“Quel oiseau y at-il?”
Brent looked down from his rafters and laughed.
“A blue bird, Madame Taquine. Blue birds are lucky.”
“The bird shall have a glass of wine for dinner. And what is that pretty song you whistle?”
He told her, and she began to imitate him, picking up the melody and whistling it while she fed the fire.
“Now, there are two birds in a cage,” she called up at him, “and what am I? A black bird with brown eyes?”
Perched up against the blue sky and climbing about the increasing intricacies of his roof timbers, Paul developed a healthy hunger, and the savoury smell of Manon’s cooking drifted up to him from below. All his old “tool sense” was coming back, and he was working with a speed and a precision that would have damned him in the world of Go Slow. But then Paul had an object, a spark of the sacred fire, and the little capitalist down below there—even Manon—who employed him, would have opened her eyes very wide if he had preached by his acts the Religion of Slackness. Paul had seen her slip away into the garden and begin digging in the corner where the iron summer house stood. She returned, holding up a bottle of wine to encourage her man.
“Now you know where it is.”
She felt that the wine was as safe as the silver.
The dinner was all that a dinner should be, and they drank the health of the new roof. To Manon’s eyes the house began to look quite “dressed,” and already she saw herself voyaging over from Ste. Claire in Etienne Castener’s big blue cart with the bits of furniture she had collected, and turning the Café de la Victoire into a home. This house of hers would lead the way in Beaucourt, and stand as a live thing to encourage the others.