“She 'ave no chance like Jules; she is oblige' to wait and take what invite her.”
The voices of children from other quarter-breed cottages, playing along the beach, added cheer to the sweet darkness. Clethera and Honoré sat silently enjoying each other's company, unconscious that their aboriginal forefathers had courted in that manner, sitting under arbors of branches.
“Why do peop' want to get marry?” propounded Clethera.
“I don't know,” said Honoré.
“Me, if some man hask me, I box his ear! I have know you all my life—but don' you never hask me to get marry!”
“I not such a fool,” heartily responded Honoré. “You and me, we have seen de folly. I not form de habit, like Jules.”
“But what we do, Honoré, to keep dat Jules and dat Melinda apart?”
Though they discussed many plans, the sequel showed that nothing effectual could be done. All their traditions and instincts were against making themselves disagreeable or showing discourtesy to their elders. The young man's French and Irish and Chippewa blood, and the young girl's French and Cree blood exhausted all their inherited diplomacy. But as steadily as the waters set like a strong tide through the strait, in spite of wind which combed them to ridging foam, the rapid courtship of age went on.
In carrying laundered clothing through the village street, Melinda Cree was carefully chaperoned by her granddaughter, and Honoré kept Jules under orders in the boat. But of early mornings and late twilights there was no restraining the twittering widower.