There was a sheep-pen in the corner of the field next the road, and near it was a barred gate, opening on a winding path that led down to the flat shore. Bidiane went through the gate, frowned slightly at a mowing-machine left out-of-doors for many days by the careless Claude, then laughed at the handle of its uplifted brake, that looked like a disconsolate and protesting arm raised to the sky.
All the family were in the hay field. Two white oxen drew the hay wagon slowly to and fro, while Claudine and the two boys circled about it, raking together scattered wisps left from the big cocks that Claude threw up to Mirabelle Marie.
The mistress of the house was in her element. She gloried in haying, which was the only form of exercise that appealed in the least to her. Her face was overspread by a grin of delight, her red dress fluttered in the strong breeze, and she gleefully jumped up and down on top of the load, and superimposed her fat jolly weight on the masses of hay.
Bidiane ran towards them, dilating her small nostrils as she ran to catch the many delicious odors of the summer air. The strong perfume of the hay overpowered them all, and, in an intoxication of delight, she dropped on a heap of it, and raised an armful to her face.
A squeal from Claudine roused her. Her rake had uncovered a mouse's nest, and she was busily engaged in killing every one of the tiny velvety creatures.
"But why do you do it?" asked Bidiane, running up to her.
Claudine stared at her. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood as she stood in the blazing light of the sun, and Bidiane, even in the midst of her subdued indignation, thought of some lines in the Shakespeare that she had just laid down:
"'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship."
Claudine was carrying on a vigorous line of reasoning. She admired Bidiane intensely, and she quietly listened with pleasure to what she called her rocamboles of the olden times, which were Bidiane's tales of Acadien exploits and sufferings. She was a more apt pupil than the dense and silly Mirabelle Marie.
"If I was a mouse I wouldn't like to be killed," she said, presently, going on with her raking; and Bidiane, having made her think, was satisfied.