"You can rest in bed."
"I want to stay here a little while longer. Do not mind me, but go to bed yourself."
The voice was tender, persuasive, but Pani did not stir. Now and then she felt uncertain of the child.
"Was it not a happy day to you, ma fille?"
"Yes," with soft brevity.
Had it been happy? At different times during the past two years a curious something, like a great wave, had swept over her, bearing her away, yet slowly she seemed to float back. Only it was never quite the same—the shores, the woods, the birds, the squirrels, the deer that came and looked at her with unafraid eyes, impressed her with some new, inexplicable emotion. What meaning was behind them?
But to-night she could not go back. She had passed the unknown boundary. Her limited knowledge could not understand the unfolding, the budding of womanhood, whose next change was blossoming. It had been a day of varied emotions. If she could have run up the hillside with no curious eyes upon her, sung with the birds, gathered great handfuls of daisies and bell flowers, tumbled up the pink and yellow fungus that grew around the tree roots, studied the bits of crisp moss that stood up like sentinels, with their red caps, and if you trod on them bristled up again, or if she could have climbed the trees and swung from branch to branch in the wavering flecks of sunshine as she did only such a little while ago, all would have been well. What was it restrained her? Was it the throng of people? She had enjoyed startling them with a kind of bravado. That was childhood. Ah, yes. Everybody grew up, and these wild antics no longer pleased. Oh, could she not go back and have it all over again?
She had danced and laughed. Pierre had tried to keep her a good deal to himself, but she had been elusive as a golden mote dancing up and down. She seemed to understand what this sense of appropriating meant, and she did not like it.
And then Martin Lavosse had been curious as well. Rose and he were not betrothed, and Rose was like a gay humming bird, sipping pleasure and then away. Madame De Ber had certainly grown less strict. But Martin was still very young and poor, and Rose could do better with her pretty face. Like a shrewd, experienced person she offered no opposition that would be like a breeze to a smoldering flame. There was Edouard Loisel, the notary's nephew, and even if he was one of the best fiddlers in town, he had a head for business as well, and was a shrewd trader. M. Loisel had no children of his own and only these two nephews, and if Edouard fancied Rose before Martin was ready to speak—so the mother had a blind eye for Rose's pretty coquetries in that direction; but Rose did not like to have Martin quite so devoted to any other girl as he seemed to be to Jeanne.
Jeanne had not liked it at all. She had been good friends and comrades with the boys, but now they were grown and had curious ideas of holding one's hand and looking into one's eyes that intensified the new feeling penetrating every pulse. If only she might run away somewhere. If Pani were not so old they would go to the other side of the mountain and build a hut and live together there. She did not believe the Indians would molest them. Anything to get away from this strange burthen pressing down upon her that she knew not was womanhood, and be free once more.