11 Isle Perdrix

FAR away from grimy New England manufacturing towns, from coal smoke, and roaring furnaces, and brisk Yankee trade and bustle, from circuses and flying trapeze, there rests, rock-bound, and bare, and bleak, a green dot in a blue waste of waters—Isle Perdrix. Lonely and barren, it rears its craggy headland, crowned with stunted spruce and dwarf-cedars, and runs out its sandy spits and tongues, like an ugly, sprawling spider, into the chilly waters of Bay Chalette. Through the brief Canadian summer, through the long snow-bound Canadian winter, with the fierce August suns beating and blistering it, with dank sea-fogs mapping it, with whirling snow storms shrouding it, Isle Perdrix rests placid, unchanged, almost unchangeable, the high tides of Bay Chalette threatening sometimes to rise in their might and sweep it away, altogether, into the stormy Atlantic beyond.

Long ago, when all this Canadian land was French, and the beautiful language the only one spoken, it had been christened Isle Perdrix. Later, with Irish, and English, and Scotch immigration, to confound all names, it became Dree Island; otherwise it is unaltered, since fifty, sixty, more years ago. Its headland light burns as of yore, a beacon in dark and dangerous Bay Chalette its resident physician is still resident, as when in that far-off time it was a quarantine station, and men and women died in the long sheds, erected in the sands, of “ship fever,” faster than hands could bury them. It is an island undermined with graves, haunted by ghostly memories. The world moves, but it moves languidly about Dree Island. It is a quarantine station still, but its hospitals have stood empty for the past decade of years; emigrant ships come rarely now to dull St. Gildas, and Dr. Macdonald finds his office pretty well a sinecure. He lives there still though, a sort of family Robinson Crusoe, in his cottage, practices as he gets it over in St. Gildas, and brings up his two boys in their breezy home, and would not change his secluded, peaceful, plodding life to be made viceroy of all Her Majesty’s dominions.

Dr. Macdonald’s island castle is a cottage—a long, white cottage, only one story and an attic high. But though low, it is lengthy, and contains some nine or ten pretty rooms, and always a spare chamber for the pilgrim and the stranger within its gates. They come sometimes to sketch, and fish, and shoot—bronzed and bearded pilgrims, artists from the States, officers from Ottawa and Montreal, and go away charmed with the doctor, the house, the cuisine, the sport, the sea. He would be difficult indeed whom Dr. Angus Macdonald’s genial manners, and Madam Aloysia’s cookery would fail to charm. Most kindly of hosts, most gentle of gentlemen, is the dreamy doctor, and in her way “Ma’am Weesy “—so the children shorten her stately baptismal—is a cordon bleu.

The cottage sits comfortably in a garden, and the garden is shut in on the north and east by craggy bluffs, that break the force of the beetling Atlantic winds. Behind is a vegetable garden, with currant and goose-berry bushes, flourishing among the potatoes and cabbages; in front is a flower garden—such flowers as with infinite coaxing will consent to blossom in so bleak a spot. Hardy old-fashioned poppies and dahlias, London pride, queen of the meadow, bachelor buttons, and lilac trees—these with southern sunshine and western breezes, brighten the island-garden for three or four months out of the twelve. A great picturesque trail of hop-vine and scarlet runner drapes the porch, and twines in pretty festoons round the window of the doctor’s study. Take it for all in all, the bearded artists, who carry away so many sketches of it in their portfolios, may be sincere enough in pronouncing it one of the most capital little hermitages the round world holds.

It is a July morning—forenoon rather—for eleven has struck by the doctor’s clock. Peace reigns on Isle Perdrix, a peace that may almost be felt, a great calm of winds and sea. The summer sky is without a cloud; it is blue, blue, blue, and flecked with rolling billows of white wool-a languid zephyr, with the saline freshness of the ocean, just stirs the hop-vines, but faintly, as if it too were a-weary in the unusual heat. Little baby wave lets lap with murmurous motion upon the gray sands—the gulls that whirl and circle round the island do not even shriek.

Peace reigns too within the cottage, the doctor is from home, the boys are at St. Gildas, and the other disturbing element of the household is—well, Ma’am Weesy does not exactly know where, but where she will remain she devoutly hopes for another hour or two. Vain hope—as the thought crosses the old woman’s mind, there comes the sound of shrill, sweet singing, a quick rush and patter of small feet, a shout, and there whirls into the cottage kitchen a girl of twelve, out of breath, flushed with running, but singing her chorus still—
“Here’s to the wind that blows,
And the ship that goes,
And the lass that loves a sailor.”

