"I did not think it right," answered David manfully. "I meant to go when I set out, but Vevette's words kept ringing in my ears: 'It is mean and cowardly to pain thy mother's heart just for a pleasure.' So I turned aside and went to sit a while with Jean Laroche, who is laid up still with his sprained ankle."
"Then you never went near the procession at all—you never saw it," said Lucille, in a tone of disappointment, as David shook his head. "I thought you would at least have something to tell us. What are you laughing at, mademoiselle, if I may be so bold as to ask?"
"At you," I answered with perfect frankness. "At first you are enraged enough to kill me because I did not keep David from going, and now you are vexed at him because he did not go."
"But you did keep me, and I should have come home at once, only the poor Mother Laroche asked me so earnestly to come in and amuse Jean a little. But I must hurry home. Come, girls."
Lucille and I did not go into the house, but into the granary, which was one of our places of retirement. I took up an old psalm-book and began turning over the leaves. Lucille stood looking out of the door. At last she spoke.
"So you did hinder him, after all?"
"Yes, what a pity!" I answered mischievously. "Else he might have something to tell us. But I am only a little girl, you know. When I am older I shall know better. But there, we won't quarrel," I added. I could afford to be magnanimous, seeing how decidedly I had the best of it. "It is worse to be cross on Sunday than to go to see processions. Come, let us kiss and be friends."
Lucille yielded, but not very graciously. In fact, she was always rather jealous of me. She said I set her father and mother up against her, which certainly was not true, and that David liked me the best, which might have been the case, for she was always lecturing him and assuming airs of superiority, which irritated him, good-tempered as he was. I do not think she was very sorry when it was decided that I should leave the cottage and go home for good.
I have dwelt more lengthily on this childish affair because it was the first thing which made me at all sensible of the atmosphere of constant danger and persecution in which we lived even then.
