[CHAPTER XVI—THE RISE IN THE RIVER]
There was news enough at Madame Renaud’s. Every year she grew a little stouter, a trifle more consequential. The grandmères always were. Elise and Louis both had little daughters. There had been sons before, but granddaughters were rather nearer, it seemed. She must make a christening cake for both, and she thanked the saints that the church had been freshened up a little and that the good Vicar-General had made a gift of a new altar cloth.
The other news was not so joyous. Barbe Gardepier had never been home since her marriage. Women travelled very seldom in those days. Once her baby boy had been born and died, then her little girl was just born. And now she had lost her husband, and was coming back to St. Louis to live.
Jean Gardepier had died early in the winter. But news was slow in coming. This had been sent with the first relay of boats, and she would be up in June with her little girl.
“And to think of the sorrow of the poor thing!” exclaimed Madame Renaud, wiping her eyes. “Here I have my good man Louis and my four children around me, three of them in homes of their own, and never a sorrow, while she is left alone to sup bitter grief! And not a relative near her! The saints be praised when it is possible for families to stay together. Then there is a friendly voice to console you.”
They all remembered pretty Barbe Guion. The old grandmère had died—that was natural in old age—but aunts and uncles and cousins were living, so it was a family grief.
But the christening came to break the sorrow and there was a grand time. Spring had come late this year. With a rather hard winter, streams and rivers had been choked with ice, but now all was bloom and beauty and gladness.
There were always some special prayers and a mass said on Corpus Christi day, and it was kept with great seriousness at Gaspard Denys’. But the Indians all about were so friendly that fears were allayed, though the town was better protected now.
There had been very heavy spring rains, and this, with the sunshine, gave promise of abundant harvests. Farmers had begun to plant wheat and rye, which brought back old memories of pleasant life in sunny France when taxes and tithes were not too high.
Amid all this smiling content there was one morning a strange sound. Men paused at their work and listened. Sometimes in a high wind the sound came rushing over the prairie like the tramp of an army, and seemed to threaten everything with destruction. Occasionally the river rose, but since the founding of the towns no great harm had been done.