"Pouf! There are men who stay five or ten years, and have left a wife in France. You can't blame them for taking a new one when you are invited to. It is a wild, hard life, but not worse than a soldier's. And when you are your own master the hardships are light. But some of this good supper."
"Out with you," she said to the Indian boys, who had snatched a piece of the broiled fish. Then she put down a plate, took up two birds that dripped delicious gravy, and a squirrel browned to a turn. From the cupboard beside the great stone chimney, so cunningly devised that no one would have suspected it, she brought forth a bottle of wine from the old world, her last choice possession, that she had dreamed of saving for Antoine, and now her dream had come true.
There was much to tell on both sides, though her life had been comparatively uneventful. He related incidents of his wilder experiences far away from civilization that he had grown to enjoy in its perfect freedom that often lapped over into lawlessness. And he ate until squirrel, fish, and the cakes, both of rye and corn, had disappeared. The slave boys fared ill that night.
Rose had eaten her supper more daintily. The great pile of raspberries was a delight; large, luscious; melting in one's mouth without the aid of sugar, and being picked up with the fingers. She had been startled at the sudden appearance of the husband she had heard talked of, but of course not seen. His loud voice grated on her ears, made more sensitive by illness, and when, a long while after, the pine torch that was flaring in the kitchen defined his brawny frame as he stood in the doorway, she wanted to scream.
"Oh—what have you here—a ghost?" he asked.
"A child who was left here more than a year ago. Jean Arlac lost his wife, and not knowing what to do with her—she was not his own child—left her here. He went out with the fur-hunters."
"Jean Arlac!" Antoine scratched among his rough locks as if to assist his memory. "Yes. And on the way he picked up a likely Indian girl who has given him a son. And he saddled her on you?"
"Oh, the Sieur will look after her—perhaps take her back to France," she answered, indifferently.
"The best place for her, no doubt. She looks a frail reed. And women need strength in this new world. A little infusion of Indian blood will do no harm. I wouldn't mind a son myself, but a girl—pouf!"
The child was glad he would not want her. She turned her face to the wall. She had not known what loneliness was before, but now she felt it through all her body, like a great pain.