Also, she sang sometimes children's songs of France, and other pretty ballads, mostly concerning love. For the French occupy themselves chiefly with love and cooking and the fine arts, I judge, and know how to make an art of eating, also. For there in France every meal is a ceremony; but in this land we eat not for the pleasurable taste which, in savory food, delights and tempts, but we eat swiftly and carelessly and chiefly to stay our hunger.
Yet, at times, food smacks smartly to my tongue; as when at Christmas tide I shot a great wild turkey on the Stacking Ridge; and when Penelope basted it in the kitchen my mouth watered as I sniffed the door-crack.
And again, gone stale with soupaan and jerked meat and fish soused or dried with salt, Nick shot a yearling buck near our barn at daylight; and the savour of his cooking filled all with pleasure.
Upon the New Year we made a feast and had a bottle of Sir William's port, another of Madeira, a punch of spirits, and three pewters of buttery ale.
Lord! there was a New Year. And first, not daring to give drink to my Saguenay, we fed him till he was gorged, and so rolled him in a pile of furs till he slept by the oven below. Then we set twenty dips afire by the chimney, and filled it up with dry logs.... I am sorry we had so little sense; for I was something fuddled, and sang ballads—which I can not—and Nick would dance, which he did by himself; and his hornpipes and pigeon-wings and shuffles and war-dances made my head spin and my heavy eyes desire to cross.
Penelope's cheeks burned, and she fanned and fanned her with a turkey wing and laughed to see Nick caper and to hear the piteous squalling which was my way of singing.
But she complained that the dip-lights danced and that the floor behaved in strange fashion, running like ripples on Vlaie Water in a west wind.
She had sipped but one glass of Sir William's port, but I think it was a glass too much; for the wine made her so hot, so she vowed, that her body was all one ardent coal, and so presently she pulled the hair-pegs from her hair and let it down and shook it out in the firelight till it flashed like a golden scarf flung about her.
Her pannier basque of rose silk—gift of Claudia and made in France—she presently slipped out of, leaving her in her petticoat and folded like a Quakeress in her crossed foulard, and her white arms as bare as her neck.
Which innocently concerned her not a whit, nor had she any more thought of her throat's loveliness than she had of herself in her shift that morning at Bowman's.