five girls, you know. Rose is as tall as I
and has a prettier face and dances like a sprite. And there are so many
of the fur hunters and traders who drink and spend their money, and
sometimes beat their wives. Margot Beeson picked out a wife for him, but
he said she was too old. It was Lise Moet."

Jeanne laughed. "I should not want to live with her, her voice goes
through your head like a knife. She is little Jacques' aunt and the
children are all afraid of her. How old is Antoine?"

"Twenty-eight!" in a low, protesting tone.

"Just twice as old as you!" said Jeanne with a little calculation.

"Yes, I can't help but think of it. And when I am thirty he will be an
old man sixty years old, bent down and wrinkled and cross, maybe."

"O no, Marie," cried Jeanne, eagerly. "It is not that way one reckons.
Everything does not double up so fast. He is fourteen years older than
you, and when you are thirty he can only be fourteen years older than
you. Count up on your ten fingers--that makes forty, and four more, he
will be forty-four."

Marie's mouth and eyes opened in surprise. "Are you quite sure?" with an
indrawn breath.

"O yes, sure as that the river runs to the lake. It is what they teach
at school. And though it is a great trouble to make yourself remember,
and you wonder what it is all about, then at other times you can use the
knowledge and are happy and glad over it. There are so many queer
things," smiling a little. "And they are not in the catechism or the
prayers. The sisters shake their heads over them."

"But can they be quite right?" asked Marie in a kind of awesome tone.

"Why they seem right for the men to know," laughed Jeanne. "How else
could they be bartering and counting money? And it is said that Madame
Ganeau goes over her husband's books every week since they found Jules
Froment was a thief, and kept wrong accounts, putting the money in his
own pocket."

Jeanne raised her voice triumphantly.

"Oh, here they are!" cried Cecile followed by a string of girls. "And
look, they have found a harvest, their pails are almost full. You mean,
selfish things!"

"Why you had the same right to be hunting everywhere," declared Jeanne
stoutly. "We found a good place and we picked--that is all there is of
it."

"But you might have called us."

Jeanne laughed in a tantalizing manner.

"O Jeanne Angelot, you think yourself some great things because you live
inside the stockade and go to a school where