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We both used to work in the garden. Mère Dubray was always knitting and cooking." Pani emerged again. "Yes, let us go," and Rose led the way, but she would have liked to throw herself down among the babies, who seemed all arms and legs. "Can you read?" the boy said suddenly. "We have a book and I can read quite well. My father knows how.
We are just coming to know there are other sides to the world. Ah, here is Mère Dubray." The child glanced from one woman to the other. She saw the same difference as there was between the workmen and the few of the better class. Was it knowledge such as M'sieu Ralph had? And the good-hearted home-making Mère scouted learning for women. Their business was cooking and keeping the house.
The ladies over yonder talk of them because it is a fashion, but when they ride through the parks and woods they want a train of admirers. And with you it is pure love. Could you love any one as you do nature? Was any one ever so good to you that you could fall down at their feet and worship them? Surely you do not love Madame Dubray?" "M'sieu Ralph has been very kind.
A few luxuries had been brought thither, but the mother government had a feeling that the colonists ought mostly to provide for themselves, and was often indifferent to the necessary demands. Mère Dubray went out to the kitchen and began to prepare supper. There was a great stone chimney with a bench at each side, and for a fireplace two flat stones that would be filled in with chunks of wood.
He wanted to see the ships. And Madame Dubray whipped him well, so that score is settled," with a sound of justice well-paid for in her voice. "We will see" nodding and laughing. "Then can I tell him?" "The elders had better do that. But there will be room enough in Quebec for him and us, I fancy," returned miladi. Rose ran away. Pani was waiting out on the gallery.
Which to take puzzled her. "I might try first one and then the other," she ruminated. "I would get the good of both. And they might not mix well." She boiled some water and poured it over the herbs. It diffused a bitter, but not unpleasant flavor. Then she put it out of doors to cool. Rose was sleeping heavily, but her eyes were half open and it startled Mère Dubray.
The joy was so new, so unexpected, she had no words for it. Lalotte Dubray had had the gala day of her life. Her peasant wedding had been simple enough.
And no one had given up the passage to India. Lying westward was a great river, and what was beyond that no one knew. It was the province of man to find out. It was a dull life for a little girl in the winter. Rose almost longed for the garden, even if weeds did grow apace. In the old country Mère Dubray had spun flax and wool, here there was none to spin.
One night and one day they gave her up. She lay white and silent and Mère Dubray brought out a white muslin dress and ironed it up, much troubled to know whether she had a right to Christian burial or not. And then she opened her eyes with their olden light and began to ask in a weak voice what happened to her yesterday, and found her last remembrance was six weeks agone.
"Ah, ha! little truant!" cried Mère Dubray, with a sharp glance at the child, "where hast thou been all the afternoon, while weeds have been growing apace?" "She has been playing guide to a stranger," explained Destournier, "and I have found her most interesting. It has been time well spent." Mère Dubray smiled. She always felt honored by the encomiums of M. de Champlain.
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