Bernard Carrick looked at his wife in sheer amazement.
"Hotel! Well, there are only two or three taverns good enough for traders, and that ilk, who don't mind a roystering crew, gaming, and drinking. If it was government business, he might be taken in at the Fort. Why, what can we do? And a man. You see, he is used to the habits of civilized life, and we have had no time to fall into the traces. The Lindsays are in their new house, but I couldn't ask them to take in our guest."
"And we;" Barbe hesitated, then said laughingly, "we shall have to enlarge our borders. Sometime the boy will want a room."
Bernard dropped into grandfather's chair and considered. He had been about the world enough to know the place would look rather rough to a person from one of the chief cities. Somehow, they were a little different. There were pieces of fine old furniture that had come from France, then their ways were rather more refined. It would be the proper thing to take him in. And he would be here in about a week.
Mrs. Bradin agreed on that point. Truth to tell, she was anxious to see this M. de Ronville, whose father had been her father's boyhood's companion.
"Why, you could give him Dilly's room, and she could go over to Norry's," she said as they were discussing the next day what was to be done. "It is a good thing we brought down that old bedstead, though Dilly hated it so."
Dilly had outgrown her little pallet, though at first she declared the high posts were the little brown men grown into giants, who would carry her away. But when grandmere exhumed some faded silk hangings where the roses were of a creamy pink, and cupids with wings were flying about, she was soon reconciled. Then Grandfather Bradin had made her a chest of drawers and two chairs that looked as though they might have been imported.
"And I can fix a bed in the attic for the man, so we will have it all running smoothly."
"You are a great comfort," said Bernard to his mother-in-law.
The post now came every week. Even the busy folks went to meet it for the sake of the newspapers and the occasional letters, though those mostly went to the Fort. Sometimes a few emigrants had joined the train. For now there seemed to have broken out a fever for adventure, for founding new settlements, although in some places the Indians were still troublesome.