“Sir,” said Bonaventure, turning with flushed face, “I stay.”
“Yes,” said the other, “dass righ’; you betteh go way and stay. Magicien,” he added as the schoolmaster moved on, “sorcier!—Voudou!—jackass!”
What did all this mean?
CHAPTER VI.
WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT.
Catou, it seems, had gone one day to College Point with a pair of wild ducks that he had shot,—first of the season,—and offered them to the priest who preached for Grande Pointe once a quarter.
“Catou,” said the recipient, in good French but with a cruel hardness of tone, “why does that man out there teach his school in English?” The questioner’s intentions were not unkind. He felt a protector’s care for his Acadian sheep, whose wants he fancied he, if not he only, understood. He believed a sudden overdose of enlightenment would be to them a real disaster, and he proposed to save them from it by the kind of management they had been accustomed to—they and their fathers—for a thousand years.
Catou answered the question only by a timid smile and shrug. The questioner spoke again: