"But you feel it. I can look into the minds of my fellow beings. The time before this when I was reincarnated, I was a witch."
Derrice looked at her in irresistible amusement.
"Come now, Miss or Mrs. New Yorker," said Miss Gastonguay, vivaciously, "tell me what is your idea of New England."
"I don't know that I have ever formulated anything. I have been in Boston once or twice. I liked it."
"But you avoided the smaller places."
"Yes; though my father often spoke to me of Rossignol. What a fine street this is!"
"Isn't it?" and Miss Gastonguay requested her pony to slacken his pace. One large white or yellow house succeeded another. All stood back from the street, nearly all were perched on high banks with flights of steps approaching them, and over all hung bare yet graceful and luxuriant elms. "Ah, the New England elms, how I love them!" said Miss Gastonguay, enthusiastically. "Do you know that this country was all a forest one hundred and fifty years ago?"
"I suppose it was,—I don't know much about the history of this State."
"It seems strange now to think of those days. This lovely river had only Indians on its banks. Then, just after plucky Jacob Buswell, in 1769, ascended through the wilderness beyond here, and hewed out a place for his log cabin on a spot where a cathedral now stands in Bangor, Louis Gastonguay, a Frenchman, and relative of the Baron de St. Castin, came here, and founded Rossignol."
"How interesting!"