"What is the matter, Julie? Do you want to bring Jean and his
Indians here, with this pretty screaming of yours?"
"But it brushed me in the face twice, mademoiselle."
"These are only night hawks, Julie; they gather sometimes like this in our own poplar-grove."
"O-o that's what it was? Pardonnez-moi. What a simpleton I am, my mistress. Do you think they heard me?" and her sweet voice was now so low, that the locust, dozing among the spray of the golden-rod, could scarcely have heard her tones. The thicket was literally swarming with these noiseless birds; and wondering they flew round and round the figures of the intruders, but most of all did they marvel at the great mound of white that had been raised amongst them. Some of them, in alarm, rose high above the bluff, wheeling and darting hither and thither, and the girls could hear their c-h-u-n-g as if some hand, high up in the air, had smote the bass chord of a violoncello. But when the flame from the camp fire arose, terror seized every feathered thing in the bluff, and they all flew, in wild haste, away from the bewildering light.
Annette was now away wandering through the grove, gathering dry and fallen limbs for the fire; and as Julie bustled about through the long prairie grass, preparing the meal, she was startled with a little cry.
"Mon Dieu, what is it?" Julie hastened away to her mistress, her bright eyes widened and gleaming with alarm.
"What has happened my mistress?"
"Oh! is that all it is? Why Julie, I am just as silly as you are. I stooped to pick up what I thought a little bramble, but when I laid my hand upon it, it moved; and then went under the ground. It was a gopher. I am now rebuked for chiding the fears of my little maid."
"But anybody would scream at touching a live thing like that on the ground. It was foolish, though, to be frightened at a bird."
Generous, sweet little Julie!