Part 26 (1/2)
She looked helplessly at her own garments, and then colored vividly, thinking if this young man were not here she would gather a lapful. Why should she have this strange consciousness?
Nothing of service met her gaze, and she drew her brow into a little frown. It gave her a curious piquancy, and interested him. She had spirit.
”Oh, I know! What a dullard I was. Those great flaring dockweeds do not grow about here. But something else will answer.”
She ran over to an old birch tree and tore off great pieces of bark, then gathering some half-dried gra.s.ses, began to fas.h.i.+on a sort of pail, bending up the edges to make the bottom. She was so quick and deft, it was a pleasure to watch her. Then she filled it with the choicest of the fruit. There was still some left.
”We might have another feast,” he suggested.
”I have feasted sufficiently. Let us make another basket. It can be smaller than this.”
It was very pleasant to dally there in the woods. He was unnecessarily awkward, that the slim fingers might touch his, and her little laugh was charming.
”Allow me to carry the larger one,” and he reached for it.
”No, no. You are weighted in the pockets. And these are choice. I will have no one take part in them.”
She drew herself aside and began to march with a graceful, vigorous step, her head proudly poised on the arching neck that, bared to summer suns and wind, yet was always white. The delicious little hollow, where the collar bones met, was formed to lay kisses in, and be filled with warm, throbbing lips. Yes, he was right in coming back to Quebec, she was more enchanting than the glimpse of her had been.
”Why do you look at me so?” she cried, with a kind of quick repulsion she did not understand, but it angered her.
”It is the homage we pay to beauty, Mam'selle.”
”Your sister is beautiful,” she said, with an abruptness that was almost anger.
”So thought the Sieur de Champlain, and I believe she was not offended at it.”
”I am not like that,” she declared decisively. ”She was fair as a lily, and Father Jamay said she had the face of a saint.”
”I am not so partial to saints myself. And my brother-in-law would have been better satisfied, I do believe, if she had been less saintly.”
She looked a trifle puzzled.
”It is long since you left France,” she commented irrelevantly.
”I was not seventeen. It is six years ago.”
”Do you mean to go back?”
”Sometime, Mam'selle. Would you like to go?”
”No,” she said decidedly.
”But why not?” amused.
”Because I like Quebec.”
”It is a wretched wilderness of a place.”
”Madame Destournier talks about France. Why, if Paris is all gayety and pleasure, are people put in dungeons, and then to death? And there seem so many rulers. They are not always good to the Sieur, either.”