This was the deepest insult that could be offered to the children across the road. Sometimes in their childish quarrels aprons and jackets were torn, and faces were slapped, but no bodily injury ever equalled in indignity that put upon the Catholic children when their religion was ridiculed.
However, they did not retaliate, but their faces became gloomy, and they immediately quickened their steps.
"Holler louder," Bidiane exhorted her followers, and she broke into a howling "Pax vobiscum," while a boy at her elbow groaned, "Et cum spiritu tuo," and the remainder of the children screamed in an irreverent chorus, that ran all up and down the scale, "Gloria tibi Domine."
The Acadien children fled now, some of them with fingers in their ears, others casting bewildered looks of horror, as if expecting to see the earth open and swallow up their sacrilegious tormentors, who stood shrieking with delight at the success of their efforts to rid themselves of their undesired companions.
"Shut up," said Bidiane, suddenly, and at once the laughter was stilled. There was a stranger in their midst. He had come gliding among them on one of the bright shining wheels that went up and down the Bay in such large numbers. Before Bidiane had spoken he had dismounted, and his quick eye was surveying them with a glance like lightning.
The children stared silently at him. Ridicule cuts sharply into the heart of a child, and a sound whipping inflicted on every girl and boy present would not have impressed on them the burden of their iniquity as did the fine sarcasm and disdainful amusement with which this handsome stranger regarded them.
One by one they dropped away, and Bidiane only remained rooted to the spot by some magic incomprehensible to her.
"Your name is Bidiane LeNoir," he said, quietly.
"It ain't," she said, doggedly; "it's Biddy Ann Black."