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Hosmer looked after the young man, and thought of him for a moment: of his soft voice and gentle manner perplexed that he should be the same who had expressed in confidence the single regret that he had not been able to kill Joçint more than once. Grégoire went directly to the house, and approached that end of the veranda on which Melicent’s room opened.
“Oh, all sort o’ ways,” he admitted, with a certain shy brazenness; determined to go through with the ordeal. “Dey ’low you wants to cut de little gals’ plaits off, an’ sich I don’ know me.” “Do you suppose, Nathan,” said Thérèse attempting but poorly to hide her amusement at Melicent’s look of dismay, “that Miss Hosmer would bother herself with darkies’ plaits?” “Dat’s w’at I tink m’sef.
It was Melicent’s delighted intention to keep house here. And she foresaw no obstacle in the way of procuring the needed domestic aid in a place which was clearly swarming with idle women and children. “Got a cook yet, Mel?” was Hosmer’s daily enquiry on returning home, to which Melicent was as often forced to admit that she had no cook, but was not without abundant hope of procuring one.
“Going to help Grégoire feed the mules,” she called back looking over her shoulder; the sinking sun lighting her handsome mischievous face. Thérèse proceeded to arrange the flowers with some regard to graceful symmetry; and Fanny did not regain her talkative spirit that Melicent’s coming had put to flight, but sat looking silent and listlessly into the distance.
She did not forget that Hosmer had told her “The lady knows why I have come” and she resented that knowledge which Thérèse possessed of her past intimate married life. Melicent’s attentions did not last in their ultra-effusiveness, but she found Fanny less objectionable since removed from her St.
He was more occupied than he liked during those busy days of harvesting and ginning, that left him only brief and snatched intervals of Melicent’s society. If he could have rested in the comfort of being sure of her, such moments of separation would have had their compensation in reflective anticipation.
She knew at once that the mill was burning, and it was the affair of a moment with her to spring from her bed and don slippers and wrapper. She knocked on Melicent’s door to acquaint her with the startling news; then hurried out into the back yard and rang the plantation bell. Next she was at the cottage rousing Hosmer.
“I am taking extra pains with it,” he answered, looking complacently at his handiwork and smoothing down the glossy feathers with the ends of his withered old fingers. “I thought the American lady down at the house might want to buy it.” Thérèse could safely assure him of Melicent’s willingness to seize on the trophy.
“To be sure I do,” said Hosmer, relying on a knowledge lent him by previous similar experiences, and taking in the clinging artistic drapery that enfolded her tall spare figure, “you’ve a new gown on. I didn’t think to mention it, but I noticed it all the same.” This admission of a discernment that he had failed to make evident, aroused Melicent’s uncontrolled mirth.
Melicent’s emphasis of speech was a thing so recurrent, so singularly her own, as to startle an unaccustomed hearer. “That opinion might carry some weight, Mel, if I hadn’t heard it scores of times from you, and of as many different women.” “Indeed you have not. Mrs. Lafirme is exceptional.
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