, let me say something to you that you may perhaps remember when you are older. It is this: you have at present about as much comprehension and appreciation of real heart trouble, and of mental struggles that tear one first this way, then that way,—you have about as much understanding of them as has that kitten sheltering itself behind you."

Bidiane quietly stowed away this remark among the somewhat heterogeneous furniture of her mind; then she said, "I feel quite old when I talk to my aunt and to Claudine."

"You are certainly ahead of them in some mental experiences, but you are not yet up to some other people."

"I am not up to Madame de Forêt," she said, gently, "nor to you. I feel sure now that you have some troubles."

"And what do you imagine they are?"

"I imagine that they are things that you will get over," she said, with spirit. "You are not a coward."

He smiled, and softly bade her good night.

"Good night, mon cousin," she said, gravely, and taking the crying kitten in her arms, she put her head on one side and listened until the sound of the carriage wheels grew faint in the distance.