Good-humored raillery greeted Claude and his small flock of Conservatives when Mirabelle Marie came driving them in before her.
"Ah, Joe à Jack, where is thy doubloon?" called out a Liberal. "Thou hast lost it,—thy candidate is in the Bay. It is all up with him. And thou, Guillaume,—away to the shore with thee. You remember, boys, he promised to swallow a dog-fish, tail first, if Agapit LeNoir went in."
A roar of laughter greeted this announcement, and the unfortunate Guillaume was pushed into a seat, and had a glass thrust into his hand. "Drink, cousin, to fortify thee for thy task. A dog-fish,—sakerjé! but it will be prickly swallowing."
"Biddy Ann, Biddy Ann," shrieked her aunt, up the staircase, "come and hear the good news," but Bidiane, who was usually social in her instincts, was now eccentric and solitary, and would not respond.
"Skedaddle up-stairs and hunt her out, Claudine," said Mrs. Corbineau; but Bidiane, hearing the request, cunningly ran to the back of the house, descended the kitchen stairway, and escaped out-of-doors. She would go up to the horseshoe cottage and see Rose. There, at least, it would be quiet; she hated this screaming.
Her small feet went pit-a-pat over the dark road. There were lights in all the windows. Everybody was excited to-night. Everybody but herself. She was left out of the general rejoicing, and a wave of injured feeling and of desperate dissatisfaction and bodily fatigue swept over her. And she had fancied that Agapit's election would plunge her into a tumult of joy.
However, she kept on her way, and dodging a party of hilarious young Acadiens, who were lustily informing the neighborhood that the immortal Malbrouck had really gone to the wars at last, she took to the wet grass and ran across the fields to the cottage.
There were two private bridges across Sleeping Water just here, the Comeau bridge and Rose à Charlitte's. Bidiane trotted nimbly over the former, jumped a low stone wall, and found herself under the windows of Rose's parlor.
Why, there was the hero of the day talking to Rose! What was he doing here? She had fancied him the centre of a crowd of men,—he, speech-making, and the cynosure of all eyes,—and here he was, quietly lolling in an easy chair by the fire that Rose always had on cool, rainy evenings. However, he had evidently just arrived, for his boots were muddy, and his white horse, instead of being tied to the post, was standing patiently by the door,—a sure sign that his master was not to stay long.
Well, she would go home. They looked comfortable in there, and they were carrying on an animated conversation. They did not want her, and, frowning impatiently, she uttered an irritable "Get away!" to the friendly white horse, who, taking advantage of one of the few occasions when he was not attached to the buggy, which was the bane of his existence, had approached, and was extending a curious and sympathetically quivering nose in her direction.