Part 40 (2/2)

His face darkened. ”You give that to Biddy.”

”Yes,” said his niece, ”give it to me. Come now, and get it, and show me the house.”

Mrs. Watercrow rose resignedly, and preceded the girl to the kitchen.

”Let's find Claudine. She's a boss cook, mos' as good as Rose a Charlitte. Biddy, be you goin' to stay along of us?”

”I don't know,” said the girl, gaily. ”Will you have me?”

”You bet! Biddy,”--and she lowered her voice,--”you know 'bout Isidore?”

The girl shuddered. ”Yes.”

”It was drink, drink, drink, like a fool. One day, when he works back in the woods with some of those Frenchmen out of France, he go for to do like them, an' roast a frog on the biler in the mill ingine. His brain overswelled, overfoamed, an' he fell agin the biler. Then he was dead.”

”Hush,--don't talk about him; Claudine may hear you.”

”How,--you know her?”

”I know everybody. Mr. Nimmo and his mother talked so often of the Bay.

They do not wish Narcisse to forget.”

”That's good. Does the Englishman's maw like the little one?”

”Yes, she does.”

”Claudine ain't here,” and Mirabelle Marie waddled through the kitchen, and directed her sneaks to the back stairway. ”We'll skip up to her room.”

Bidiane followed her, but when Mrs. Watercrow would have pushed open the door confronting them, she caught her hand.

”The divil,” said her surprised relative, ”do you want to scare the life out of me?”

”Knock,” said Bidiane, ”always, always at the door of a bedroom or a private room, but not at that of a public one such as a parlor.”

”Am I English?” exclaimed Mirabelle Marie, drawing back and regarding her in profound astonishment.

”No, but you are going to be,--or rather you are going to be a polite Frenchwoman,” said Bidiane, firmly.

Mirabelle Marie laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. She had just had presented to her, in the person of Bidiane, a delicious and first-cla.s.s joke.

Claudine came out of her room, and silently stared at them until Bidiane took her hand, when her handsome, rather sullen face brightened perceptibly.

Bidiane liked her, and some swift and keen perception told her that in the young widow she would find a more apt pupil and a more congenial a.s.sociate than in her aunt. She went into the room, and, sitting down by the window, talked at length to her of Narcisse and the Englishman.

At last she said, ”Can you see Madame de Foret's house from here?”

Mirabelle Marie, who had squatted comfortably on the bed, like an enormous toad, got up and toddled to the window. ”It's there ag'in those pines back of the river. There's no other sim'lar.”

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