Our Little Quebec Cousin

by Mary S. Saxe

Then back of her was the great market, all the stalls were piled high with fruit and vegetables of every size and shape in a riot of color.

Along the pavement were coops of live chickens and turkeys. There were long pouches of "black pudding," dangling from the booths. The stalls were heaped with home grown tobacco, dark slabs of maple sugar, home woven toweling, curtains, rugs, carpets, firmly knit socks, elaborately plaited mats. A charm and a glamor hangs over the generally commonplace business of buying and selling, getting gain, and making provision for the needs of the day. The whole thing is like a gay picture book. There are groups of habitant women, all talking in chorus; the queer little blue and red carts that have come from across the river by ferry; the small pink pigs squealing their hardest as they are lifted from the crates of the vendors to the sacks of the purchasers; the squawking of fowls whose end is near. Certainly Bonsecour Market is a spot to be visited if one would see the Habitant in his happiest mood.

About ten o'clock the customers arrive. There are lovely ladies in limousines, and sometimes there would hop out of a motor a pretty little English Canadian girl, to buy some nuts from open bags which always stand in rows along the pavements.

One day a very lively little missie gave Oisette a handful of English walnuts and invited her to climb down and come inside the market and see some little pigs.

But Oisette had been told to remain on guard, and remain she did. Now and then she would have a glimpse of her father as he went from stall to stall disposing of his stock.

One of his best customers was an old Irish dame, who had a French name because she had married in her youth one Alphonse LeBlanc, but she did not speak French at all. She was very popular with the English customers, and many of the "quality" (as she called them), bought her fruit and vegetables because she spoke their tongue. Her manners, too, made her famous throughout the market. As a customer arrived, she would make a deep curtsy, as though Royalty approached, and would say in her rich brogue, "And what fer yez, Darlin?"

One market day, when a cold slanting rain came on, Madame LeBlanc insisted that Monsieur Tremblent should lift little Oisette down and bring her inside Madame's stall.

So she was made very cozy beside a diminutive stove, known as a Quebec heater. It certainly was a very warmth giving stove, with a black iron kettle on the top, which poured forth a long plume of white steam. On a shelf hard by a big yellow and black cat purred very loud, as though trying to beat the kettle. He was flanked on each side by pyramids of cheese.

In spite of wind and weather, customers arrived, one and two at a time; they would step inside one at a time, leaving just room enough for Madame to curtsy. Most of them noticed Oisette and asked Madame about her. When Monsieur Tremblent came back at last to call for his little girl, he found she had made friends with the cat and had her pockets full of latire (molasses candy), and was holding a big red apple. Small wonder that her face was wreathed in smiles.

When her father opened the door, Oisette heard Madame say: "Come in, dear, shut the door, and we'll have a cup of tay."