"Allons donc!" she said. "Quel garçon!" And with my best bow to her and a salute to my captain and the good doctor, I whistled to Leon to accompany me and strode quickly down the road toward the little church.
But as I neared it I slackened my pace, and but for very shame I would have turned and fled again to the shelter of madame's motherly smile. I had not seen Mademoiselle Pelagie since the day of the picnic, and I was much in doubt whether she regarded me as her rescuer to be esteemed with grateful and friendly feeling, or as the cause of the loss of a dear friend, perhaps a lover. I felt very sure I would be able to tell at our first meeting in which light I was held, and, screwing up all my courage, I made a bold dash for the church door.
Scarcely had my shadow darkened the doorway when I was surrounded by an eager group, saluting me with every form of friendly welcome back to St. Louis; but the face I looked for was not among them. Mademoiselle Chouteau and Mademoiselle Papin seized me, one by either arm, and led me to a great pile of greens, and would have set me at once to work in tying them to long ropes. But I begged them to permit me first to pay my respects to the rest of my friends; for over in a dark corner I had seen Pelagie at work, with two or three young men around her, supplying her with greens for her nimble fingers to weave into garlands, and she had not come with the others to greet me. I thought at least that little courtesy was due me, for, whether she liked or resented my rescuing her, I had risked much in the doing of it.
I was filled with bitterness toward her, but could have no more kept away from her than the moth from the flame. My bitterness now gave me courage, and I sauntered up to her with what I flattered myself was quite as grand an air as the chevalier's might have been. Hand on the hilt of my sword, hat doffed, with its plume sweeping the ground, I bowed low.
"If mademoiselle has not forgotten an old acquaintance, will she permit me respectfully to salute her?"
She had been seated on a low seat with the side of her face toward me, and may or may not have been aware of my approach. As I spoke, she rose quickly and turned toward me, the rich blood rushing over her face and neck for a minute, and receding and leaving her almost as white as when I had held her in my arms and she had thought the chevalier killed.
She did not speak, but she held out her hand, and I bowed low over it, and barely touched it with my lips. The young men (among whom was of course Josef Papin) crowded around me with friendly greetings, and for a few minutes we talked fast, they asking and I answering many questions about Daniel Boone and our adventures in the far West.
I did not look at mademoiselle as we talked, but—it is a way I have—I saw her all the time. I think it must be because I am so much taller than most people that I can see all that goes on around me (or, perhaps more truly, beneath me) without seeming to look. I saw mademoiselle regard me with a strange glance, as if she were looking at some one she did not know, and was trying to explain him to herself. Then she sat down and quietly went on with her work, her head bent, and not looking at me again.
I talked on for a few minutes, and then turned to make my adieus to mademoiselle. She looked up at me with a friendly smile and I saw, what I had not noticed before, that she was paler and thinner than when I had seen her last, and there was a look in her dark eyes as of hidden trouble.
"Will you not stay and help us, monsieur?" she said in that voice which, from the first time I had heard it, had always seemed to me the sweetest in the world. Of course it set my silly pulses to beating faster, but I answered steadily and with an air of cold courtesy: