“Crébiche,” said the master, holding the boy’s hand at parting, “ah! Crébiche, if thou become not a good scholar”—and read a promise in the boy’s swimming eyes.
“Claude, Claude, I am at yo’ mercy now.” But the honest gaze of Claude and the pressure of his small strong hand were a pledge. The grateful master turned to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there.
CHAPTER IX.
READY.
Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and making the hoary cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless enemy—earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, sawyer, dragon-fly—from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for him; standing upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all for the luxury—not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark, back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then sitting up on an average half the night—sometimes the whole of it—at his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the crow, and all that brigand crew—busy times! All nature in glad, gay earnest. Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; blackberries ripe; morning-glories under foot; the trumpet-flower flaring from its dense green vine high above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; honey a-making in the hives and hollow trees; butterflies and bees lingering in the fields at sunset; the moth venturing forth at the first sign of dew; and Sidonie—a wild-rose tree.
Mark you, this was in Grande Pointe. I have seen the wild flower taken from its cool haunt in the forest, and planted in the glare of a city garden. Alas! the plight of it, poor outshone, wilting, odorless thing! And then I have seen it again in the forest; and pleasanter than to fill the lap with roses and tulips of the conservatory’s blood-royal it was to find it there, once more the simple queen of that green solitude.
So Sidonie. Acadian maidens are shy as herons. They always see you first. They see you first, silently rise, and are gone—from the galérie. They are more shy than violets. You would think they lived whole days with those dark, black-fringed eyes cast down; but—they see you first. The work about the house is well done where they are; there are apt to be flowers outside round about; while they themselves are as Paul desired to see the women in bishop Timothy’s church, “adorned in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety.”
Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. Her best homespun gown was her own weaving; the old dog lying on the galérie always thumped the floor with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe passed; the fawn—that Claude had brought—would come trotting and press its head against it; all the small living things of the dooryard would follow it about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves would push each other for the nearest place, lay their cheeks upon the fence’s top, and roll their eyes—as many a youth of Grande Pointe would have done if he might. Chat-oué,—I fear I have omitted to mention that the father of Crébiche, like the father of Claude, had lost his wife before he was of age,—Chat-oué looked often over that fence.