The soft notes of a bell tolled over the clearing, and Peter drew himself erect and breathed a little tensely as he listened to it. "I used to hear a church bell like that, a long time ago," he said, softly. "I can just remember it."
She touched his arm as they listened. "I was coming to take you to church. Father Albanel says you promised."
She started down the slope, walking slowly, with Peter at her side. He thought it was interesting how the sound of the bell suddenly opened the doors of Five Fingers.
Pierre Gourdon came out of his cabin with his wife, and Josette was dressed in white, like Mona; and Marie Antoinette, waiting with Joe and their two children to greet them, looked like a slim white angel to Peter. Even Geertruda Poulin, who was almost as wide as she was high, wore a dress as white as the gull's wings down in Middle Finger Inlet.
The children were prim and starched and the men were in clothes which Peter had not seen them wear before, their faces shining with the effect of lather and sharp razors.
And loveliest of all the girls and women, Peter thought, was Mona—lovelier even than Adette Clamart, who came hurrying to them with laughing eyes and red lips and rebellious curls dancing about her pink cheeks to beg Peter's pardon for laughing at him the preceding afternoon.
To Peter's infinite dismay Adette seized his head between her two small hands and kissed him squarely on the eye which had looked so funny to her yesterday.
"There, I'm sorry, Peter," she said. "But you did look so funny."
She was gone like one of the dainty, golden canaries that nested in the clearing, running to catch up with Jame, her husband, who had Telesphore in his arms.