It was true enough. When we arrived at a time when we would have liked a Mayflower or a Holland Mynheer, Virginia Cavaliers, or Spanish Dons, behold we had no ancestry that had risen out of the foam or been transplanted by fabled Deity. Only sturdy, courageous, hard-working pioneers who had seen an objective point and seized it and dreamed of being a connecting link between the East and the West and then worked mightily to make the dream come true.
We rambled about the old places. The Ouilmette cabin had fallen into ruins, but the memory of the trader and his Indian wife still hung about it. We went over to the fort, that began to show signs of neglect. Here were the unmarked graves of those who had perished and we trod softly. Grass and a few wild flowers were springing up over them. Mrs. Heald and her beautiful horse stirred Sophie as it had me.
"If you came out here and stayed until midnight, don't you suppose you could see her go riding down to escape the Indians?"
I shuddered. "I don't believe I should want to be here at midnight," I said, rather awestricken.
"Wouldn't you try a charm to see your future husband?" she queried.
"I don't imagine I shall ever have a husband," I said, with a curious kind of assurance about the future. I seemed to belong altogether to father.
"Oh, I wouldn't stay single for anything," she cried, "and here, where you don't need to have a dot, it must be easy to get a husband."
"A dot?" I repeated in perplexity.
"Why, yes. In France, Ma mère had to have some money beside a string of gold beads and two rings and some bed and table linen. Papa's mother would hardly consent then. You have to get the permission of the parents on both sides, and then you have two marriages."
"How queer! Why, it is almost like buying your wife," I said, and I felt my eyes open wide.