He was a little man, radiating goodness and fun. He had round, ruddy cheeks, looking as if the half of an apple had been glued to each side of his face, and a spreading, crinkly brown beard.
"Bienvenue! Bienvenue!" Cried Johnny Gagnon with sweeping obeisances.
"Well, Johnny, have you got a new one for me?" asked his lordship with a twinkle.
The river bank became a scene of delightful confusion; black cassocks, red tunics, orange ribbons, and blue ostrich feathers all mingled. The two slender boy priests showed strange hirsute adornments. One had a face like a round white doily with brown fringe; the other was spotted with hair like new grass.
The agent and the doctor were ordinary looking men. They did not add to the picturesqueness of the scene, but each carried a bag which was charged with romance for the natives.
The two policemen were almost as young as the boy-priests, but bigger and redder and clean-shaven. Here the eyes of the Gagnon girls lingered longest.
The greatest sensation, naturally, was created by the blue hat. It was the last to come ashore. It lingered on the gunwale with an appealing turn manwards until a red arm was offered on one side, a black arm on the other, whereupon it hopped ashore with a coy wag to the right and to the left. It was not hard to see why the boatmen had christened her the "chicadee-woman."
Young Joe, catching a glimpse of the face beneath, muttered "School-marm!" impolitely.
The natives, however, made no such distinctions. To them she was just a white woman, only the second they had ever seen. They had no means of knowing whether they came more beautiful than this.
Miss Mackall, booted, hatted, and corseted in town, was the headliner of the show.