WEDDING GUESTS.
More guests were arriving—Diomé, Batiste, Mathurin, and a dozen others. Bowkett came out into the porch to receive them, and usher one after the other into the dining-room. As the last went in before him, his friend Dick Vanner of the forked tongue tapped him on the shoulder.
"Who is in there?" he whispered. "Did you see?" pointing as he spoke to the door of Uncle Caleb's room.
Gaspé was on the alert in a moment, longing to break a lance in his friend's behalf. The men dropped their voices, but the echo of one sentence reached him. It sounded like, "No, she only saw the other boy."
"So, Wilfred, mon cher, you and I have changed places, and I have become that 'other boy,'" laughed Gaspé to himself, lying perdu with an open ear.
As the two separated they muttered, "Outwit us? Like to see it done!"
"Keep that door shut, and leave the rest to me," added Vanner, sauntering up to the fire.—"Accommodation is scanty here to-night. How many are there in your party?" he asked, looking down on Gaspé. "Pête said four—three men and a boy. Was not it five—three men and two boys?"
"Yes, five," answered Gaspé.
"You boys must want something to eat," remarked Vanner, carelessly pushing open the door of the storeroom, and returning with a partridge pie. "Here, fall to. Where's your chum?"
Gaspé saw the trap into which he was expected to walk. He stepped over it.