It was in one of these talks that the pendulum seemed to make its last swing and settle down to its resting-place. Prosper was telling her of the good crop of sugar that he had just made from his maple grove.
"The profit will be large—more than forty piastres—and with that I shall buy at Chicoutimi a new quatre-roue, of the finest, a veritable wedding-carriage—if you—if I—'Toinette? Shall we ride together?"
His left hand clasped hers as it lay on the gate. His right arm stole over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that leaned against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night already dark. He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she laughed.
"If you! If I! If what? Why so many ifs in this fine speech? Of whom is the wedding for which this new carriage is to be bought? Do you know what Raoul Vaillantcœur has said? 'No more wedding in this parish till I have thrown the little Prosper over my shoulder!'"
As she said this, laughing, she turned closer to the fence and looked up, so that a curl on her forehead brushed against his cheek.
He gripped Prosper by the head.—[Page 165].
"Baptême! Who told you he said that?"