"Ah! we are vastly to be pitied; no beaux at all at the general's, only about six to one; a pretty proportion, and what I hope always to see. We—the ladies I mean—drink chocolate with the general to- morrow, and he gives us a ball on Thursday; you would not know Quebec again. Nothing but smiling faces now: all gay as never was—the sweetest country in the world. Never expect to see me in England again; one is really somebody here. I have been asked to dance by only twenty-seven. …"
Ah! who would not forgive the frolicsome Bella all her flirtations? But before we dismiss this pleasant record of other days, yet another extract, and we have done.
(BELLA FERMOR TO LUCY RIVERS)
"Sillery—Eight in the evening.
"Absolutely, Lucy, I will marry a savage and turn squaw (a pretty soft name for an Indian Princess!) Never was anything so delightful as their lives. They talk of French husbands, but commend me to an Indian one, who lets his wife ramble five hundred miles without asking where she is going.
"I was sitting after dinner, with a book, in a thicket of hawthorn near the beach, when a loud laugh called my attention to the river, when I saw a canoe of savages making to the shore. There were six women and two or three children, without one man amongst them. They landed and tied the canoe to the root of a tree, and finding out the most agreeable shady spot amongst the bushes with which the beach was covered, (which happened to be very near me) made a fire, on which they laid some fish to broil, and fetching water from the river, sat down on the grass to their frugal repast. I stole softly to the house, and ordering a servant to bring some wine and cold provisions, returned to my squaws. I asked them in French if they were of Lorette, they shook their heads—I repeated the question in English, when the eldest of the women told me they were not, that their country was on the borders of New England, that their husbands being on a hunting party in the woods, curiosity and the desire to see their brethren, the English, who had conquered Quebec, had brought them up the great river, down which they should return as soon as they had seen Montreal. She courteously asked me to sit down and eat with them, which I complied with and produced my part of the feast. We soon became good company, and brightened the chain of friendship with two bottles of wine, which put them in such spirits that they danced, sung, shook me by the hand, and grew so fond of me that I began to be afraid I should not easily get rid of them.
"Adieu! my father is just come in and has brought some company with him from Quebec to supper.
"Yours ever,