"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mère."
"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline that keeps Angélique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such discipline in our family."
"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angélique to Maria, "and when you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."
Maria gave Angélique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.
"Would you die now?"
"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."
"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It is wicked to say you want to die."
"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,—that is what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."
"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my back."
She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them, holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her attention from her companions.