Vesper talked to him for some time, and the child at last fell asleep, his tiny hand clasping a scapulary on his breast, his pretty lips murmuring to the picture on it, "Good St. Joseph, Mr. Englishman says that only a few of the trees and flowers are hurt by the storm. Watch over the little willows and the small lilies while I sleep, and do not let them be harmed."
Vesper at first patiently and kindly endured the pressure of the curly head laid on his arm. He would like to have a beautiful child like this for his own. Then thoughts of his childhood began to steal over him. He remembered climbing into his father's bed, gazing worshipfully into his face, and stroking his handsome head.
"O God, my father!" he muttered, "I have lost him," and, unable to endure the presence of the child, he softly waked him. "Go back to your mother, Narcisse. She may miss you."
The child sleepily obeyed him, and went to continue his dreams by his mother's side, while Vesper lay awake until the morning, a prey to recollections at once tender and painful.
Vesper's second friend, the mail-driver, never failed to call on him every morning. If one could put a stamp on a letter it was permissible at any point on the route to call, "Arrête-toi" (stop), to the crimson flying bird. If one could not stamp a letter, it was illegal to detain him.
Vesper never had, however, to call "Arrête-toi." Of his own accord Emmanuel Victor de la Rive, upon arriving before the inn, would fling the reins over his pony's back, and spring nimbly out. He was sure to find Vesper lolling on the seat under the willows, or lying in the hammock, with Narcisse somewhere near, whereupon he would seat himself for a few minutes, and in his own courteous and curious way would ask various and sundry questions of this stranger, who had fascinated him almost as completely as he had Narcisse.
On the morning after the thunder-storm he had fallen into an admiration of Vesper's beautiful white teeth. Were they all his own, and not artificial? With such teeth he could marry any woman. He was a bachelor now, was he not? Did he always intend to remain one? How much longer would he stay in Sleeping Water? And Vesper, parrying his questions with his usual skill, sent him away with his ears full of polite sentences that, when he came to analyze them, conveyed not a single item of information to his surprised brain.
However, he felt no resentment towards Vesper. His admiration rose superior to any rebuffs. It even soared above the warning intimations he received from many Acadiens to the effect that he was laying himself open to hostile criticism by his intercourse with the enemy within the camp.
Vesper was amused by him, and on this particular morning, after he left, he lay back in the hammock, his mind enjoyably dwelling on the characteristics of the volatile Acadien.
Narcisse, who stood beside him in the centre of the bare spot on the lawn, by the hammock, in vain begged for a story, and at last, losing patience, knelt down and put his head to the ground. The Englishman had told him that each grass-blade came up from the earth with a tale on the tip of its quivering tongue, and that all might hear who bent an ear to listen. Narcisse wished to get news of the storm in the night, and really fancied that the grass-blades told him it had prevailed in the bowels of the earth. He sprang up to impart the news to Vesper, and Agapit, who was passing down the lane by the house to the street, scowled, disapprovingly, at the pretty, wagging head and animated gestures.