Alaine gave her delicate chin an upward toss. “I frequent the home of a young man? I fail to understand you, Madame Mercier.”
“Ta ta, she has quite the air of a grande dame, she who might now be weeping in a nunnery, or as a slave, a poor engagé, but for her old Michelle, who guards her but for her own good, poor little fledgling.”
“Forgive me, Mère Michelle,” cried Alaine, stopping her occupation of burnishing a brass kettle; “I forget sometimes, but indeed it was not because of Pierre, nor of any other man, that I wished to see Mathilde. We both desire to go to the Point this afternoon to join in the devotions and to send a prayer heavenward for the safety of our beloved ones.”
Michelle wiped a tear from her eye. “Wretched old woman that I am!” she said, with a quick digression from wrath to remorse. “I was thinking, Is not Gerard enough for her that she must run after other youths?”
“Gerard? Nay, but Gerard is my brother. You forget that he is a Mercier as well as I.”
“He is a Legrand as you are a Hervieu,” returned Mère Michelle.
Alaine shook her head. “No, no, we do not say so. I pray you, Mère Michelle, put any such ideas away. Whisper it not to any one that I am a Hervieu. But a day or two ago you warned me not to disclose it.”
“Ah, well, I say so to no one outside this house.”
“But the birds of the air; there is one now on the bush outside; I fear he will bear the news.”
Mère Michelle turned her head quickly, and then, at Alaine’s merry laugh, set to work again at paring the vegetables she was making ready for the dinner. “Beware how you go out alone,” she warned after a moment’s silence. “Louis says the Indians are gathering to-day for their yearly cider fête.”