“I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M’m’selle.” Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await her convenience.
He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down deftly.
“I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb,” said Ruth as she took his hand. “Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?”
A girl of about Ruth’s own age had come quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.
“’Cynthe,” said the little man briskly, “you show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass.” He 91 took the bridle from Ruth’s hand and led the horse away to the shed in the rear of the store.
The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not answer?
She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a front pew.
At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth could only catch a little here and there.
“You will come by the fête, M’m’selle. You will not dance non, I s’pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one jolie time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance.” Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.
It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before been so devout and concentrated 92 in church should in an instant switch their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into the fun with all her heart.