'O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,' I replied, looking up deprecatingly into his cold scornful eyes.
'Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild creature, Aunt Sarah?'
'Well,' I said to myself, 'perhaps I am!'
The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer travellers rushed ashore to buy 'Indian curiosities,' made by the nuns in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder over the singular taste of these people from 'below,' who actually preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac. The officers did much escort duty; their buttons gilded every scene. Our quiet surgeon was foremost in everything.
'I am surprised! I had no idea Dr. Prescott was so gay,' said the major's wife.
'I should not think of calling him gay,' I answered.
'Why, my dear Mrs. Corlyne! He is going all the time. Just ask
Augusta.'
Augusta thereupon remarked that society, to a certain extent, was beneficial; that she considered Dr. Prescott much improved; really, he was now very 'nice.'
I silently protested against the word. But then I was not a Bostonian.
One bright afternoon I went through the village, round the point into the French quarter, in search of a laundress. The fishermen's cottages faced the west; they were low and wide, not unlike scows drifted ashore and moored on the beach for houses. The little windows had gay curtains fluttering in the breeze, and the room within looked clean and cheery; the rough walls were adorned with the spoils of the fresh-water seas, shells, green stones, agates, spar, and curiously shaped pebbles; occasionally there was a stuffed water-bird, or a bright-colored print, and always a violin. Black-eyed children played in the water which bordered their narrow beach-gardens; and slender women, with shining black hair, stood in their doorways knitting. I found my laundress, and then went on to Jeannette's home, the last house in the row. From the mother, a Chippewa woman, I learned that Jeannette was with her French father at the fishing-grounds off Drummond's Island.