you sleep, a
_prie-dieu_----"

"What is that?" interrupted the child.

"A little altar, with a stone step on which you kneel. And a crucifix at
the top, a book of prayer and invocation. Many of the sisters pray an
hour at midnight. All pray an hour in the morning, then breakfast and
the chapel for another hour, with prayers and singing. After that the
classes. The little girls are taught the catechism and manners, if they
are to go out in the world, sewing and embroidery. At noon prayers again
and a little lunch, then work out of doors for an hour, and running
about for exercise, catechising again, singing, supper and a chapel
hour, and then to bed. But the nuns spend the evening in prayer, so do
the devout."

"Madame, I shall never go in a convent, if the Fathers build one for
girls. I like the big out-of-doors. And if God made the world He made it
for some purpose, that people should go out and enjoy it. I like the
wilderness, the great blue sky, the sun and the stars at night, the
trees and the river, and the birds and the deer and the beautiful wild
geese, as they sail in great flocks. If I was shut up in a cell I should
beat my head against the stones until it was a jelly, and then I should
be dead."

Madame de Champlain looked at the child in amaze. In her decorous life
she had known nothing like it.

"And I wish there were no women. I do not like women any more. Men are
better because they live out of doors and do not pray so much. Except
the priests. And they are dirty."

Then she turned away and went out on the gallery, with a curiously
swelling heart. Oh, why was not Marie Gaudrion different? What made
people so unlike. If there was some one----

"Ha, little maid, where are you running to so fast?" exclaimed a
laughing voice. "Have you seen my sister yet?"

Eustache Boulle caught her arm, but she shook him off, and stood up
squarely, facing him. What vigor and resolution there was in her small
bewitching face.

"Hi, hi! thou art a plucky little _fille_, ready for a quarrel by the
looks of thy flashing eyes. What have I done to thee, that thou shouldst
shake me off as a viper?"

"Nothing! I am not to be handled roughly. I am going my way, and I think
it will not interfere with thine."

A pleasant smile crossed his face which made him really attractive, and
half disarmed her fierceness.

"My way is set in no special lines until I return to Tadoussac. Hast
thou seen my sister?"

She nodded.