"What's shoes?" asked the smallest half-breed, tucking up his smock
around his middle.

"They are things to wear on your feet," explained Jenieve; and her
red-skinned half-brothers heard her with incredulity. She had told
their mother, in their presence, that she intended to buy the children
some shoes when she got pay for her spinning; and they thought it
meant fashions from the Fur Company's store to wear to mass, but never
suspected she had set her mind on dark-looking clamps for the feet.

"You must try them on," said Jenieve, and they all stepped
experimentally from the water, reluctant to submit. But Jenieve was
mistress in the house. There is no appeal from a sister who is a
father to you, and even a substitute for your living mother.

"You sit down first, Francois, and wipe your feet with this cloth."

The absurdity of wiping his feet before he turned in for the night
tickled Francois, though he was of a strongly aboriginal cast, and he
let himself grin. Jenieve helped him struggle to encompass his lithe
feet with the clumsy brogans.

"You boys are living like Indians."

"We are Indians," asserted Francois.

"But you are French, too. You are my brothers. I want you to go to
mass looking as well as anybody."

Hitherto their object in life had been to escape mass. They objected
to increasing their chances of church-going. Moccasins were the
natural wear of human beings, and nobody but women needed even
moccasins until cold weather. The proud look of an Iroquois taking
spoils disappeared from the face of the youngest, giving way to uneasy
anguish. The three boys sat down to tug, Jenieve going encouragingly
from one to another. Francois lay on his back and pushed his heels
skyward. Contempt and rebellion grew also in the faces of Gabriel
and Toussaint. They were the true children of Francois Iroquois, her
mother's second husband, who had been wont to lounge about Mackinac
village in dirty buckskins and a calico shirt having one red and one
blue sleeve. He had also bought a tall silk hat at the Fur Company's
store, and he wore the hat under his blanket when it rained. If
tobacco failed him, he scraped and dried willow peelings, and called
them kinnickinnick. This worthy relation had worked no increase in
Jenieve's home except an increase of children. He frequently yelled
around the crescent bay, brandishing his silk hat in the exaltation of
rum. And when he finally fell off the wharf into deep water, and wa