[CHAPTER XV.]
THE FRENCH FAMILY.
'Tilda Jane stood entranced. This was not the Dillson cottage, the coachman had made a mistake. She stood staring in the window, for this was a sight that pleased her above all other sights.
Here was another family,—a happy family, evidently, all gathered around a cheerful fire in a good-sized living-room. There were an old grandfather in the corner smoking a pipe, an old woman beside him with a white cap on her head, a middle-aged man cleaning a gun by the light of a lamp on the table, a middle-aged woman knitting a stocking, and a cluster of children of all ages about the grandfather, grandmother, father and mother.
Mingled with the crackling of the open fire was a very gay clatter of tongues speaking in some foreign language, and one boy's voice soared above the rest in the words of a song that 'Tilda Jane was afterward to learn:
"Un Canadien errant,
Bannis de son pays,
Parconrait en pleurant,
Un pays étranger."