"Oh, none of us expects to be as adept as you," replied Henriette, "or as Helen, who has a natural talent for such things."
"Mademoiselle Helene," said Madame Pigou, with an affectionate smile of fellowship at Helen, "is one of us. Thank you all—thank you for the sake of Armand. I shall write him how you helped," she added.
"Mind that you don't overdo!" Madame Ribot warned Henriette as she started back to the chateau.
Henriette did not overdo. With skirt tucked above her slim ankles and an old pair of gloves up to her elbows, she used her sickle much as she had her brush, cutting her small swaths handily after she had learned the trick and often stopping to deride her own efforts or to boast of them very merrily, holding the attention of every one on herself. It was no cross to her that she did not keep up with the others. Madame Pigou complimented her for another reason. It was wonderful that Henriette should cut even a single sheaf; the condescension of a beautiful princess who used a real trowel and some real mortar in laying the cornerstone of a public building.
Helen, humming snatches of song, kept her swath even with Madame Pigou. Her plain features as she bent to her work seemed in keeping with it. There was truth in Madame Pigou's saying that she was "one of us." But Madame did not set a fast pace, for she saw that Helen meant to hold her own.
When Phil had finished a swath he turned and cut toward Henriette in hers, and thus they met face to face as he nipped the last straws from in front of her sickle; her face flushed, too, with exercise, as they both stood erect, he with head bare, his sleeves rolled, drawing a deep breath and stretching his supple, square shoulders.
Helen pausing to rest had a glimpse of him thus; and it occurred to her how he must have looked far away in the Southwest when he was directing the workmen in railroad-building. Then she sent the sharp knife athwart the bundle of straws that she had gathered in her hand.
"A good, straight man!" whispered Madame Pigou. "He knows how to work."
"So I was thinking," murmured Helen absently. Then, a sheaf finished, she looked up again to see them standing in quite the same position of confidential comradeship. "Cousin, more praise!" she called, and repeated in English what Madame Pigou had said of him.
"A real compliment, this!" he replied.