ts. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky
trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country
years ago about Jacques and his loves and his good wine.

Presently the great bell clanged out. That was a signal for booths to
shut, for deerhide curtains to be drawn. Some obstreperous soldiers were
marched to the guardhouse. Some drunken revelers crept into a nook
beside a storage box or hid in a tangle of vines to sleep until
morning.

But in many of the better class houses merriment and gayety went on
while the outside decorousness was observed. There was a certain respect
paid to law and the new rulers were not so arbitrary as the English had
been. Also French prejudices were wearing slowly away while the real
characteristics of the race remained.

"I shall not go to school to-day," said Jeanne the next morning. "I will
tell the master how it was, and he will pardon me. And I will get two
lessons to-morrow, so the children will see that he does not favor me. I
think they are sometimes jealous."

She laughed brightly and went dancing about singing whatever sounds
entered her mind. Now it was a call of birds, then a sharp high cry,
anon a merry whistle that one might fancy came from the woods. She ran
out and in, she looked up and down the narrow street with its crooks
that had never been smoothed out, and with some houses standing in the
very road as it were. Everything was crowded in the business part.

Rose De Ber spied her out and came running up to greet her; tossing her
head consequentially.

"We had a gay time last night. I wish you could have peeped in the
windows. But you know it was not for children, only grown people. Martin
Lavosse danced ever so many times with me, but he moaned about Marie,
and I said, 'By the time thou art old enough to marry she will have a
houseful of babies, perhaps she will give you her first daughter,' and
he replied, 'I shall not wait that length of time. There are still good
fish in the lakes and rivers, but I am sorry to see her wed before she
has had a taste of true life and pleasure.' And, Jeanne, I have resolved
that mother shall not marry me off to the first comer."

Jeanne nodded approval.

"I do not see what has come over Pierre," she went on. "He was grumpy as
a wounded bear last night and only a day or two ago he made such a
mistake in reckoning that father beat him. And Monsieur Beeson and
mother nearly quarreled over the kind of