"Of course," she said, with the little slight accent she seemed to have caught from her father and old Grandmother Beaubien, "I thought every one in Delphi knew. For myself, I am proud of him, and of all my mother's people, but I am also proud of being a Beaubien. You girls do not know perhaps that some of my father's people helped to found Fort Dearborn, and they were very brave and courageous voyagers in the early days of New France."
Peggy really rose to the occasion remarkably, Kit thought. Probably the most zealously guarded membership in Hope's freshman class was that of the Portia Club, and yet, before the tea was over, she had invited Marcelle to attend the next meeting and be proposed for membership.
"We're not going to try a whole play at first, just famous scenes, and I know you'd fit in somewhere and enjoy it. Don't you want to, Marcelle?"
Marcelle shrugged her shoulders, deprecatingly.
"I shall be glad to help always," she said, with simple dignity, "if you wish to make me one of you. We have an old copy of Shakespeare at home that was my mother's, and I have read much of it in the long winter evenings. I think," she added, whimsically, "that I would rather play parts like Shylock or Hamlet than the girl rôles, and best of all, I should love dearly to play Prince Hal."
"What do you think of that?" Anne said on the way home. "The idea of her being interested in Shakespeare at all or knowing anything about it, after living all her life in that little sand dump. Kit, you certainly have discovered a flower that was born to blush unseen."
"It will take her out of her shell, anyway," Kit replied, happily. "And I do think the girls came up to the mark splendidly. Heaven knows how they are talking about us now, behind our backs, but they acted their parts nobly when I swung that door open, and there stood, just Marcelle!"