"Many nice things are going to happen," her mother went on. "Just think what fun you and Edith will have helping Miss Connie with her school treat. You are going to find that very English."
Frances smiled. "Oh, I won't be a pig, Mother," she said at last. "Miss
Connie is a dear and of course we must make the boys have a nice time."
"The climate agrees so well with Win that I am very thankful to spend Christmas here," replied Mrs. Thayne. "To-morrow, Nurse is going into town to the French market and I think you will like to go with her."
Win and Edith joined the marketing expedition next morning and even
Frances was impressed with the holiday spirit overhanging the place.
They left Nurse carefully inspecting fat geese in a poulterer's stall
and started to explore.
Any number of plump chickens and ducks hung about, together with little pigs decorated by blue rosettes on their ears, a touch that struck Win as extremely funny. In the vegetable market were heaped huge piles of potatoes, scrubbed till their pink skins shone, great ropes of red onions braided together by their dried tops, turnips, artichokes, garlic, winter squashes, white and purple cabbages, celery and egg plant and many varieties of greens and early vegetables. The stalls themselves were prettily arranged and fragrant with nice smells but their keepers were the great attraction. Many were in charge of old women dressed in white peasant caps and clean starched aprons above full wool skirts and wooden sabots. Little tow-headed grandchildren, comical replicas in miniature, smiled shyly or dropped bobbing curtsys as the girls stopped to speak.
Fruit stalls proved even more fascinating with the hothouse grapes, red, white, and dark purple, showing a hazy bloom. Fresh figs and dates abounded, alternating with baskets of Italian chestnuts and oranges, forty for a shilling. Every stall seemed to have vied in decorations with its neighbor, being bowers of myrtle and laurestinus. One sported a shield showing three leopards in daffodils against a green background.
"Look at the English coat of arms," said Frances, catching sight of it.
"That's not English," said Edith. "Those are the leopards of Jersey, the old Norman insignia."
"I can't understand," observed Frances as they sauntered on, "why, when Jersey belongs to England, it has a different coat of arms and government and everything."
"Because the islands are all little self-governing communities," supplied Win. "It's a privilege they have always had, and even England wouldn't dare take it from them now. Jersey is desperately jealous of Guernsey. They say that even a Jersey toad will die if it is taken to Guernsey."