She found it already half laden; and in the stern, to her delight, she saw Mother Pêche’s red mantle. She was on the point of calling to her, but checked herself just in time. The boat was twenty paces from the wharf-edge; and those twenty paces were deep ooze, intolerable beyond measure to white moccasins. Absorbed in her one purpose, which was to get on board the ship without delay, she had not looked to one side or the other, but had regarded women, children, soldiers, boatmen, as so many bushes to be pushed through. Now, however, letting her hood part a little from her face, she glanced hither and thither with her quick imperiousness, and then from her feet to that breadth of slime, as if demanding an instant bridge. The next thing she knew she was lifted by a pair of stout arms and carried swiftly through the mud to the boatside.
After a moment’s hot flush of indignation at the liberty, she realized that this was by far the best possible solution of the problem, as there was no bridge forthcoming. She looked up gratefully, and saw that her cavalier was a big red-coat, with a boyish, jolly face. As he gently set her down in the boat she gave him a radiant look which brought the very blood to his ears.
“Thank you very much indeed!” she said, in an undertone. “I don’t know how I should have managed but for your kindness. But really it is very wrong of you to take such trouble about me; for I see these other poor things have had to wade through the mud, and their skirts are terrible.”
The big red-coat stood gazing at her in open-mouthed adoration, speechless; but a comrade, busy in the boat stowing baggage, answered for him.
“That’s all right, miss,” said he. “Don’t you worry about Eph. He’s been carryin’ children all day long, an’ some few women because they was sick. He’s arned the right to carry one woman jest fer her beauty.”
In some confusion Yvonne turned away, very fearful of being recognized. She hurriedly squeezed herself down in the stern by Mother Pêche. The old dame’s hand sought hers, furtively, under the cloak.
“I went to look for you, mother,” she whispered into the red shawl.
“I knew you’d come, poor heart, dear heart!” muttered the old woman, with a swift peering of her strange eyes into the shadow of the girl’s hood.
“I waited for you till they dragged me away. But I knew you’d come.”
“How did you know that, mother?” whispered Yvonne, delighted to find that this momentous act of hers had seemed to some one just the expected and inevitable thing. “Why, I didn’t know it myself till half an hour ago.”