“Here it is kept with the rest of our treasures, Annette, the papers which belong to your father and the grants of our land. I show this place to you because you have a wisdom beyond your years, and are indeed my little comfort.”
Annette’s face grew rosy with pleasure at these words, and holding her mother’s hand, she whispered,—
“I love you truly, dearest mamma, and I am the happiest girl in the world.”
When the little ones were in bed, Annette crept up on her father’s lap and had the crowning joy of the day, a long story of his childhood’s days in France; and she listened entranced, as she had hundreds of times before, to his descriptions of the old grey chateau at Étaples, the rose garden with its sun-dial, and, best of all, to the tales of how he and her mother used to scull down the broad shallow Canache, and then at the river’s mouth search among the rocks and seaweed for shrimps, while out at sea the big ships went sailing past, with their white or brown sails swelling with the fresh wind.
Even with the interest she felt in the story, poor Annette, tired with so much pleasure, nestled lower and lower in her father’s arms, and finally her head fell on his shoulder.
“She sleeps,” he said, “poor little girl, fairly tired out with too much happiness”; and taking her in his strong arms, he carried her off to her room, where she was soon settled in her bed, the process of undressing hardly waking her.
VI
With each succeeding year there were more and more settlers coming to the flowery land of Louisiana. If they had flocked thither in the time of the Regent, that clever and witty intriguer, they came more eagerly during the reign of Louis XV, so shallow a king that it is hard to conceive how he won the name of “The Well-beloved.”
It was a strange company which made up the population of the Crescent City, not only those from Paris with their elegances and velvet coats, beneath which beat such loyal hearts, but rubbing shoulders with them in street and café were many of far rougher exterior, who had come down from the settlements in Canada, and learned to adore the little city which was so different from the homes which they had left in the cold North.
Yet each and every one of these, marquis from France or pioneer from Canada, or even the sad-faced Acadian refugee who had been welcomed to these hospitable shores, had a heart which beat for France alone.