"What did you do with 'em?"
"We threw them in the lake."
"Come, now, look at that, ha, ha," and Mirabelle Marie laughed in a quavering voice. "I can see Claudine throwing sheets in the lake. She would make pickin's of 'em. Don't lie, Bidiane, me girl, or you'll see ghosties. You want to help your poor aunt,—you've made up a nice leetle lie, but don't tell it. See, Jude and Edouard are heatin' some soup. Give some to Agapit LeNoir and take a cup yourself."
Bidiane, with a gesture of utter helplessness, gave up the discussion and sat down beside Agapit.
"You believe me, do you not?" she asked, under cover of the joyful bustle that arose when the two boys began to pass around the soup.
"Yes," he replied, making a wry face over his steaming cup.
"And what do you think of me?" she asked, anxiously.
Agapit, although an ardent Acadien, and one bent on advancing the interests of his countrymen in every way, had yet little patience with the class to which Mirabelle Marie belonged. Apparently kind and forbearing with them, he yet left them severely alone. His was the party of progress, and he had been half amused, half scornful of the efforts that Bidiane had put forth to educate her deficient relative.
"On general principles," he said, coolly, "it is better not to chase a fat aunt through dark woods; yet, in this case, I would say it has done good."
"I did not wish to be heartless," said Bidiane, with tears in her eyes. "I wished to teach her a lesson."