“Perhaps so. There will be fleets in all the time now. And Indians and voyageurs and piles of pelts and evil smells, and such a confusion in the streets it will hardly be safe to go out unless one is willing to be jostled and pushed hither and yon.”
“And M’sieu Denys does not come home to dinner. It is all ready.”
“Let us have ours, then,” with cordial assent.
“Perhaps he may bring home M’sieu Valbonais.”
“Well, there may be something left. I am hungry, but I cannot eat all this bountiful meal,” with a gay laugh.
“It will be spoiled, ma’m’selle,” complainingly.
“The more need that we eat ours while it is just right,” she answered, with smiling emphasis. “Will it make them any happier to have ours less inviting?”
So she took her seat at the table with a merry audacity, and praised the cookery so heartily that Mère Lunde was good humored in a moment or two. Still there was no step on the path.
“They will not come,” in a tone of disappointment.
“But, you know, there is enough to get at the market in such times as these,” returned Renée, with a lightsome air. “Trust them for not starving.”