He had not joined in the foolishness.
“What they think does not so much matter, ma’m’selle. It is what is in the woman’s heart.”
“And she cannot go out serenading her true love.”
“Would you want to, ma’m’selle?”
“I should like to find out who he was,” and she laughed.
Denys roused himself suddenly and began to talk business. André was working his way up in the Chouteau mill and was in high favor with its owners. What would happen when the spring opened, for St. Louis was growing to be a larger business centre? England, the talk was, had ceded her rights to the river and all the eastern shore to the new colonial government, which would make fresh treaties with Spain. The Ohio River was another promising branch. In fact, everything seemed tending to strange and uncertain prospects.
Denys would have been more than amazed if a vision of fifty years later had crossed his brain there in the firelight. And a hundred years—that would have sent him quite crazy.
But the king’s ball was the next thing. They were such a pleasure-loving people at this time; indeed, the winters would have been very dreary without the pleasure.
So the merry crowd came and the cake was made. Everybody who could gathered as usual, and the children added zest in the early part of the evening, exchanging their gifts and eating their étrennes. The stately dances of the elder people, and then the gavotte, the airy passe-pied, and afterward the merry spinning round in all kinds of fancy steps, in which some of the young men excelled.
Then twelve boomed out and one of the matrons cut the cake, another dealt out the pieces just as they came, so there should be no favoritism. Renée’s had in it no bean—was she glad or sorry? For two pairs of eyes watched her eagerly.