A Little Girl in Old Detroit

by Amanda M. Douglas

Madame De Ber was very gracious, and both Rose and Marie were friendly enough. But Madame flung out one little arrow that missed its mark.

"Your old lover soon consoled himself it seems. It is said he married a handsome Indian girl up at the Strait. I dare say he was pledged to her."

"Yes. It was Owaissa who freed me from captivity. She came down to Bois Blanc and heard the story and sent me away in her own canoe with her favorite servant. Louis Marsac was up at St. Ignace getting a priest while she waited. I cannot think he was at all honest in proposing marriage to me when another had the right. But there was a grand time it was said, and they were very happy."

Madame stared. "It was a good thing for you that you did not care for him. I had a distrust for him. He was too handsome. And then he believed nothing and laughed at religion. But the Marsacs are going to be very rich it is said. You did not see them married?"

"Oh, no." Jeanne laughed with a bitterness she had not meant to put into her voice. "He was away when Owaissa came to me and heard my plight. And then there was need of haste. I had to go at once, and it would not have been pleasant even if I could have waited."

"No, no. Men are much given to make love to young girls who have no one to look after them. They think nothing of it."

"So it was fortunate that it was distasteful to me."

Jeanne had a girl's pride in wanting this woman to understand that she was in no wise hurt by Marsac's recreancy. Then she added, "The girl was beautiful as Indian girls go, and it seems a most excellent marriage. She will be fond of that wild northern country. I could not be content in it."

Jeanne felt that she was curiously changed, though sometimes she longed passionately for the wild little girl who had been ready for every kind of sport and pleasure. But the children with whom she had played were grown now, boys great strapping fellows with manners both coarse and shy, going to work at various businesses, and the girls had lovers or husbands,—they married early then. So she seemed left alone. She did not care for their chatter nor their babies of which they seemed so proud.

So she kept her house and nursed Pani back to some semblance of her former self. But often it was a touch of the childhood of old age, and she rambled about those she had known, the De Longueils and Bellestres, and the night Jeanne had been left in her arms.