This salute was the signal for the appearance of what appeared to me the entire population of the place. There were people under the lindens, people at the doors and open windows, people in boats rowing towards us; one man was poling a scow in which were a cow and two horses. There were men with handcarts, boys with baskets, old women and young girls, all talking, gesticulating freely.
The handcarts were drawn up to the landing-place; the steamer was made fast to an apology for a mooring-post; the gangway heaved up. Several sheep on the lower deck were run down it by a forced method of locomotion, their keepers hoisting their hind legs, and steering them wheelbarrow fashion into the street where some children attempted to ride them. All about me I heard the chatter of Canadian French, not a word of which I understood.
A ponderous antiquated private coach, into which were harnessed two fine shaggy-fetlocked horses,—I learned afterwards these were Percherons, with sires from Normandy,—stood in the street directly opposite the boat; a small boy was holding their heads. I wondered if that were my "Seigniory coach"!
My trunk was literally shovelled out down the gangway, and I followed. I stood on the landing-place and looked about me. I was, in truth, in that other country for, oh, the air! It was like nothing I had ever known! So strong, so free, so soft, as if it were blowing straight from the great Northland, over unending virgin plains, through primeval unending forests, that the dwellers on this great water highway might enjoy something of its primal purity and strength.
I was filling my lungs full of it and thinking of my instructions to ask for Mrs. Janet Macleod, when a tall man, loosely jointed but powerfully built, made his way to me through the crowd.
"I take it you 're the gal Mis' Macleod 's lookin' fer?"
It was simply the statement of a foregone conclusion, but the drawling nasal intonation, the accent and manner of speech, told me that it was native to my northern New England, where I have lived two-thirds of my life; it was the speech of my own people. I laughed; I could not have helped it. It was such a come-down from my high ideas of "Seigniory retainers" of foreign birth, with which romance I had been entertaining myself ever since I had fed my fancy on what the New York Public Library yielded me.
"Yes, I 'm the one, Marcia Farrell. Is this our coach?"
The man gave me a keen glance from under his bushy eyebrows; indeed, he looked sharply at me a second time. If he thought I was quizzing him he was much mistaken.
"Yes, that's our'n,"—I noticed he placed an emphasis on the possessive,—"and we 'd better be gettin' along 'fore dark; the steamer's late. You and the coach ain't just what you 'd call a perfect fit—nor I could n't say as you was a misfit," he added, as he opened the door for me to get in. "Guess Mis' Macleod was expectin' somebody with a little more heft to 'em; you don't look over tough?" The statement was put in the form of a question. "But your trunk 'll fill up some."