A Little Girl in Old Detroit Part 14

Jeanne stood up suddenly. "It is Martin Lavosse," she said. "You danced with him. He is so gay. O Marie!" and her face was alight.

"No, it is not Martin. I would not mind if it were. But he is so young, only eighteen."

"You are young, too."

Marie sighed again. "You have not seen him. It is Antoine Beeson. He is a boat builder, and has been buying some of the newly surveyed land down at the southern end. Father has known him quite a long while. His sister has married and gone to Frenchtown. He is lonely and wants a wife."

"But there are many girls looking for husbands," hesitated Jeanne, not knowing whether to approve or oppose; and Marie's husband was such a new idea.

"So father says. And we have five girls, you know. Rose is as tall as I and has a prettier face and dances like a sprite. And there are so many of the fur hunters and traders who drink and spend their money, and sometimes beat their wives. Margot Beeson picked out a wife for him, but he said she was too old. It was Lise Moet."

Jeanne laughed. "I should not want to live with her, her voice goes through your head like a knife. She is little Jacques' aunt and the children are all afraid of her. How old is Antoine?"

"Twenty-eight!" in a low, protesting tone.

"Just twice as old as you!" said Jeanne with a little calculation.

"Yes, I can't help but think of it. And when I am thirty he will be an old man sixty years old, bent down and wrinkled and cross, maybe."

"O no, Marie," cried Jeanne, eagerly. "It is not that way one reckons.

Everything does not double up so fast. He is fourteen years older than you, and when you are thirty he can only be fourteen years older than you. Count up on your ten fingers--that makes forty, and four more, he will be forty-four."

Marie's mouth and eyes opened in surprise. "Are you quite sure?" with an indrawn breath.

"O yes, sure as that the river runs to the lake. It is what they teach at school. And though it is a great trouble to make yourself remember, and you wonder what it is all about, then at other times you can use the knowledge and are happy and glad over it. There are so many queer things," smiling a little. "And they are not in the catechism or the prayers. The sisters shake their heads over them."

"But can they be quite right?" asked Marie in a kind of awesome tone.

"Why they seem right for the men to know," laughed Jeanne. "How else could they be bartering and counting money? And it is said that Madame Ganeau goes over her husband's books every week since they found Jules Froment was a thief, and kept wrong accounts, putting the money in his own pocket."

Jeanne raised her voice triumphantly.

"Oh, here they are!" cried Cecile followed by a string of girls. "And look, they have found a harvest, their pails are almost full. You mean, selfish things!"

"Why you had the same right to be hunting everywhere," declared Jeanne stoutly. "We found a good place and we picked--that is all there is of it."

"But you might have called us."

Jeanne laughed in a tantalizing manner.

"O Jeanne Angelot, you think yourself some great things because you live inside the stockade and go to a school where they teach all manner of lies to the children. Your place is out in some Indian wigwam. You're half Indian, anyhow."

"Look at us!" Jeanne made a sudden bound and placed herself beside Cecile, whose complexion was swarthy, her hair straight, black, and rather coa.r.s.e, and her dark eyes had a yellowish tinge, even to the whites. "Perhaps I am the descendant of some Indian princess--I should be proud of it, for the Indians once held all this great new world; and the French and English could not hold it."

There was a t.i.tter among the girls. Never had Jeanne looked prouder or handsomer, and Cecile's broad nose distended with anger while her lips were purple. She was larger but she did not dare attack Jeanne, for she knew the nature and the prowess of the tiger cat.

"Let us go home; it gets late," cried one of the girls, turning her companion about.

"O Jeanne," whispered Marie, "how splendid you are! No husband would ever dare beat you."

"I should tear out his eyes if he did."

CHAPTER VII.

LOVERS AND LOVERS.

There were days when Jeanne Angelot thought she should smother in the stuffy school, and the din of the voices went through her head like the rushing noise of a whirlwind. She had stolen out of the room once or twice and had not been called to an account for it. Then one day she saw a boy whipped severely for the same thing. Children were so often beaten in those days, and yet the French habitans were very fond of their offspring.

Jeanne lingered after the children made their clumsy bows and shuffled out.

"Well, what is it?" asked the gruff master.

"Monsieur, you whipped the Dorien boy for running away from school."

"Yes, and I'll do it again. I'll break up the bad practice. Their parents send them to school. They do a mean, dishonest thing and then they lie about it. Don't come sniveling to me about Dorien."

"Monsieur, I was not going to snivel for anybody. You were right to keep your word. If you had promised a holiday and not given it to us we should have felt that you were mean and not of your word. So what is right for one side is right for the other."

He looked over the tops of his gla.s.ses, and he made deep wrinkles in his forehead to do it. His eyes were keen and sharp and disconcerted Jeanne a little.

"Upon my word!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Jeanne drew a long breath and was almost afraid to go on with her confession. Only she should not feel clean inside until she had uttered it.

"There'd be no trouble teaching school if the pupils could see that.

There'd be little trouble in the world if the people could see it. It is the good on my side, the bad shoved off on yours. Who taught you such a sense of fairness, of honesty?"

If he could have gotten his grim face into smiling lines he would have done it. As it was it softened.

"Monsieur, I wanted to tell you that I had not been fair. I ran out of school the second day. It was like daggers going through my head and there were stars before my eyes and such a ringing in my ears! So I ran out of doors, clear out to the woods and stayed there up in a high tree where the birds sang to me and the wind made music among the leaves and one could almost look through the blue sky where the white boats went sailing. I thought I would not come to school any more."

"Well--you did though." He was trying to think who this strange child was.

"You see I had promised. And I wanted to learn English and many other things that are not down in the prayers and counting beads. Pani said it was wrong. So I came back. You did not know I had run away, Monsieur."

"No, but there was no rule then. I should have been glad if half of them had run away."

He gave a chuckle and a funny gleam shone out of his eye, and there was a curl in his lip as if the amus.e.m.e.nt could not get out.

Jeanne wanted to smile. She should never be afraid of him again.

"And there was another time--"

"How many more?"