"I like you," she said, with frank earnestness.
"Then I shall come to see you often. This is such a queer place with no ready-made houses and really nothing but log huts or those made of rough slabs. I wonder now how I had the courage to come. But I could not be separated from my dear husband. And when he makes his fortune we shall go back to our dearly beloved France."
The child smiled. The story had no embarrassment for her—Catherine had brought her from France and she had never called her mother until on shipboard. Back of it was vague and misty, though Catherine was in it all. But this beautiful woman with her soft voice, different from anything she had ever heard—why, she liked her already almost as much as M'sieu Ralph.
"And you have been ill a long while?"
"It seemed only a day when I first woke up. Then the snow was on the ground. I was so cold. I wanted to go to sleep on the chimney seat and Mère would not let me. And now everything is in bloom and the garden is planted and the sun shines in very gladness. I shall never like winter again," and she shuddered.
"Are the winters so dreadful?" she inquired of Destournier.
"I never knew anything like it. I can't understand why the Sieur de Champlain should want to found a city here when the country south is so much more congenial. Although this is the key to the North, as he says. And there is a north to the continent over there."
"You think there are fortunes to be made?"
"For those who come to make them. But the mother country will squeeze hard. We have not found the gold and silver yet. But after all, trade is your best pioneer. And this is an era of exploring, of fame, rather than money-getting. We are just coming to know there are other sides to the world. Ah, here is Mère Dubray."
The child glanced from one woman to the other. She saw the same difference as there was between the workmen and the few of the better class. Was it knowledge such as M'sieu Ralph had? And the good-hearted home-making Mère scouted learning for women. Their business was cooking and keeping the house. But she decided she liked the lady the best, just as she liked M'sieu Ralph better than the brawny leathern- and fur-clad workmen. But the Mère had been very good and never scolded her now.