The airman continued to eat very busily.
"He died—out there"—Wayland looked through the window, musingly. "There was an Iceland schooner wrecked off the Isle des Chouans. And no life-saving crew short of Ylva Light. So my father went out in his little American catboat, all alone.... Marie-Josephine saw his sail off Eryx Rocks ... for a few moments ... and saw it no more."
The airman, still devouring his bread and meat, nodded in silence.
"That is how it happened," said Wayland. "The French authorities notified me. There was a little money and this hut, and—Marie-Josephine. So I came here; and I write[pg 88] children's stories—that sort of thing.... It goes well enough. I sell a few to American publishers. Otherwise I shoot and fish and read ... when war does not preoccupy me...."
He smiled, experiencing the vague relief of talking to somebody in his native tongue. Quesnel Moors were sometimes very lonely.
"It's been a long convalescence," he continued, smilingly. "One of their 'coal-boxes' did this"—touching his leg. "When I was able to move I went to America. But the sea off the Eryx called me back; and the authorities permitted me to come down here. I'm getting well very fast now."
He had stripped every chassis of its canvas, and had made a roll of the material.
"I'm very glad to be of any use to you," he said pleasantly, laying the roll on the table.
Marie-Josephine, on her low chair by the hearth, sat listening to every word as though she had understood. The expression in her faded eyes varied constantly; solicitude, perplexity, vague uneasiness, a recurrent glim[pg 89]mer of suspicion were succeeded always by wistful tenderness when her gaze returned to Wayland and rested on his youthful face and figure with a pride forever new.
Once she spoke in mixed French and Breton: