“Mortgage!” exclaimed Desiré in shocked tones. “I never knew we had one.”
“I, either, until that day. You see nôtre mère was sick so long that all our little savings were used up, and ready money was an absolute necessity.”
“And what did he tell you about this?” continued the girl, after a thoughtful pause, running her finger along the line of tantalizing characters.
“Nothing very definite. He said it was a memorandum of some kind that had been handed down in our family for generations. The name of its writer, and its meaning, have been lost in the past; but each father passed it on to his eldest son, with a warning to preserve it most carefully, for it was valuable.”
“And now it belongs to you,” concluded Desiré, half sadly, half proudly.
Jack nodded, and for several moments neither spoke.
John Wistmore, aged 18, Desiré, 14, Priscilla, 9, and René, 5, were direct descendants of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, whose story the poet Longfellow tells in The Courtship of Miles Standish.
The little town of Sissiboo, an Indian corruption of Six Hiboux[1] where they lived, is one of those settled by the Acadians upon their return to the land of their birth some years after the expulsion. So closely, so ramblingly are the villages strung along the shores of St. Mary’s Bay on the northwest coast of Nova Scotia that it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. Their inhabitants live exactly as did their ancestors, speaking French and preserving with care all the old habits and customs.
[1]SIX OWLS.
The lives of the children had been simple, happy ones, until the recent death of their father and mother, hardly three months apart. John Wistmore, in whose veins flowed the blood of men of culture and ambition, had been anxious to give his children greater educational advantages than Sissiboo afforded. Jack, therefore, had been sent to Wolfville to school, and was now ready for college; while Desiré was looking forward to high school in the autumn. Now all was changed. Without relatives, without money, and without prospects, they faced the problem of supporting the two younger children and themselves.