"Ben sûr," whispered back the other from behind his leathery hand. "The wind's from the northeast. It will blow a gale before sundown." And he nodded toward the swaying tree-tops.
With this, the one with the blue eyes straightened back in the wooden pew and folded his short, knotty arms in attention; the muscles of his broad shoulders showing under his thick seaman's jersey, the collar encircling his corded, stocky neck deep-seamed by a thousand winds and seas. The gestures of these two old craftsmen of the sea, who had worked so long together, were strangely similar. When they knelt I could see the straw sticking from the heels of their four wooden sabots and the rolled-up bottoms of their patched sail-cloth trousers.
As the mass ended the old woman in the white cap coughed gently, the curé closed his book, stepped from the chancel, patted the child's head in passing, strode rapidly to the sacristy, and closed the door behind him.
I followed the handful of worshippers out into the sunlight and down the hill. As I passed the two old fishermen I heard the one with the blue eyes say to his mate with the leathery hand:
"Allons, viens t'en! What if we went to the café after that dog's night of a sea?"
"I don't say no," returned his partner; then he winked at me and pointed to the sky.
"I know," I said. "It's what I've been waiting for."
I kept on down the crooked hill to the public square where nothing ever happens save the arrival of the toy train and the yearly fête, and deciding the two old salts were right after their "dog's night" (and it had blown a gale), wheeled to the left and followed them to the tiniest of cafés kept by stout, cheery Madame Vinet. It has a box of a kitchen through which you pass into a little square room with just space enough for four tables; or you may go through the kitchen into a snug garden gay in geraniums and find a sheltered table beneath a rickety arbour.
"Ah, mais, it was bad enough!" grinned the one with the leathery hand as he drained his thimbleful of applejack and, Norman-like, tossed the last drop on the floor of the snug room.
"Bad enough! It was a sea, I tell you, monsieur, like none since the night the wreck of La Belle Marie came ashore," chimed in the one with the blue eye, as he placed his elbows on the clean marbletop table and made room for my chair. "Mon Dieu! You should have seen the ducks south of the Wolf. Aye, 'twas a sight for an empty stomach."