dropped, as they mostly were when she
played, and the long lashes black against her soft, clear paleness. And
my father Jacques sitting by the fire, his chin in his hand, still as a
carved image, looking at her with his heart in his eyes. That is the way
I think of them oftenest, Melody, my dear, as I look back to the days
long ago; this is the way I mostly see my father and mother, Jacques and
Marie De Arthenay, a faithful husband and wife.

CHAPTER II.

OUR village was not far from the sea, and my mother often took me down
to the beach. It was a curving beach of fine sand, bright and warm, and
the rocks that shut it in were warm, too, brown and yellow; it was a
sunny, heartsome place as ever I saw. I remember one day,--many days,
and this one of them,--when the three of us went down to the beach,
Mother Marie and Petie Brand and I. The Lady, the violin, went too, of
course, and we had our music, and it left us heartened through and
through, and friends with all the world. Then we began to skip stones,
three children together. Petie and I were only learning, and Mother
Marie laughed at our stones, which would go flopping and tumbling a
little way, then sink with a splash.

"They are ducks!" she said. (She called it "docks," Melody; you cannot
think how soft her speech was.) "Poor leetle docks, that go flap, flap;
not yet zey have learned to swim, no! But here now, see a bird of ze
water, a sea-bird what you call." She turned her wrist and sent the flat
pebble flying; it skimmed along like a live thing, flipping the little
crests of the ripples, going miles, it seemed to Petie and me, till at
length we lost sight of it altogether.

"Where did it go?" I asked. "I didn't hear it splash."

"It went--to France!" said Mother Marie. "It make a voyage, it goes,
goes,--at last it arrives. '_Voila la France!_' it say. 'That I go
ashore, to ask of things for Marie, and for _petit Jacques_, and for
Petie too, good Petie, who bring the apples.'"

There were red apples in a basket, and I can see now the bright
whiteness of her teeth as she set them into one.

"What will the stone see?" I asked again; for I loved to make my mother
tell me of the things she remembered in France, the country she always
loved. She loved to tell, too; and a dreamy look would come into her
eyes at such times, as if she did not see us near at hand, but only
things far off and dim. We listened, Petie and I, as if for a fairy
tale.

"He com