h! She pressed her own lips to it, and
a delicious sensation sped through her small body.

"What art thou dreaming about, Jeanne? Come to thy dinner."

She glanced up with a smile. In a vague way she had known before there
were many things Pani could not understand; now she felt the keen,
far-reaching difference between them, between her and the De Bers, and
Louis Marsac, and all the people she had ever known. But her mother, who
could tell most about her, was dead.

It was not possible for a glad young thing to keep in a strained mood
that would have no answering comprehension, and Jeanne's love of nature
was so overwhelming. Then the autumn at the West was so glowing, so
full of richness that it stirred her immeasurably. She could hardly
endure the confinement on some days.

"What makes you so restless?" asked the master one noon when he was
dismissing some scholars kept in until their slow wits had mastered
their tasks. She, too, had been inattentive and willful.

"I am part of the woods to-day, a chipmunk running about, a cricket
which dares not chirp," and she glanced up into the stern eyes with a
merry light, "a grasshopper who takes long strides, a bee who goes
buzzing, a glad, gay bird who says to his mate, 'Come, let us go to the
unknown land and spend a winter in idleness, with no nest to build, no
hungry, crying babies to feed, nothing but just to swing in the trees
and laugh with the sunshine.'"

"Thou art a queer child. Come, say thy lesson well and we will spend the
whole afternoon in the woods. Thou shalt consort with thy brethren the
birds, for thou art brimming over."

The others were dismissed with some added punishment. The master took
out his luncheon. He was not overpaid, he had no family and lived by
himself, sleeping in the loft over the school.

"Oh, come home with me!" the child cried. "Pani's cakes of maize are so
good, and no one cooks fish with such a taste and smell. It would make
one rise in the middle of the night."

"Will the tall Indian woman give me a welcome?"

"Oh, Pani likes whomever I like;" with gay assurance.

"And dost thou like me, child?"

"Yes, yes." She caught his hand in both of hers. "Sometimes you are
cross and make ugly frowns, and often I pity the poor children you beat,
but I know, too, they deserve it. And you speak so sharp! I used to jump
when I heard it, but now I only give a little start, and sometimes just
smile within, lest the children should see i