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In the mornings Tit'Be jumped out of bed long before daylight to see if the great sticks of birch had done their duty and burned all night; should, unluckily, the fire be out he lost no time in rekindling it with birch-bark and cypress branches, placed heavier pieces on the mounting flame, and ran back to snuggle under the brown woollen blankets and patchwork quilt till the comforting warmth once more filled the house.
"The newspaper that spoke of this medicine," Eutrope Gagnon went on, "put it that whenever a person falls sick and is in pain it is always the kidneys; and for trouble in the kidneys these pills here are first-rate. That is what the paper said, and my brother as well." "Even if they are not for this very sickness," said Tit'Be deferentially, "they are a remedy all the same."
"Hail Mary, full of grace ..." Soon Tit'Be jumped from bed to put wood upon the fire; an impulse of shyness caused Maria to turn away and hide her rosary under the coverlet as she continued to pray.
Throughout the afternoon she must knit the woollen garment designed for her father as a New Year's gift, and though the faithful repetition ceased not, the work of her fingers was something of a distraction and a delay; then came the long preparations for supper, and finally Tit'Be brought his mittens to be mended, so all this time the Ayes made slow and impeded progress, like some devout procession brought to halt by secular interruption.
Whenever the heat failed, mother Chapdelaine might be heard saying anxiously. "Don't let the fire out, children." Whereupon Maria, Tit'Be or Telesphore would open the little door, glance in and hasten to the pile of wood.
The married couple had given their first children, Esdras and Maria, fine, high-sounding, sonorous names; but they had apparently wearied of these solemnities, for the next two children never beard their real names pronounced; always had they been called by the affectionate diminutives of childhood, Da'Be and Tit'Be.
The women were alone in the house with Tit'Be and the children, the father having gone for seed-grain to Honfleur whence he would only return on the morrow. Telesphore and Alma Rose were asleep, Tit'Be was having a last pipe before the family prayer, when Chien barked several times and got up to sniff at the closed door. Then two light taps were heard.
In her maidenly simplicity she feared to show herself too bold, and very resolutely she kept her glance lowered, like the young girls with richer parents who return from the convents in Chicoutimi trained to look on the world with a superhuman demureness. Scarcely was gone when the two women and Tit'Be knelt for the evening prayer.
Little Alma Rose, asleep on her father's knee, was undressed and put to bed; Telesphore followed; Tit'Be arose in turn, stretched himself, and fined the stove with green birch logs; the father made a last trip to the stable and came back running, saying that the cold was increasing. Soon all had retired, save Maria. "You won't forget to put out the lamp?" "No, father."
"Only you wait a few months ... When the boys are back from the woods we shall set to work, they two, Tit'Be, and I, and presently we shall have our land cleared. With four good men ax in hand and not afraid of work things will go quickly, even in the hard timber. Two years from now there will be grain harvested, and pasturage that will support a good herd of cattle.
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