After a while her thoughts returned to the present. She rose and took up her history book. Tomorrow’s examination would mean a lot to her marks and she must be ready for it. But with the worry of Gale, and her recent quarrel with her Aunt fresh in her mind, she found it difficult to concentrate on the book before her.
Chapter XII
GALE
Meanwhile in a little, crude French Canadian farmhouse a slight dark haired girl bent over her sewing while a roaring fire in the brick fireplace sent its welcome warmth out into the room.
To Antoinette Bouchard the winter was the best season of the year. She loved to sit warm and cozy in her brother’s house and listen to the wind sing in the chimney and watch the swirl of snow outside. This storm was the earliest she remembered. It was not yet deep winter, barely winter at all, but the snow was piled high against the house and this morning when François had shoveled a path from the door it had been up to his knees.
The rocking chair in which she had been swaying gently to and fro creaked suddenly and she looked up in alarm at the figure across the hearth. Her eyes took on a compassionate gleam, her lips curled in a smile, half admiration and half pity. When the other person did not stir, Antoinette resumed her gentle rocking, but her eyes were not now on her sewing and her work lay idle in her lap.
This other girl was not quite as old as she, Antoinette, and she was so pretty. The reddish brown hair lay in soft curls about the pale, still face. Her eyes were closed, but Antoinette could well remember the hurt, clouded expression of them when they had first looked into hers that morning. She could clearly remember the puzzled look on the girl’s face when she had asked her questions, questions that had remained unanswered.
It was last night François had brought the girl to their little house. She remembered clearly the tale he had told her of the wrecked airplane, the tree which he had moved to pull the girl from the wreckage, of carrying her the long, long distance through the snow to his home because he did not know where else to take her.
This morning she and François, when the girl had awakened from a sleep which had at first seemed to refresh her, had asked questions but she had been unable to tell them who she was. The little English that Antoinette knew had been exhausted in an attempt to discover the identity of the girl and from whence she had come.
The girl had been bewildered, frightened, and they hoped a quiet rest would restore her memory. All day it had been so. She had sat with closed eyes most of the time, but Antoinette guessed that her mind was struggling to remember the details of who she was and what had happened.
Antoinette sighed and returned to her sewing. This morning François, after he had cut some wood, was to start out on a trip back to the airplane. Perhaps there he could have discovered someone searching for the girl. But he was destined not to go. During his log splitting, the axe had fallen upon his foot, making a nasty wound that would leave him crippled for many days. There was nothing now to do but keep the girl here and try to help her restore the past that had suddenly been blotted from her mind.