er pretty lips, allow her eyes to rove about and then let
the lids drop decorously in a fashion he called a nun's face; but it was
adorable.

"I shall not be a nun," she would declare vehemently.

"No, Mam'selle, thou art the kind to dance on a man's heart and make him
most happy and most wretched. No nun's coif for that sunny, tangled mop
of thine."

He would fain have lingered through the winter, but a peremptory message
came for him.

"I shall be here another summer and thou wilt be older, and understand
better what life is like."

"It is good enough and pleasant enough now," she answered perversely.

"I wonder--if thou wilt miss me?"

"Why, yes, silly! The splendid canoeing and the races we run, and I may
be big enough next summer to go to Lachine. I would like to rush through
the rapids that Antoine the sailor tells about, where you feel as if you
were going down to the centre of the world."

"No woman would dare. It would not be safe," he objected.

"Men are not always lost, only a few clumsy ones. And I can swim with
the best of them."

"M. Destournier will not let you go."

"He is not my father. I belong just to myself, and I will do as I
like."

She stamped her foot on the ground, but she laughed as well. He was not
nineteen yet, but a man would be able to manage her.

She did miss him when he was gone. And it seemed as if Marie grew more
stupid and cared less for her. And that lout of a Jules Personeau would
sit by her on the grass, or help her pick berries or grapes and open
them skilfully, take out the seeds or the pits of plums, and place them
on the flat rocks to dry. He never seemed to talk. And Rose knew that M.
Destournier scolded because he was not breaking stone.

He was building a new house himself, and helping the Sieur plan out the
path from the fort up above to the settlement down below. They did not
dream that one day it would be the upper and the lower town, and that on
the plain would be fought one of the historic battles of the world,
where two of the bravest of men would give up their lives, and the
lilies of France go down for the last time. Quebec was beginning to look
quite a town.

Destournier's house commanded his settlement, which was more strongly
fortified with a higher palisade, over which curious thorn vines were
growing for protection. He had a fine wheat field, and some tobacco. Of
Indian corn a great waving regiment planted only two rows thick so as to
give no