"No, no," said the Indian woman.
"That was very good, excellent," pointing to the two empty birch-bark dishes, which he picked up and threw on the coals, a primitive way to escape dish washing. "I will find you a heap more. I will get fish or berries, and oh, I know where the bees have stored a lot of honey in a hollow tree."
"You let them alone for another month," commanded Wanamee. "Honey—that will be a treat indeed."
Miladi had missed the sweets of her native land, though there they had not been over-plentiful, since royalty must needs be served first. They bought maple sugar and a kind of crude syrup of the Abenaqui women, who were quite experts in making it. When the sun touched the trees in the morning when the hoarfrost had disappeared, they inserted tubes of bark, rolled tightly, and caught the sap in the troughs. Then they filled their kettles that swung over great fires, and the fragrance arising made the forests sweet with a peculiar spiciness. It was a grand time for the children, who snatched some of the liquid out of the kettle on a birch-bark ladle, and ran into the woods for it to cool. Pani had often been with them.
"Let us go down to the old house," exclaimed Rose. "Do you know who is there?"
"Pierre Gaudrion. He gets stone for the new walls they are laying against the fort. And there are five or six little ones."
"It must be queer. Oh, let us go and see them."
She was off like a flash, but he followed as swiftly. Here was the garden where she had pulled weeds with a hot hatred in her heart that she would have liked to tear up the whole garden and throw it over in the river. She glanced around furtively—what if Mère Dubray should come suddenly in search of Pani.
Three little ones were tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the other in one of the journeys up to Tadoussac and brought her home.
The Sieur did not discourage these marriages, for the children generally affiliated with the whites, and if the colony was to prosper there must be marriages and children.