Pierre took Auguste by the arm and led him to a place at the table near Grandpapa. Guichard pushed a wooden seat made of sticks toward him. A "chair," Auguste remembered, from Père Isaac's picture book.
Why do they sit up high and raise their food up so high? Auguste wondered. Perhaps pale eyes did not keep their floors clean enough to sit on and eat from. But these appeared very clean.
"This is a special meal in your honor," said Pierre. "Most of the people who work on our land will be eating here with us." Men and women were seating themselves at the other tables.
A feast! thought Auguste. Perhaps there would be dancing afterward.
"How many people live on your land, Father?" he asked in Sauk.
"About a hundred men, women and children live and work here," Pierre answered. "Beyond the hills to the west, by the river, is the settlement called Victor, where another hundred people live. Many of them work for us too. Nicole and Frank live in Victor."
Two hundred, thought Auguste. That was not so many, after all. There were nearly two thousand people in the British Band.
Nicole sat beside him, Pierre across the table from him. Nicole went through the names of the objects on the table—"plate," "glass," "knife," "fork," "spoon." Guichard was going around the table behind the people sitting there, filling each glass with a red liquid from a pitcher.
Auguste had seen beads and other small objects made of glass at Saukenuk, but here glass was everywhere. What was glass, and how did the pale eyes make things from it?
Even as he was wondering about glass he saw his father take out of his coat pocket an oval silver case hanging from a purple cord around his neck. Pierre opened the case and took out yet two more small, round pieces of glass in a metal frame. To Auguste's bewilderment, he put these over his eyes, like a transparent mask. He smiled when he saw Auguste staring.