Everything had done well this year, even the flower gardens, and some of the more pious of the women attributed their abundance of blossoms to the blessing of the seeds by the parish priests.
Agapit LeNoir, who now naturally took a broader and wider interest in the affairs of his countrymen, sat on Rose à Charlitte's lawn, discussing matters in general. Soon he would have to go to Halifax for his first session of the local legislature. Since his election he had come a little out of the shyness and reserve that had settled upon him in his early manhood. He was now usually acknowledged to be a rising young man, and one sure to become a credit to his nation and his province. He would be a member of the Dominion Parliament some day, the old people said, and in his more mature age he might even become a Senator. He had obtained just what he had needed,—a start in life. Everything was open to him now. With his racial zeal and love for his countrymen, he could become a representative man,—an Acadien of the Acadiens.
Then, too, he would marry an accomplished wife, who would be of great assistance to him, for it was a well-known fact that he was engaged to his lively distant relative, Bidiane LeNoir, the young girl who had been educated abroad by the Englishman from Boston.
Just now he was talking to this same relative, who, instead of sitting down quietly beside him, was pursuing an erratic course of wanderings about the trees on the lawn. She professed to be looking for a robin's deserted nest, but she was managing at the same time to give careful attention to what her lover was saying, as he sat with eyes fixed now upon her, now upon the Bay, and waved at intervals the long pipe that he was smoking.
"Yes," he said, continuing his subject, "that is one of the first things I shall lay before the House—the lack of proper schoolhouse accommodation on the Bay."
"You are very much interested in the schoolhouses," said Bidiane, sarcastically. "You have talked of them quite ten minutes."
His face lighted up swiftly. "Let us return, then, to our old, old subject,—will you not reconsider your cruel decision not to marry me, and go with me to Halifax this autumn?"
"No," said Bidiane, decidedly, yet with an evident liking for the topic of conversation presented to her. "I have told you again and again that I will not. I am surprised at your asking. Who would comfort our darling Rose?"
"Possibly, I say, only possibly, she is not as dependent upon us as you imagine."
"Dependent! of course she is dependent. Am I not with her nearly all the time. See, there she comes,—the beauty! She grows more charming every day. She is like those lovely Flemish women, who are so tall, and graceful, and simple, and elegant, and whose heads are like burnished gold. I wish you could see them, Agapit. Mr. Nimmo says they have preserved intact the admirable naïveté of the women of the Middle Ages. Their husbands are often brutal, yet they never rebel."