“Jis’ look Miss T’rèse how she go a lopin’ down de lane. Dere she go—dere she go—now she gone,” and she again became contemplative.
Thérèse, after crossing the railroad, for a space kept to the brow of the hill where stretched a well defined road, which by almost imperceptible degrees led deeper and always higher into the woods. Presently, leaving this road and turning into a bridle path where an unpracticed eye would have discovered no sign of travel, she rode on until reaching a small clearing among the pines, in the center of which stood a very old and weather beaten cabin.
Here she dismounted, before Morico knew of her presence, for he sat with his back partly turned to the open door. As she entered and greeted him, he arose from his chair, all trembling with excitement at her visit; the long white locks, straggling and unkept, falling about his brown visage that had grown old and weather beaten with his cabin. Sinking down into his seat—the hide covered chair that had been worn smooth by years of usefulness—he gazed well pleased at Thérèse, who seated herself beside him.
“Ah, this is quite the handsomest you have made yet, Morico,” she said addressing him in French, and taking up the fan that he was curiously fashioning of turkey feathers.
“I am taking extra pains with it,” he answered, looking complacently at his handiwork and smoothing down the glossy feathers with the ends of his withered old fingers. “I thought the American lady down at the house might want to buy it.”
Thérèse could safely assure him of Melicent’s willingness to seize on the trophy.
Then she asked why Joçint had not been to the house with news of him. “I have had chickens and eggs for you, and no way of sending them.”
At mention of his son’s name, the old man’s face clouded with displeasure and his hand trembled so that he was at some pains to place the feather which he was at the moment adding to the widening fan.
“Joçint is a bad son, madame, when even you have been able to do nothing with him. The trouble that boy has given me no one knows; but let him not think I am too old to give him a sound drubbing.”
Joçint meanwhile had returned from the mill and seeing Thérèse’s horse fastened before his door, was at first inclined to skulk back into the woods; but an impulse of defiance moved him to enter, and gave to his ugly countenance a look that was far from agreeable as he mumbled a greeting to Thérèse. His father he did not address. The old man looked from son to visitor with feeble expectancy of some good to come from her presence there.