“Oh, Ma’am Weesy !” cries this breathless apparition, “where is Johnny?”

She stands in the doorway directly in the stream of yellow morning sunshine, her sailor hat on the back of her head—a charming head “sunning over with curls,” and looks with two eyes as blue and bright as the July sky itself, into the old woman’s face.

She is a charming vision altogether, a tall, slim girl, in a blue print dress made sailor-fashion, and trimmed with white braid, a strap of crimson leather belting it about the slender waist. Long ringlets of flaxen fairness fall until they touch this belt. The face is bewitching, so fair, so spirited, so full of life and eagerness, and joyous healthful youth. It matches the blonde hair and sky-blue eyes—it is all rose-pink and pearl-white.

Ma’am Weesy pauses in her work with a sort of groan. She is peeling potatoes for dinner, and throwing them into a tin pan of cold water beside her. The sunny kitchen is a gem of cleanliness and comfort; Ma’am Weesy herself is a little brown old person of fifty, as active and agile as a young girl, and housekeeper for fifteen years in the doctor’s cottage. She is monarch of all she surveys at present, for Madame Macdonald is dead, and an autocratic ruler. That kitchen “interior” is a picture; everything it contains glows and gleams again with friction, tinware takes on the brilliance of silver, the rows of dishes sparkle in the sunshine. In the place of honor, in a gilt frame, hangs her patron, that handsome Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, to whom in all her difficulties, culinary as well as conscientious, she is accustomed to promptly, not to say peremptorily, appeal.

She casts an imploring glance at him now, for this youthful person is the one of all the family, who rasps and exasperates her most, but Aloysius continues to regard them with his grave smile, and responds not. “Where is Johnny?” repeats impatiently the vision in flaxen curls and sailor suit; “is he up-stairs? I can’t find him. He isn’t anywhere, and he said—you heard him yourself last night, Ma’am Weesy”—in shrill indignation “you heard him say he would take me out in the Boule-de-neige this forenoon. And now it is past eleven o’clock, and I can’t find him. Johnny! John-neee !” the shrill tones rise to an ear-splitting shriek.

“Ah, Mon Dieu!” cries out old Weesy, and covers her ears with her hands. “Mademoiselle, leave the kitchen—leave directly, I say! I will not be deafened like this. You must not come screaming at me like a sea-gull, it is not to be borne; your voice is worse than the steam whistle down at the Point in a fog. Master Jean is not here—is not here, I tell you. He went to St. Gildas right after breakfast, and has not yet returned.”

“To St. Gildas?” repeats the young person in blue, and an expression of blank despair crosses the sunny face.

Then she looks at Ma’am Weesy and brightens a bit.

“I don’t believe it,” she says, promptly.

“It is true, nevertheless, ma’amselle. I wanted coffee and sugar, and he offered to go. But he must be back by now—it is hours since he went. Go down to the Point and call. M’sieur Rene, at least, is sure to be there.”

“I don’t want M’sieur Rene,” says mademoiselle, in an aggressive tone. “I want Johnny. I think it is horrid of you, Ma’am Weesy, to go sending him for sugar and things, when you might know I’d want him. You might have sent old Tim. And now it is fourteen minutes past eleven, and the best of the day gone. You wait until you want me to shell peas for you, or rake clams, and you’ll see.”

With which dark threat this young person crushes her sailor hat with some asperity down on her pale gold curls, and turns despondently to go.

Ma’am Weesy looks after her with a chuckle; it is not always she can get rid of her thus easily, and a gad-fly about the kitchen would be less of a torment over her work than mademoiselle.

Mademoiselle, meantime, recovers her spirits with great rapidity, the moment she is out of the house, and starts off at racing speed, despite the blazing sun, to the Point. It is a lofty peak, at the extreme outer edge of a projecting tongue of land, overlooking the bay and the town, across the river, and all boats passing up or down. If the missing Johnny is on sea or shore, mademoiselle is determined he shall know she awaits him and hastens his lagging steps. So standing erect on her lofty perch, overlooking the vasty deep, she uplifts her strong young voice, and

“Johnny! Johnny-y! Johnny-y-y !” pierces the circumambient air. Even the sea-gulls pause in consternation as they listen.

