Rose A Charlitte Part 8

"No, sir, in a cross-spittal. He nusses sick people, and gets two dollars a day."

"Oh, indeed."

"Do you come from Bostons?" asked the old man.

"Yes, I do."

"And do you know my daughter?"

"What is her name?"

The Acadien reflected for some time, then said it was MacCraw, whereupon Vesper a.s.sured him that he had never had the pleasure of meeting her.

"Is your trade an easy one?" asked the old man, wistfully.

"No; very hard."

"You are then a farmer."

"No; I wish I were. My trade is taking care of my health."

The Acadien examined him from head to foot. "Your face is beautifuller than a woman's, but you are poorly built."

Vesper drew up his straight and slender figure. He was not surprised that it did not come up to the Acadien's standard of manly beauty.

"Let us shake hands lest we never meet again," said the old man, so gently, so kindly, and with so much benevolence, that Vesper responded, warmly, "I hope to see you some other time."

"Perhaps you will call. We are but poor, yet if it would please you--"

"I shall be most happy. Where do you live?"

"Near the low down brook, way off there. Demand Antoine a Joe Rimbaut,"

and, smiling and nodding farewell, the old man moved on.

"A good heart," said Vesper, looking after him.

"Caw, caw," said a solemn voice at his elbow.

He turned around. One of the blackest of crows sat on a garden fence that surrounded a neat pink cottage. The cottage was itself smothered in lilacs, whose fragrant blossoms were in their prime, although the Boston lilacs had long since faded and died.

"Do not be afraid, sir," said a woman in the inevitable handkerchief, who jumped up from a flower bed that she was weeding, "he is quite tame."

"_Un corbeau apprivoise_" (a tame crow), said Vesper, lifting his cap.

"_Un corbeau prive_, we say," she replied, shyly. "You speak the good French, like the priests out of France."

She was not a very young woman, nor was she very pretty, but she was delightfully modest and retiring in her manner, and Vesper, leaning against the fence, a.s.sured her that he feared the Acadiens were lacking in a proper appreciation of their ability to speak their own language.

After a time he looked over the fields behind her cottage, and asked the name of a church crowning a hill in the distance.

"It is the Saulnierville church," she replied, "but you must not walk so far. You will stay to dinner?"

While Vesper was politely declining her invitation, a Frenchman with a long, pointed nose, and bright, sharp eyes, came around the corner of the house.

"He is my husband," said the woman. "Edouard, this gentleman speaks the good French."

The Acadien warmly seconded the invitation of his wife that Vesper should stay to dinner, but he escaped from them with smiling thanks and a promise to come another day.

"They never saw me before, and they asked me to stay to dinner. That is true hospitality,--they have not been infected. I will make my way back to the inn, and interview that sulky beggar."

CHAPTER VI.

VESPER SUGGESTS AN EXPLANATION.

"Glad of a quarrel straight I clap the door; Sir, let me see you and your works no more."

POPE.

At twelve o'clock Mrs. Rose a Charlitte was standing in her cold pantry deftly putting a cap of icing on a rich rounded loaf of cake, when she heard a question asked, in Vesper's smooth neutral tones, "Where is madame?"

She stepped into the kitchen, and found that he was interrogating her servant Celina.

"I should like to speak to that young man I saw this morning," he said, when he saw her.

"He has gone out, monsieur," she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"Which is his room?"

"The one by the smoking-room," she answered, with a deep blush.

Vesper's white teeth gleamed through his dark mustache, and, seeing that he was laughing at her, she grew confused, and hung her head.

"Can I get to it by this staircase?" asked Vesper, exposing her petty deceit. "I think I can by going up to the roof, and dropping down."

Mrs. Rose lifted her head long enough to flash him a scrutinizing glance. Then, becoming sensible of the determination of purpose under his indifference of manner, she said, in scarcely audible tones, "I will show you."

"I have only a simple question to ask him," said Vesper, rea.s.suringly, as he followed her towards the staircase.

"Agapit is quick like lightning," she said, over her shoulder, "but his heart is good. He helps to keep our grandmother, who spends her days in bed."

"That is exemplary. I would be the last one to hurt the feelings of the prop of an aged person," murmured Vesper.

Rose a Charlitte was not satisfied. She unwillingly mounted the stairs, and pointed out the door of her cousin's room, then withdrew to the next one, and listened anxiously in case there might be some disturbance between the young men. There was none; so, after a time, she went down-stairs.