Petulantly Nancy Howard cast aside her letter and buried her chin in her
cupped palms.
“Oh, the woes of having a learned father!” she sighed. “Here is Joe’s
letter, telling me how everything is starting up at home; and here am I,
Nancy Howard, buried in this picturesque, polyglot wilderness, just
because my sire feels himself moved to take a vacation from medicine in
order to study history at first hand! I wish he would let his stupid
monograph go to the winds, and take me home in time for the Leighton’s
dinner, next week.”
She picked up the scattered sheets of her letter and ran them over once
more, holding up her left hand, as she did so, to cut off the dazzling
sunshine from the white paper. It was a pretty hand, slim, strong and
tapering. Prettier still was her head, erect and crowned with piles of
reddish-brown hair. It was not without apparent reason that Nancy Howard
had been, for the past year, one of the most popular girls of her social
circle at home.
At the third page, her brows wrinkled thoughtfully. Dropping the loose
sheets into her lap, she once more fell to musing aloud.
“It does seem to me that Joe is seeing a good deal of Persis Routh. I
never thought he liked her especially well. But anyway I am out of all
the fun. Space isn’t the only thing that makes distance. Up here, I am
at least two hundred years away from home. How long have I been here?
Eight, no, nine days.” Suddenly she laughed. “At least, it has been a
period of fasting and meditation. I believe I’ll count it as a novena to
the Good Sainte Anne. Perhaps she will manufacture a miracle in my
behalf, and get up a little excitement for me. Fancy an excitement in
this place!”
“B’jour, mam’selle.”
Nancy turned alertly, as the voice broke in upon her musings.
“Bon jour, madame,” she answered, with a painstaking French which laid
careful stress upon each silent letter and separated the words into an
equal number of distinct sentences. At present, it was her latest
linguistic accomplishment, and she aired it with manifest pride.
Pausing midway over the stile, the old woman brushed her face with the
apron that hung above her tucked-up skirt.
“Why not you go to the church?” she asked.
Nancy breathed a sigh of relief, as the talk lapsed into her mother
tongue. Like most Americans, she preferred that conversational
eccentricities should be entirely upon the other side, and she
questioned how far she could go upon the strength of her own three
words. Nevertheless, she framed her reply on the idioms of her
companion.
“Why for should I go?”
The woman set down her pail of water on the top step of the stile. Then
she planted herself just below it, with her coarse boots resting on the
crisp brown turf.
“We go to church, all the days,” she admonished Nancy sternly.
The girl smiled irrepressibly.
“So I have noticed,” she said, half under her breath. Then she added
hastily, “But we do not.”
“Are you Catholique?”
Nancy shook her head.
“Too bad! But surely you can pray in any church.”
This time, Nancy felt a rebuke.
“Yes,” she assented; “but I am not used to going, every day.”
“No. No?” The second _no_ was plainly interrogative. “But the Good
Sainte Anne only does those miracle to them that pray without ceasing.”
The girl faced about sharply.
“Madame Gagnier, have you ever seen a miracle?”
The wide flat hat nodded assent.
“A real, true miracle?”
“Yes, so many.”
“Hh! I’d like to see one.”
Two keen old eyes peered up at her from beneath the wide hat.
“Mam’selle does not believe?”