CHAPTER II.
OUR village was not far from the sea, and my mother often took me down to the beach. It was a curving beach of fine sand, bright and warm, and the rocks that shut it in were warm, too, brown and yellow; it was a sunny, heartsome place as ever I saw. I remember one day,—many days, and this one of them,—when the three of us went down to the beach, Mother Marie and Petie Brand and I. The Lady, the violin, went too, of course, and we had our music, and it left us heartened through and through, and friends with all the world. Then we began to skip stones, three children together. Petie and I were only learning, and Mother Marie laughed at our stones, which would go flopping and tumbling a little way, then sink with a splash.
"They are ducks!" she said. (She called it "docks," Melody; you cannot think how soft her speech was.) "Poor leetle docks, that go flap, flap; not yet zey have learned to swim, no! But here now, see a bird of ze water, a sea-bird what you call." She turned her wrist and sent the flat pebble flying; it skimmed along like a live thing, flipping the little crests of the ripples, going miles, it seemed to Petie and me, till at length we lost sight of it altogether.
"Where did it go?" I asked. "I didn't hear it splash."
"It went—to France!" said Mother Marie. "It make a voyage, it goes, goes,—at last it arrives. 'Voilà la France!' it say. 'That I go ashore, to ask of things for Marie, and for petit Jacques, and for Petie too, good Petie, who bring the apples.'"
There were red apples in a basket, and I can see now the bright whiteness of her teeth as she set them into one.
"What will the stone see?" I asked again; for I loved to make my mother tell me of the things she remembered in France, the country she always loved. She loved to tell, too; and a dreamy look would come into her eyes at such times, as if she did not see us near at hand, but only things far off and dim. We listened, Petie and I, as if for a fairy tale.
"He come, zat leetle—non! that lit-tel stone." (Mother Marie could often pronounce our English "th" quite well; it was only when she forgot that she slipped back to the soft "z" which I liked much better.) "He come to the shore! It is not as this shore, no! White is the sand, the rocks black, black. All about are nets, very great, and boats. The men are great and brown; and their beards—Holy Cric! their beards are a bush for owls; and striped their shirt, jersey, what you call, and blue trousers. Zey come in from sea, their sails are brown and red; the boats are full wiz fish, that shine like silver; they are the herring, petit Jacques, it is of those that we live a great deal. Down zen come ze women to ze shore and zey—they—are dressed beautiful, ah! so beautiful! A red petticoat,—sometimes a blue, but I love best the red, striped wiz white, and over this the dress turned up, à la blanchisseuse. A handkerchief round their neck, and gold earrings,—ah! long ones, to touch their neck; and gold beads, most beautiful! and then the cap! P'tit Jacques, thou hast not seen caps, because here they have not the understanding. But! white, like snow in ze sun; the muslin clear, you understand, and stiff that it cracks,—ah! of a beauty! and standing out like wings here, and here—you do not listen! you make not attention, bad children that you are! Go! I tell you no more!"
It was true, Melody, my dear, that Petie and I did not care so much about the descriptions of dress as if we had been little girls; my mother was never weary of telling about the caps and earrings; I think she often longed for them, poor little Mother Marie! But now Petie and I clung about her, and begged her to go on, and she never could keep her vexation for two minutes.
"Tell how they go up the street!" said Petie.