"What do you do now, Mr. Placide?" asked Amy.
"Oh, I fish. The sea is good to us Acadians; it is better than the factory. One gets health here as well as fish, and fish enough to keep the house fed. So, with my potatoes and my cherries, I am rich." Then, with an afterthought,—"But I hope sometime that little Yvonne can go to Boston, where there is much music. She could study and be great singer, for the voice it needs teaching. I know that, because I have been in the States where people study so much."
The girls found it hard to leave Placide, for he was even more fluent than Alexandre, and his years in the States had given him a certain amount of information about things American, and he was evidently fond of displaying what he knew. But at last they managed to say good-bye, and continued their way down the road.
"I am tired," sighed Priscilla, as the four stood at the door of the little hotel.
"Then let us sit here on the piazza. Would this suit you, Yvonne?"
Yvonne turned toward Amy with a smile. "I like whatever the other ladies like; it is all good for me."
"Oh, yes," added Martine, "it will be great fun to sit here and watch the passers-by. Things are rushing this afternoon; two persons are entering that shop across the way, and I can count three ox-carts and two buggies in sight. Where do you suppose the buggies are going?"
"Perhaps half a mile up the road; perhaps to Yarmouth. You know there is a continuous street along St. Mary's Bay, about forty miles from Yarmouth to Weymouth."
"One street forty miles long!" Amy's statement roused Priscilla from her lethargy.
"The young lady says true," interposed Madame, their landlady, who had stepped out on the piazza. "Forty miles, and all Acadians! Is it not marvellous that they have grown to be so much, when the English treated them so cruelly, long, long ago?"