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The little girl made a playhouse in one corner of the cabin and stood up sticks for Indian children to whom she told over what had been taught her. They blundered just as she had done, but she had a curious patience with them that would have touched one's heart. "What nonsense!" Mère Dubray would exclaim.
"Nay, nay, thou art not well enough to run away from me, little one. I will send word down to the cabin of Mère Dubray. She has her husband, whom she has not seen for two years, and will care naught for thee. Women are all alike when a man's love is proffered," and she gave a gay little laugh. "My head feels light and swims around as if it was on the rapid river. But I must go home, I "
When they were out of the narrow passageway she said, "Now let us have a race. I am glad Mère Dubray is there no longer, are you not? But what a funny pile of children!" They had their race, and a climb, and on the gallery they found miladi looking for them, and they told over their adventure. "Yes," she said smilingly.
She ran gayly one day, she went up the stream in the canoe with Destournier and was full of merriment. But the next day she felt strangely languid. Most of the men had gone hunting. Mère Dubray was piling away some of the heaviest furs. "Thou wilt roast there in the chimney corner," she said rather sharply. "Get thee out of doors in the fresh air again.
Mère Dubray was very busy with her own affairs, and her husband was as exigent as any new lover. Her cookery appealed to him in the most important place, his stomach. "And to think I have done without thee these two years," he would moan. When she saw her, the little girl had a strange fear that at the last moment they would seize her and take her up to the fur country with them.
She was proud of her garden, as well, and pleased to have visitors inspect it. Indeed the young man thought he had seen no neater gardens in sunny France. "Mère Dubray," he said, "convert this young man into an emigrant. I am a little sorry to have him begin in the autumn when the summer is so much more enticing. But if the worst is taken first there is hope for better to cheer the heart."
And in her last moments she confessed the child was not her own, but that of a friend, and before she told the whole story a convulsion seized her. Jean was very angry and declared the child was nothing to him. He brought it to Mère Dubray and then went off to the fur regions, from whence the tidings came that he had married an Indian woman and taken a post station.
I can always eat now, and a while ago I could not bear the smell of food." "You were so thin and white. And Mère Dubray thought every morning you would be dead. You wouldn't like to be put in the ground, would you?" "Oh, no, no!" shivering. "Nor burned. Then you go to ashes and only the bones are left." "That is horrid, too. Burning hurts. I have burned my fingers with coals."
At the mention of books Rose had glanced up eagerly at Destournier. Then there was a sudden rush without. Both Indian boys were racing and yelling in their broken language. "They are coming; they are coming! The canoes are in," and both began to caper about. Mère Dubray took down a leathern thong and laid it about them; but they were like eels and glided out of her reach.
Charles, and visit the islands, for besides Pani the Mère had another Indian boy the Sieur had sent her, so there would be no gardening for the small, white Rose. And he had made a new friend for her, who was waiting anxiously to see her. Presently she went soundly asleep in the fragrant air, and he carried her back and laid her on the bed. Mère Dubray came and looked at her and shook her head.
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