“Good Heaven !” cries a voice, at last. “Stop that awful row, Snowball.” Your shrieks are enough to wake the dead.

The speaker is a youth of sixteen or so, stretched in the shadow of the great rock on which the girl stands, his hat pulled over his eyes, trying to read. Vain effort, with those maddening cries for Johnny rending the summer silence.

Snowball glances down at him, and her only answer is a still more ear-splitting and distracted appeal for the lost and longed-for “Johnny.”

“They may wake the dead if they like,” she says, disdainfully, “but they needn’t wake you. I don’t want you. Want Johnny.”

“Yes, I hear you do,” retorts the reader. “You always do want Johnny, don’t you? You want Johnny a good deal more than Johnny ever wants you.”

It is an uncivil speech, and, it may be remarked just here, that the amenities of life, as passing between M. Rene Macdonald and Mlle. Snowball Trillon, are mostly of an acid and acrid character; Open rupture indeed is often imminent, and is only avoided by the fact that the young lady is constitutionally unable to retain indignation for over five minutes at any one time. Her reply to this particularly ungallant speech, is one of, her very sweetest smiles—a smile that dances in the blue eyes, and flashes out two rows of small pearl-white teeth.

“Look here, Rene,” she says, “I wish you would, come, too. You’ll make yourself as blind as a bat, if you keep on over books forever and ever. I think I see Johnny and the batteau coming across, and we’re going to Chapeau Dieu for raspberries. Do—do put that stupid book in your pocket,” impatiently, “and come.”

“It isn’t a stupid book,” says Rene Macdonald, “and berrying is much too hard work this scorcher of a day. You’ll inveigle Johnny into a sunstroke if you don’t take care.”

“Look here!” repeats Snowball, and comes dashing down the steep side of the cliff like a young, chamois. The last five feet she takes with a flying leap, and lands like a tornado at the lad’s side. “Just look here!”

She produces from a hiding-place a basket—a market-basket of noble proportions, whips off the cover, and displays the contents.

“Sandwiches,” she says, with unction, “made of minced veal and ham, lovely and thin-cold chicken pie, pound cake-all stolen from Ma’am Weesy, Rene!—biscuits, and a blueberry tart! The basket is full—full—I packed it myself. It’s for our lunch, And the raspberries are thick—thick, Rene, over on the Banens. Johnny was there yesterday, and says so. And Weesy is going to make jam, and says we can have raspberry shortcake every evening for a week. For a week—think of that!”

She is fairly dancing with eagerness as she speaks, her great blue eyes flash like stars, her whole piquant, spirited face aglow-and flushed. Even Rene—Rene the phlegmatic—catches a little of her enthusiasm. Raspberry shortcake every day for a week—and raspberry jam for ever after! His resolution staggers—he hesitates—he is lost!

“Do come!” reiterates Snowball, and eyes and lips, and clasped hands repeat the prayer. She looks lovely as she stands in that beseeching attitude, but it is not her beauty, nor her entreating tone that moves the obdurate Rene—it is the sweet prospect of shortcake and jam.

“Well,” he says, condescendingly, “I don’t care if I do. It’s always easier yielding than rowing with you, and papa told me to keep you and Jack out of mischief whenever I got a chance.”

He is a slender, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, French looking boy, very like his dead Canadian mother—not exactly handsome, and yet sufficiently attractive, with that broad, pale forehead, and those dark, luminous eyes. All sort of misty, dreamy ideas float behind that thoughtful-looking brow; he is quite a prodigy of industry and talent, head boy of St. Francis College, over at St. Gildas, where he and his brother are students.

“There’s Johnny, now!” cries Snowball, in accents of exquisite delight. She drops the basket and bounds away fleet as a fawn. “Johnny! Johnny!” she calls, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, and calling until I am hoarse. How could you be so awfully horrid as to go to St. Gildas and never tell me?”

“Hadn’t time,” responds Master Johnny, resting on the gunwale of his boat, the “Bottle-de-neige.” “Weesy wanted her groceries in no end of a hurry. I’m here now, though; what do you want?”

