nvert is any use to you, take me over and
send me forth. It's a noble scheme. But, for Heaven's sake, fortify
yourself. How many proselytes do you expect in the first hundred years?"

"You forget," replied Haviland. "I have always this faithful little
legion of Dormilliere. Has not Lareau said," and he smiled half in joke,
half seriously, "that we are a people of ideals."

They returned to their fishing in silence, broken by a meditative query
now and then from Chrysler, but no movement of curiosity from the
Bonhomme.

CHAPTER XXVII.

JOSEPHTE.

"Sister Elisa," lisped Rudolphe, the tiny boy. (In the garden the
children of the farmer of the domain, and of Pierre, were playing
together.) "Mr. Ch'ysl' has told me he was a Canadian."

"Did he say so, _mon fin_?" asked motherly ten-year-old Elisa, picking a
"belle p'tite" flower for the little fellow, whom she held by the hand.

"He's not Canadian," put in the large boy, Henri, with contempt
befitting his twelve years of experience. "Because he doesn't speak
French. He's an English."

"Speaking French don't make a Canadian," answered Elisa. "The Honorable
says every one who is native in Canada is a Canadian, speak he French,
speak he English."

"O, well--the Honorable--the Honorable--" retorted Henri, testily.

While this went on, the voice of Josephte could be heard singing low and
happy, in a corner of the walk of pines which surrounded the garden and
the back of the grounds:

"Eglantine est la fleur que j'aime
La violette est ma couleur...."[H]

Next, lower, but as if stirred softly by the lingering strain rather
than feeling its sadness:

[Footnote H: "Eglantine is the flower I love,
My color is the violet"]

"....Dans le souci tu vois l'embleme
Des chagrins de mon triste coeur."[I]

[Footnote I:

"....The symbol shall the emblem prove
Of my sad heart and eyelids wet"]

When she got thus far, she stopped and called out, cheerfully:--"Come
along, my little ones; come along; come along and recite your duties!"
And in a trice they all raced in and were panting in a row about her.

Thus one sultry afternoon, Mr. Chrysler found her sitting, book and
sewing on her lap and only a rosary about her neck to relieve the modest
black dress, whose folds,

"Plain in their neatness,"
accorded well with her indefinably gentle bearing. Seeing him, she
stopped and dropped her head, like a good convent maiden.

"