ward."

Her eyes were eloquent with unspoken words, but she thought, "If that
were all!" Pierre Philibert had long received the silent reward of her
good opinion and approbation.

The Bourgeois at this moment came up to salute Amelie and the Lady de
Tilly.

"The Bourgeois Philibert has the most perfect manner of any gentleman in
New France," was the remark of the Lady de Tilly to Amelie, as he
left them again to receive other guests. "They say he can be rough
and imperious sometimes to those he dislikes, but to his friends and
strangers, and especially to ladies, no breath of spring can be more
gentle and balmy." Amelie assented with a mental reservation in the
depths of her dark eyes, and in the dimple that flashed upon her cheek
as she suppressed the utterance of a pleasant fancy in reply to her
aunt.

Pierre conducted the ladies to the great drawing-room, which was already
filled with company, who overwhelmed Amelie and her aunt with the
vivacity of their greeting.

In a fine shady grove at a short distance from the house, a row of
tables was set for the entertainment of several hundreds of the hardy
dependents of the Bourgeois; for while feasting the rich the Bourgeois
would not forget his poorer friends, and perhaps his most exquisite
satisfaction was in the unrestrained enjoyment of his hospitality by
the crowd of happy, hungry fellows and their families, who, under the
direction of his chief factor, filled the tables from end to end, and
made the park resound with songs and merriment--fellows of infinite
gaiety, with appetites of Gargantuas and a capacity for good liquors
that reminded one of the tubs of the Danaides. The tables groaned
beneath mountains of good things, and in the centre of each, like Mont
Blanc rising from the lower Alps, stood a magnificent Easter pie, the
confection of which was a masterpiece of the skill of Maitre Guillot
Gobet, the head cook of the Bourgeois, who was rather put out, however,
when Dame Rochelle decided to bestow all the Easter pies upon the hungry
voyageurs, woodmen, and workmen, and banished them from the menu of the
more patrician tables set for the guests of the mansion.

"Yet, after all," exclaimed Maitre Guillot, as he thrust his head out of
the kitchen door to listen to the song the gay fellows were singing
with all their lungs in honor of his Easter pie; "after all, the fine
gentlemen and ladies would not have paid my noble pies such honor as
that! and what is