John Macdonald is fourteen years old, and is at, this moment, perhaps, the handsomest boy in Canada. His face is simply beautiful: He is handsomer even, in his boyish fashion, than the pretty girl who stands beside him. He is not in the least like his brother; he is taller at fourteen than Rene at sixteen—he is fair, like his Scottish forefathers, with sea-gray eyes, and a face perfect enough, in form and color, for an ideal god. His hair light brown, profuse and curling, his skin is tanned by much exposure to sea and sun and wind, and a certain simplicity and unconsciousness of his own good looks lends a last charm to a face that wins all hearts at sight.

“What do I want?” repeats Snowball, fixing two reproachful eyes on the placid countenance before her; “that’s a question for you to sit there and ask without a blush, isn’t it?”

“Don’t see anything to blush about,” retorts Johnny, with a grim; “it’s too hot to go to Chapeau Dieu, if that’s what’s the matter. The sun is a blazer 011 the water, let me tell you.”

“Oh, Johnny,” in blankest disappointment, “dearest Johnny, don’t say so. And after all the trouble I’ve had, too—fixing the loveliest lunch—chicken-pie, tarts and everything! Oh, Johnny, don’t back out at the last minute.”

Tears spring into the blue, beseeching eyes, the hands clasp again, she stands a picture of heart-broken supplication before him.

“Oh, all right,” says Johnny, who hates tears. “I wouldn’t cry about it if I were you. Where’s Rene? Shinning up the tree of knowledge, as usual, I suppose.”

“He’s coming too. Johnny, you’re a darling!” cries Snowball, in a rapture; “don’t let us lose a minute; the lunch basket is here. It is half-past eleven—we ought to have been off two hours ago.”

“I must go up to the house with the things,” says Johnny, unmoved by all this adulation. “You and Rene can pile in and wait. I won’t be a minute.”

“Don’t tell Weesy where we’re going,” calls Snowball after him; “she hates me to go berrying, because I tear my clothes and stain my stockings. And, for goodness sake, hurry up. It will be two o’clock now before we get there, do your best.”

“Which I’m not going to do it, in the present state of the thermometer,” responds Johnny, leisurely taking up his parcels, and leisurely departing. He is never in hurry, this boy, and is thereby a striking contrast to Snowball, who always is. Extremes meet indeed, in their case, for they are as utterly unlike in most ways, as boy and girl can well be. In all conflict of opinion between them, it may be added, mademoiselle invariably comes off victorious. It is always easier, as Rene has said, and as Johnny knows, where she is concerned, to yield than to do battle. Not that Rene ever yields—he and Snowball fight it out to the bitter end, and Rene will be minded, or know the reason why.

The batteau is large for that sort of boat, carries a small sail, is a beauty in her way, and the idol of young John Macdonald’s heart.

“She walks the water like a thing of life,” he is fond of quoting, gazing at her with glistening eyes, and it is the only poetry he is ever guilty of quoting. She is painted virgin white, is as clean and dry as old Weesy’s kitchen, and carries her name in gilt letters on her stern, “Boule-de-neige.” The original Boule-de-neige, with Rene, “piles in” according to the skipper’s orders, and with the precious basket stowed away, sit and wait his return. Snowball taps impatiently with one slim, sandaled foot.

Rene impassively reads.

“What tiresome book have you got now!” demands Snowball, in a resentful tone. “I do think, Rene, you are the stupidest boy that ever lived, and read the stupidest books that ever were printed.”

“Thanks!—I mean for self and books,” retorts Rene, “you, who never open a book, are a judge, of course.”

“What is that?”

“Shakespeare’s tragedies, mademoiselle.”

“There wilI be another tragedy in this boat, in five minutes if you don’t put it in your pocket. Look at that sky, look at this sea, feel the velvety wind freshening and see yourself, a great hobbledehoy, who can sit and read dull old English murders in the face of it all! I suppose you are at Macbeth; I think Lady Macbeth would have been a splendid wife for you, Rene.”

Rene grunts, assent or dissent, as she likes to take it, and reads on.

“Stern, and sulky, and horrid. Oh, Rene-be good natured for once—only for once—by way of a change; and shut up that book, and talk like a Christian—do!”

“Like a noodle, if I talk to you. It is polite to adapt one’s conversation to one’s company. And I would rather not. It is triste to talk rubbish. Speech is silver, silence is gold.”

“Here is Johnny,” cries Snowball, joyfully; “now we will have a little rational conversation—for which, Dieu merci! I sometimes wonder what I should do without Johnny. If I had to live here—if I had to live on this island alone with you, Rene, do you know what would happen?”

