“You have been long, Alaine,” she said, sharply.
“I know,” replied Alaine, meekly. “We were talking, M. Verplanck and I, and then he helped me.”
“You must not allow it again. It is not proper, nor a maidenly thing to permit.” Mère Michelle spoke in her most reproving tones. “Where did you leave M. Verplanck?”
“In the barn, attending to his horse.”
“They will soon be gone, those two,” Michelle went on, in a less severe voice, “and I shall not be sorry. I do not regret that we have been able, with God’s help, to mend their wounds, though the one is as if he were a child of the evil one; the other, stolid Dutchman though he is, cannot be disliked.”
Alaine smiled at the word stolid; if Michelle could have seen her stolid Dutchman an hour ago! She drew so long and quivering a sigh that Michelle stopped her spinning and looked at her sharply.
“I would you and Gerard were safely married,” she said; “another year and you should be.”
“He is too young, that brother of mine,” Alaine answered, “not yet twenty, Mère Michelle, and it would be wiser if he were possessed of more before he takes to himself a wife.”
“So Louis says, and so would I say were it not for the eyes of young men who trouble me by looking too long at you.”
“Whose eyes?”