She ran to the door and called, “Adrian!”
No answer.
“Pierre! Angelique! Where is everybody?”
Then she saw Angelique coming down the slope and ran to meet her. With one hand the woman carried a brimming pail of milk and with the other dragged by his collar the reluctant form of Reynard, who appeared as guilty and subdued as if he had been born a slave, not free. To make matters more difficult, Meroude was surreptitiously helping herself to a breakfast from the pail and thereby ruining its contents for other uses.
“Oh! the plague of a life with such beasts! And him the worst o’ they all. The ver’ next time my Pierre goes cross-lake, that fox goes or I do! There’s no room on the island for the two of us. No. Indeed, no. The harm comes of takin’ in folks and beasties and friendin’ them ’at don’t deserve it. What now, think you?”
Margot had run the faster, as soon as she descried poor Reynard’s abject state, and had taken him under her own protection, which immediately restored him to his natural pride and noble bearing.
“I think nothing evil of my pet, believe that! See the beauty now! That’s the difference between harsh words and loving ones. If you’d only treat the ‘beasties’ as well as you do me, Angelique, dear, you’d have less cause for scolding. What I think now is—speckled rooster. Right?”
“Aye. Dead as dead; and the feathers still stickin’ in the villain’s jaws. What’s the life of such brutes to that o’ good fowls? Pst! Meroude! Scat! Well, if it’s milk you will, milk you shall!” and, turning angrily about, Snowfoot’s mistress dashed the entire contents of her pail over the annoying cat.
Margot laughed till the tears came. “Why, Angelique! only the other day, in that quaint old ‘Book of Beauty’ uncle has, I read how a Queen of Naples, and some noted Parisian beauties used baths of milk for their complexions; but poor Meroude’s a hopeless case, I fear.”
Angelique’s countenance took on a grim expression. “Mistress Meroude’s got a day’s job to clean herself, the greedy. It’s not her nose’ll go in the pail another mornin’. No, no, indeed.”