“That you would drive me to jump over Headland Point to escape your everlasting chatter, I dare say,” says Rene.

“That you would drive me into melancholy madness with your silence, and your dismal books. Fancy yourself stalking about like your favorite Hamlet, in a black velvet dressing-gown, and me, like a gloomy Ophelia, with a wreath of sun-flowers and sea-weed in my hair, trailing after, singing tail-ends of songs out of tune.”

Something in this picture tickles the not too easily aroused sense of humor latent in Dr. Macdonald’s elder son.

Rather to the surprise of Snowball, who does not mean to be funny, he throws back his dark head, and laughs outright. And Rene Macdonald has a wonderfully pleasant and mellow laugh.

“What’s the joke?” asks Johnny, bearing down upon them rapidly. “Got the basket, Snowball? Yes, I see Bear a hand, Rene, old boy. Hooray, off she goes!”

The boat slips easily off the shelving beach, and out into the shining waters of Bay Chalette. A fresh breeze has sprung up, and tempers the fierce heat of the noon day sun. The sail is set, and away the pretty Boule-de neige flies in the teeth of the brisk breeze.

Johnny is past-master of the art of handling a boat; he and his batteau are known everywhere, for miles along the coast. He has been a toiler of the sea ever since he was seven years old.

“You didn’t tell Weesy, did you?” asks Snowball, as they fly along at a spanking rate.

“She didn’t ask me,” answers Johnny. “I told her we were all going out for a sail, and wouldn’t be back until dark. She cast a grateful look at St. Aloysius, over the chimney, and murmured a prayer of thanks-giving: Have you brought tin pails for the berries?—yes, I see—all right.”

They fly along. And presently Snowball, lying idly over the side, her sailor hat well back on her head, defiant alike of sun and wind, breaks into a song, and presently Johnny joins in the chorus. It is a sailor’s song—a monotonous chant the French sailors sing along the wharves of St. Gildas, as they coil down ropes, and the two fresh young voices blend sweetly, and float over the summer waters. And still a little later Rene pockets his book, and his clear tenor adds force to the refrain as they rapidly increase the distance between themselves and Isle Perdrix.”

Where are you going to land, Johnny?” he asks, at length. “At Sugar Scoop beach, I suppose?”

“No, don’t, Johnny,” cuts in Snowball, who is nothing if not contradictory, “land at Needle’s Point, like a good fellow.”

“Sha’n’t,” returns Johnny. “I don’t want to stove a hole in the bottom of the batteau. Needle’s Point, indeed! the worst bit of beach all a long Chapeau Dieu. Catch me!”

“But I say you shall!” cries Snowball, sitting up, and violently excited all in a moment. “You must. Never mind the batteau—at least she won’t get a hole in her. If you land at Sugar Scoop we will have two full miles to walk to Raspberry Plains—two—full—miles,” says mademoiselle, gesticulating wildly, “in this blazing hot sun. Whereas, if you land at Needle’s Point——”

“The Boule-de-neige is ruined for life,” interposes Rene. “Don’t you mind her, Johnny; she’s always a little cracked.”

“You must mind me, Johnny! If you land at Sugar Scoop I—I’ll sit right here!” cries Snowball, vindictively. “I’ll never stir. And I’ll keep the lunch basket—it’s mine, anyhow—I put it up. And I’ll eat everything! I won’t walk two miles. It’s nearly two o’clock now; it would be four when we got there. We would just have time for one look at the berries, and then march back again! You shall land at Needle’s Point, or you needn’t land at all. There!”

Johnny shrugs his shoulders resignedly. When the torrent of Snowball’s angry eloquence floods him after this fashion, Johnny always gives up. Anything for a quiet life, is his peaceful motto. But the belligerent fire awakes within the less-yielding Rene.

“Johnny,” he says, in an ominously quiet tone, “let us put her ashore,” indicating mademoiselle by a scornful gesture, “at her beloved Needle’s Point, and you and I will take the boat round to Sugar Scoop beach. It will be madness to run the batteau up on those rocks.”

Snowball starts to her feet, defiance flashing in the azure eyes, flushing the rose-pink cheeks to angry crimson.

