“They are very droll, those two old ones, your grandfather and mine,” remarked Lucie. “To hear them argue over a bed of cabbages one would think them the most important things in the world. They are never so happy as when they are discussing the merits of their gardens. For my part I cannot see that one is better than the other. They grow; there is enough and more than enough for our use, so what does it matter? Here comes Paulette now to gather vegetables. Shall we help her to pick the peas, Annette?”
“And shell them afterward?”
“Why yes, if you will.”
Paulette, rugged of feature, brown of skin, sharp-eyed and capable, came forward with a basket on her arm. She wore a stuff skirt, a huge apron, a stout sacque and a little cap. Her face was rather grave and stern until she smiled, then her expression showed a kindly humor.
“May we help you gather the peas, Paulette?” asked Lucie, balancing herself on one foot.
Paulette scanned the vines. “Yes, if you will be careful to pick only the well-filled pods. One may not take those not fully matured. Guard well against that.”
“We know and we will be careful,” returned Lucie and forthwith the three set to work, the girls using their aprons to hold the gathered pods, Paulette giving them once in a while a sharp eye to see that they performed their task properly.
At last when peas, carrots, onions, lettuce had been gathered Paulette carried them into the house and the little girls sat down again on the stone bench to shell the peas. Paulette meantime bustled in and out to bring water, to wash the lettuce and swing it around and around in a wire basket that it might be freed from all moisture, to scrape the little potatoes, to pick over the herbs for the ragout. The warm air was scented with odors from the garden, the rose-bushes, the clambering vines and mellowing fruit. The two girls chattered away like magpies about pleasant, homely things: their lessons, their pets, the growing garden, the good curé, the kind nuns. Outside the white wall the noises from the long street seemed only sociable sounds. Carts rattled along, children called to one another, men tramped home from the factories to their midday meal, stopping their whistling or singing to greet some friend. All this made a pleasant accompaniment to the drone of bees, and the drowsy crooning of hens in the chicken yard. There were homely, suggestive sounds, too, from the kitchens.
The two little girls, Lucie Du Bois and Annette Le Brun, were great friends, as might be surmised since they were next door neighbors. Lucie, her father and mother, her grandfather, Paulette, their maid and her son Jean, occupied a comfortable, square house whose red-tiled roof could be seen when winter stripped the leaves from the trees, but which in summer was almost hidden by green. A white stucco wall separated the garden from that of the Le Bruns, but the wall was not an impassable barrier, for the two girls, by means of a ladder, or, when the ladder was lacking, by means of overhanging branches, were able to climb back and forth.
Dark-haired, brown-eyed Annette lived with her grandparents. She was a bright, ardent little soul, adoring her best friend, Lucie, who excelled her in imagination and sometimes surprised her by her vivid way of telling things. Lucie, too, had dark eyes like her father’s, but her hair was a soft golden brown like her mother’s. She was about fourteen, Annette a year older. While the latter had legends of the saints at her tongue’s end, Lucie had far wider information concerning more modern tales. She never tired of hearing from her mother stories of the Indians and of her pioneer forefathers. These stories she would retell to Annette, who listened wide-eyed. Moreover there was a small collection of her mother’s girlhood books which Lucie was permitted to have and from which she gained a knowledge not only of her mother’s native tongue, but of things American. Therefore to Annette she was a very superior person whose companionship she greatly enjoyed, and preferred to that of any other girl she knew.