"No, I am not,—I have a headache. I was up all last night reading a book on Commercial Law. I could not eat to-day, but I am not hungry."
"You are starving—come, take off your gloves," she said, peremptorily. "You shall have such a fine little dinner. I know what Célina is preparing, and I will assist her so that you may have it soon. Go lie down there in the sitting-room."
"I do not wish to stay," said Agapit, disagreeably; "I am like a bear."
"The first true word that you have spoken," she said, shaking a finger at him. "You are not like my good Agapit to-day. See, I will leave you for a time—Jovite, Jovite," and she went to the back door and waved her hand in the direction of the stable. "Go take out Monsieur LeNoir's horse. He stays to dinner."
After dinner she persuaded him to go down to the inn with her. Bidiane was in the parlor, sitting before a piano that Vesper had had sent from Boston for her. Two young Acadien girls were beside her, and when they were not laughing and exchanging jokes, they sang French songs, the favorite one being "Un Canadien Errant," to which they returned over and over again.
Several shy young captains from schooners in the Bay were sitting tilted back on chairs on the veranda, each one with a straw held between his teeth to give him countenance. Agapit joined them, while Rose went in the parlor and assisted the girls with their singing. She did not feel much older than they did. It was curious how this question of age oppressed some people; and she glanced through the window at Agapit's now reasonably contented face.
"I am glad you came with him," whispered Bidiane, mischievously. "He avoids me now, and I am quite afraid of him. The poor man, he thought to find me a blue-stocking, discussing dictionaries and encyclopædias; he finds me empty-headed and silly, so he abandons me to the younger set, although I admire him so deeply. You, at least, will never give me up," and she sighed and laughed at the same time, and affectionately squeezed Rose's hand.
Rose laughed too. She was becoming more light-hearted under Bidiane's half-nonsensical, half-sensible influence, and the two young Acadien girls politely averted their surprised eyes from the saint who would condescend to lay aside for a minute her crown of martyrdom. All the Bay knew that she had had some trouble, although they did not know what it was.