“Yes, Johnny,” she cries out, “put me ashore at Needle’s Point; put me ashore here, anywhere; but mind”—wildest wrath flaming upon Rene—”I keep the basket. No matter what you do, or where you put me, I keep the lunch basket.”

“Oh, stow all that!” says the badgered but pacific Johnny. “Sit down, Snowball; do you want to upset yourself and your precious lunch basket into the bay? Let her alone, Rene; it’s never any use fighting with her; you know she’ll have her way, if she dies for it. I’ll land you at Needle’s Point or on top of Chapeau Dieu, if you like, Snowball, only, for goodness’ sake, don’t make such an awful row.”

“Very well,” says Rene ; “it is you who will repent not I. The batteau is yours. If you like to scuttle her——”

His shoulders go up for a moment expressively; then he pulls out his book, and relapses into dignity—and Shakespeare.

“I guess it won’t be so bad as that. It will be high tide when we get there, and I’ll manage to run her up.” Thus hopefully, Johnny, and thus, in silence, the rest of the voyage is performed.

Chapeau Dieu—so called from its fancied resemblance to a cardinal’s hat—is a mountain of ponderous proportions, as to circumference, though nothing remarkable as to height. Its base is the terror of all mariners and coasters—rock-bound, beetling, undermined with sunken reefs; a spot marked dangerous on all charts; a place to be given the widest possible berth on a dark night or a foggy day. Many, many good ships have lain their bones to rest forever in the seething reefs that encircle Chapeau Dieu. But the mountain is famous, the country round, as a place for picnics, berrying parties, and the like, though anxious parents tremble a little, even in the sunniest weather, at thought of their young people there. For sudden squalls have been known to rise, and gay pleasure-boats, with their merry crews, have gone down in one dreadful minute, to be seen no more. There is but one safe landing-place—Sugar Scoop beach—but Snowball will none of it; so, perforce, they must try the more dangerous Needle’s Point.

They reach it—a black jagged ledge, the stately cliff rising sheer above, hundreds of feet—a black, perpendicular wall of rock. It is an anxious moment, as Johnny steers the Boule-de-neige between two sheets of white churning foam, its bottom grating on the rocks as it goes. But there is no surf, and the lad is an expert, and the pretty little boat slips in like a white snake, and is safe inside the churning foam.

“You’ve done it,” says Rene, “but you’re a fool to have risked it, old boy, and a sweet time you are likely to have getting her off with the ebb tide. However, it is your lookout. Make her fast, as far out as you can. We will have a wade for it, and she will be wet to the elbows—that is some comfort.”

This last brotherly remark Snowball does not hear, being busy with her tin pails and basket. But she overtakes him at this point.

“Now then! hasn’t he done it?” she exclaims, triumphantly, “anybody could do it. I could do it—even you could do it, though you can’t do much. Hurry up, Johnny—you must be famished, I am sure,” with exaggerated sympathy and affection. “You’ve had the whole work of bringing us here, and deserve your luncheon.”

Which is unjust to Rene, who has helped manfully. A contemptuous glance, however, is his only retort—he, too, is hungry, and silence is safest, until appetite is appeased. Snowball is queen regnant of the lunch basket.

“All right,” says Johnny, “go ahead. I’ll be there. Set out the prog, Snowball—I am uncommonly sharp set.”

“Now you see,” continues Snowball to Rene, “how much better it was to land here than at the other place. But that is all over—there is nothing- more hateful than a person always trying to have his own way. Sugar Scoop is two. miles from everywhere. I do hope you’ll not be so obstinate another time, Rene, but let people judge for you who know best!”

Snowball is one of that exasperating class who never can let well enough alone; who say, “I told you so” on every occasion, with a superior look that makes you long to commit murder. Rene could throw her over the cliff at the present moment, with the utmost pleasure, but still she holds the basket, and still he holds his tongue.

“Hand us those pails,” he says, gruffly, and rather snatches them than otherwise. But there is no time Snowball feels for rebuke; Johnny is bounding up the cliff in agile leaps.

“Here is a place,” says the small vixen, “perhaps you’ll stop being sulky, M’sieur Rene, and help me to lay the things.”

Rene obeys in dignified silence, the twain work with a will, and spread chicken pie, and pound cake, and sandwiches in a tempting way. Here is a twinkling tin cup to drink out of, and a spring of ice-cold water bubbles near, so theirs is a feast for the gods.

