"'Pon me soul an' body, I'd have borrered some if I'd known that," interrupted Mirabelle Marie, with a chuckle.
"Good gracious," observed Bidiane, "you don't want more than half that. We will give fifty to one of the men on the schooners. Isn't La Sauterelle going to Boston, to-morrow?"
"Yes; the cook was just in for yeast."
"Has he a head for business?"
"Pretty fair."
"Does he know anything about machines?"
"He once sold sewing-machines, and he also would show how to work them."
"The very man,—we will give him the fifty dollars and tell him to pick you out a good wheel and bring it back in the schooner."
"Then there will be no duty to pay," said Claudine, joyfully.
"H'm,—well, perhaps we had better pay the duty," said Bidiane; "it won't be so very much. It is a great temptation to smuggle things from the States, but I know we shouldn't. By the way, I must tell Mirabelle Marie a good joke I just heard up the Bay. My aunt,—where are you?"