“Come, I will show you the place here.”
Pulling aside a curtain covering a large window (the Count shut out all the light except the north light), he showed me the great panorama of the city below us. We looked across the St. Lawrence River, and in the street directly below was the old Bonsecour market. I could see the carts of the “habitants” (farmers) loaded with vegetables, fruit and fresh maple syrup, some of it of the consistency of jelly. Never have I tasted such maple syrup since I left Canada. In the midst stood the old Bonsecour Church.
“Good people,” it seemed to say, benevolently, “I am watching over you all!”
“It is,” said the Count, “the most picturesque place in Montreal. Some day I will paint it, and then it shall be famous. Ya, ya! At present it is convenient to get the good things to eat. I take me five or ten cents in my hand, and those good habitants they give me so much food I cannot use it all. You vill take lunch with me, Ya, ya! and we will have the visitors here in the Château de Ramezal. Ya, ya!”
He had kept on tap two barrels of wine, which he bought from the Oke monks. He said they made a finer wine than any produced in this country or the United States. They made it from an old French recipe and sold it for a mere song. These monks, he told me, also made cheese and butter, and the cheese, he said, was better than the best imported. I used to see these monks on the street, and even in the coldest days in winter they wore only sandals on their feet, and their bare heads were shaved bald on top. They owned an island down the St. Lawrence, and depended on its products for their existence.
XIII
TO my surprise, Reggie was not at all pleased when I told him of the work I had secured. I had been so delighted, and papa thought it an excellent thing for me. He said the Count was a genius and I would learn a great deal from him. Reggie, however, looked glum and sulky and said in his prim English way:
“You are engaged to be married to me, and I don’t want my wife to be a working girl.”
“But, Reggie,” I exclaimed, “I have been working at home, doing all kinds of painting for different people and helping papa.”
“That’s different,” he said sulkily. “A girl can work at home without losing her dignity, but when she goes out—well, she’s just a working girl, that’s all. Nice girls at home don’t do it. My word! My people would take a fit if they thought I married a working girl. I’ve been trying to break it to them gradually about our engagement. I told them I knew very well a girl who was the granddaughter of Squire Ascough of Macclesfield, but I haven’t had the nerve yet to tell them—to—er—”