They fall to, with appetites naturally healthful, and set painfully on edge by two hours and a half of salt sea air.

Luncheon has the soothing effect of clearing the moral atmosphere—they eat and drink, and laugh and talk, in highest good humor. Indeed, lest you should think too badly of Mademoiselle Snowball—that we have got hold of a youthful virago in fact, it may be said, that she only quarrels with Rene on principle, and for his good. She feels he needs putting down, and she puts him down accordingly. It is rather a motherly—a grandmotherly if you like—sort of thing. And she never (hardly ever) quarrels with any one else. And her wildest outburst of indignation never lasts, as has been stated, more than five minutes at any one time. It is a constitutional impossibility for Snowball to retain anger. For Johnny—she loves him and bullies him—is his chum and comrade, would die for him, or box his ears with equal readiness. She is never altogether happy away from him, while Master Jean in a general way sees her go with a sense of profound relief, and never wholly dare call his soul his own in her whirlwind presence. At the present stage of his existence he feels her overpowering affection a little too much for him, and could cheerfully dispense with—say two-thirds of it, with all the pleasure in life.

“Now, I call this splendid,” says Snowball, gathering up the fragments of the feast. “Rene, you have a watch, what’s the time?”

“Quarter past three,” answers Rene, lazily, looking at his gold repeater, a last birthday-gift from his father. “If you intend to get any raspberries to-day, it strikes me it is time you and Johnny were at it!”

“Me and Johnny!” cries Snowball, shrilly, “and you, for example—what of you, my friend?”

“I,” says Rene, pulling out the obnoxious Shakespeare, “will lie here and look at you, and improve my mind with ‘Richard the Third.’ ”

Snowball makes one flying leap, pounces upon Shakespeare, and hugs him to her breast.

“Never!” she cries, “never, while life beats in this bosom! Johnny, you help me. Will you come and pick, sir, or will you not?”

“Not,” says Rene,” much rather not. Give me back my book, Snowball!” in quick alarm. “Stop!”

She stands on the dizzy edge of the cliff, and Shakespeare is poised high—perilously high-above her head.

“Promise,” she exclaims, “promise to pick, else here I vow over the cliff Shakespeare goes, full fifty fathoms under Bay Chalette. Promise, or never see him more.”

“Snowball, you would not dare!” in angry alarm; for he knows she would dare—has dared more daring deeds than this. And Johnny stands and grins approval.

“Chuck it over, Snowball,” he says, “or make him help us—I’ll back you up.”

“One!—two!—” cries Snowball, eyes and cheeks aglow with wicked delight.” If I say three, over it goes. One!—two!—Do you promise, or——”

“Oh, confound you! yes, I promise. Give me my book!” says enraged Rene. “I would like to throw you over instead—I will, some day, if you exasperate me too far.”

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You daren’t, Rene, dearest,” laughs Snowball. She hands him the book as she speaks, knowing well he will not break his word.
“ ‘Come on, my merry men all,
we will to the greenwood hie!’ ”
she sings, gleefully, and snatches up one of the tin pails and bounds away.

Rene consigns his cherished volume to his pocket, picks up a tin pail, and prepares to follow, when a cry from Johnny-a low, hoarse, agonized cry-makes him stop. He looks. His brother stands, every trace of color fading from his face, his gray eyes wide with dismay, one flickering finger pointing seaward. Rene follows the finger, and gazes, and sees—yards away, floating out with the turning tide, farther and farther every second—the Boule-de-neige!

“Mon Dieu!” he cries, and stands stunned.

It is a moment before he can take in the full magnitude of the disaster. The boat is gone, past all recall, and they are here, lost on Chapeau Dieu.

“Good Heaven!” Rene exclaims, under his breath; “Johnny, how is this?”

“I did not make her fast,” Johnny answers, huskily. “I thought I did, but it was a hard place, and Snowball was calling. I did not make her secure—and now she is gone, my Boule-de-neige, and I may never see her again!”

There is agony, real agony, in his voice. Not for himself, in this first moment, does he care—not for the misfortune that has come upon them, that may end in darkest disaster—but for his darling, his treasure, the joy of his heart, his white idol, Boule-de-neige.

Rene says nothing; he feels for his brother’s bereavement too deeply, and consternation is in his soul. So they stand and gaze, and farther, and farther, and farther away, with the swelling tide, floats the faithless Boule-de neige!