When they awoke the song of a belated greybird, perched overhead, greeted them, and they lay and listened and watched the movements of a brilliantly colored woodpecker, as it circled the trunk of a spruce. Looking into the face of her sister, Archange saw that it was pale and pinched and that her smile was wan and feeble.
“Will father be here today?”
“I hope so, Marie; are you tired of me?”
“Oh, no; I do love you so, but I do want mother and—and—a drink of warm milk and a piece of bread.”
“Well, perhaps you will get them soon, and we will be happy until they come.”
They rose and Archange busied herself in setting forth breakfast, but both, though very hungry, now loathed the sight of nuts. Wandering, hand in hand, to find something more acceptable, they found in a raspberry thicket a bush with a scant crop of second-growth berries. Making a little basket of the bark of the white birch they nearly filled it, and returning to their bower, sat down to enjoy them, fashioning out of reeds make-believe spoons and asking each other if they would have cream and sugar. The play went on and faint laughter was heard. When the last berry was gone, the gnawing hunger re-awoke and the feverish heat of tongue and palate, which the acid juice had allayed, returned. Marie would not be comforted. She wanted to go home; she wanted her mother; she wanted food, and burying her face in her sister’s lap sobbed as if her heart would break and she would not be comforted. Archange felt as if she must give way to despair, but she repressed the feeling and bore up bravely. The trials and responsibilities of the past thirty-six hours had aged her, and, child as she was in years, she acted like a woman towards her sister, whom she alternately soothed and tried to divert. While leaning over her, in affected sportive mood, something soft brushed past her face and crept between them. It was a grey squirrel. Marie opened her weeping eyes, looked wonderingly for a moment, and then, with delighted gesture, grasped the little creature, and beaming with joy, pressed it to her lips.
“It is Mignon; my own clear little Mignon! What caused you to run away from me, you naughty boy?”
It was a tame squirrel, Marie’s pet, which, a week before, had scampered off to the woods. There was no doubt as to his identity, for beside its evident recognition of Marie, it retained the collar of colored yarn she had braided and tied round his neck. Hunger, home and mother were forgotten in the delight of recovering her pet, for whom she busied herself in getting breakfast, and he was soon sitting before her gravely disposing of the nuts she handed him, one by one.
“Cannot Mignon guide us home?” she suddenly asked.