“Well, w’at?” he inquired with heavy amiability. She leaned far over the railing to better communicate with him.
“You’ll go with me yonda on the hill to pick flowers fo’ Easter, Cami? I’m goin’ to take La Fringante along, too, to he’p with the baskets. W’at you say?”
“No!” was the stolid reply. “I’m boun’ to finish them shoe’, if it is fo’ a nigga.”
“Not now,” she returned impatiently; “to-morrow mo’nin’ at sun-up. An’ I tell you, Cami, my flowers’ll beat all! Look yonda at ’Dame Suzanne pickin’ her roses a’ready. An’ Mamzelle Euphraisie she’s car’ied her lilies an’ gone, her. You tell me all that’s goin’ be fresh to-moro’!”
“Jus’ like you say,” agreed the boy, turning to resume his work. “But you want to mine out fo’ the ole possum up in the wood. Let M’sieu Michel set eyes on you!” and he raised his arms as if aiming with a gun. “Pim, pam, poum! No mo’ Trézinie, no mo’ Cami, no mo’ La Fringante—all stretch’!”
The possible risk which Cami so vividly foreshadowed but added a zest to Trézinie’s projected excursion.
II.
It was hardly sun-up on the following morning when the three children—Trézinie, Cami and the little negress, La Fringante—were filling big, flat Indian baskets from the abundance of brilliant flowers that studded the hill.
In their eagerness they had ascended the slope and penetrated deep into the forest without thought of M’sieur Michel or of his abode. Suddenly, in the dense wood, they came upon his hut—low, forbidding, seeming to scowl rebuke upon them for their intrusion.
La Fringante dropped her basket, and, with a cry, fled. Cami looked as if he wanted to do the same. But Trézinie, after the first tremor, saw that the ogre himself was away. The wooden shutter of the one window was closed. The door, so low that even a small man must have stooped to enter it, was secured with a chain. Absolute silence reigned, except for the whirr of wings in the air, the fitful notes of a bird in the treetop.