“Monsieur de Tonty,” exclaimed Barbe, “I have simply been flung at your head to suit the convenience of my relatives.”
“Was that distasteful to you?” he wistfully inquired.
“I am not fit for a bride. No preparation has been made for me.”
“I thought of making some preparation myself,” confessed Tonty. “I got a web of brocaded silk from France several years ago.”
“To be clothed like a princess by one’s bridegroom,” said Barbe, wringing her gown skirt and twisting folds of it in her fingers. “That might be submitted to. But I could not wear the web of brocade around me like a blanket.”
“There are fifty needlewomen on the Rock who can make it in a day, mademoiselle.”
“And in short, monsieur, to be betrothed in the morning and married the same day is what no girl will submit to!”
Tonty, in the prime of his manhood and his might as a lover was too imposing a figure for her to face; she missed seeing his swarthy pallor as he answered,—
“I understand from all this, mademoiselle, that you care nothing for me. I have felt betrothed to you ever since I declared myself to Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac. How your pretty dreaming of the Rock of St. Louis and your homesick cry for this place did pierce me! I said, ‘She shall be my wife, and I will bring home everything that can be obtained for her. That small face shall be heart’s treasure to me. Its eyes will watch for me over the Rock.’ On our journey here, many a night I took my blanket and lay beside your tent, thanking the saints for the sweet privilege of bringing home my bride. Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, trembling, “I will kill any other man who dares approach you. Yet, mademoiselle, I could not annoy you by the least grief! Oh, teach a frontiersman what to say to please a woman!”