A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY
BOOKS BY AMY E. BLANCHARD
_REVOLUTIONARY SERIES_
A GIRL OF ’76. A STORY OF THE EARLY PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. 331 pages.
A REVOLUTIONARY MAID. A STORY OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. 321 pages.
A DAUGHTER OF FREEDOM. A STORY OF THE LATTER PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. 312 pages.
Price, $1.50 net each.
_IN THE GIRLS’ BOOKSHELF_
ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS. A STORY. 284 pages.
ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS--SCHOOL-MATES. A STORY. 308 pages.
THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF BRIGHTWOOD. A STORY OR HOW THEY KINDLED THEIR
FIRE AND KEPT IT BURNING. 309 pages.
FAGOTS AND FLAMES. A STORY OF WINTER CAMP FIRES. 306 pages.
IN CAMP WITH THE MUSKODAY CAMP FIRE GIRLS. A STORY OF SUMMER CAMP
FIRES BY CABIN AND LAKE. 310 pages.
A GIRL SCOUT OF RED ROSE TROOP. A STORY FOR GIRL SCOUTS. 320 pages.
A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY. STORY OF A LITTLE REFUGEE IN FRANCE. 338
pages.
Each illustrated by Colored Frontispiece and with Colored Jacket.
Cloth Bound. Price, $1.35 net each.
_Also Books in the AMERICAN GIRL SERIES._
[Illustration]
A Little Maid of
Picardy
BY
AMY E. BLANCHARD
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
FRANK T. MERRILL
[Illustration]
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON CHICAGO
_Copyrighted, 1919_,
BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY
Contents
I. A GARDEN GROWS 9
II. THE FIRST BREAK 22
III. WE GO 37
IV. A LONELY NIGHT 53
V. WELL MET 68
VI. MORE WAYS THAN ONE 83
VII. A STRANGE GARRET 99
VIII. A BIT OF SKY 113
IX. SHOES 129
X. NENETTE AND RINTINTIN 146
XI. A DOG AND HIS DAY 166
XII. TERROR BY NIGHT 182
XIII. OLD FRIENDS AND NEW 198
XIV. LE-COIN-DU-PRES 215
XV. GASPARD 234
XVI. UPS AND DOWNS 250
XVII. THE RETURN 266
XVIII. OLD FOLKS AT HOME 283
XIX. JOY 303
XX. THE END IS PEACE 321
A Little Maid of Picardy
CHAPTER I
A GARDEN GROWS
“Il y a dans ce village
Une enfant a l’œil noir.
C’est Jeanne au frais visage;
Elle chant matin et soir.
Elle est rieuse et belle,
Et dans nos environs
Tout le monde l’appelle
La fillette au chansons.
Tra la la--”
sang Lucie as she sat on a stone bench under a sheltering cherry tree.
The “tra la la” suddenly ceased at a stir of the branches on the other
side. Lucie glanced up with a twinkle in her eyes and changed the song
to “Way down upon the Swanee river.”
“Lucie, Lucie, what are those funny words you sing?” called some one
from over the wall.
“_Ma foi_, what ignorance!” returned Lucie with an uplift of her
eyebrows. “As if one could not tell. Did you never hear ‘the Old Folks
at Home’?”
“What is this ‘Ole folk zat ome?’ I do not know,” returned the voice.
Lucie laughed. “Come over, come over, Annette, and I will teach it to
you. It will be droll to hear you sing it.”
Annette climbed nimbly to the top of the stone wall, and presently
dropped to her feet, avoiding bushes and vines in order to make her way
to where Lucie was sitting. “It is droll enough to hear you sing it,”
she remarked. “It is in English of course.”
“American English; a song my mother often sings and which every one
knows over there in the United States.”
“And you will teach it to me, this song? I shall like to sing it for
grandfather. How he will be amused when he hears it.”
“Then repeat after me.”
This Annette essayed to do, but her efforts brought such peals of
laughter from Lucie that she stopped with a pout. “How you are a silly
one,” exclaimed she. “Me, I am all French. Can I then be expected to
know English? If you will perhaps write the words for me I may then be
able to say them, but when you speak so fast and run the words together
at such a rate I cannot follow you.” She produced a piece of paper and
a stub of pencil. Lucie carefully wrote out the first line, handed the
paper back to Annette and waited with a gleeful smile.
“Vay don oopon ze Svanay reebair,” began Annette reading slowly. Then
down fluttered the paper. “I cannot,” she cried. “This English is a
monster! a Turkey! a pig! a thing impossible. I do not see how you can
understand or speak it.”
“I speak it as well as I do French,” returned Lucie proudly. “Mamma
wishes that I shall, for one day, behold! we go to her home to that
same United States, then before my relations I shall not feel ashamed.
I should consider myself a silly one if I could not understand them nor
they me.”
“For me then there will arise no occasion for feeling shame, and
therefore there is no need to learn this tongue, for I have no
relatives in that country,” returned Annette complacently. “Would you
not, Lucie, prefer to be all French. Is it not a sorrow to you that you
are part English?”
“No, no,” Lucie shook her head. “I am not English, and I am very proud
of my American blood and that I have American aunts and uncles. As
for my mother, she tells me that she became French when she married a
Frenchman, so this is now her country as well as my father’s and mine.
I adore my France where I was born and where I hope I may die when
my hour comes. It is the land of my father, my mother, my dear old
grandfather. No, you cannot say I am English, Annette.”
This outbreak entirely satisfied Annette, who quite willingly changed
the subject when her friend proposed that they should go further into
the garden to see a certain rose now blooming gloriously. “Is it not
magnificent?” Lucie asked as they stopped before the bush.
Annette viewed it with admiration. “It is truly,” she acknowledged,
“more beautiful than my grandfather’s. Now he will be envious, that
poor grandfather, for ours has not half the number of blooms.”
“They are very droll, those two old ones, your grandfather and mine,”
remarked Lucie. “To hear them argue over a bed of cabbages one would
think them the most important things in the world. They are never so
happy as when they are discussing the merits of their gardens. For my
part I cannot see that one is better than the other. They grow; there
is enough and more than enough for our use, so what does it matter?
Here comes Paulette now to gather vegetables. Shall we help her to pick
the peas, Annette?”
“And shell them afterward?”
“Why yes, if you will.”
Paulette, rugged of feature, brown of skin, sharp-eyed and capable,
came forward with a basket on her arm. She wore a stuff skirt, a huge
apron, a stout sacque and a little cap. Her face was rather grave and
stern until she smiled, then her expression showed a kindly humor.
“May we help you gather the peas, Paulette?” asked Lucie, balancing
herself on one foot.
Paulette scanned the vines. “Yes, if you will be careful to pick only
the well-filled pods. One may not take those not fully matured. Guard
well against that.”
“We know and we will be careful,” returned Lucie and forthwith the
three set to work, the girls using their aprons to hold the gathered
pods, Paulette giving them once in a while a sharp eye to see that they
performed their task properly.
At last when peas, carrots, onions, lettuce had been gathered Paulette
carried them into the house and the little girls sat down again on the
stone bench to shell the peas. Paulette meantime bustled in and out
to bring water, to wash the lettuce and swing it around and around in
a wire basket that it might be freed from all moisture, to scrape the
little potatoes, to pick over the herbs for the ragout. The warm air
was scented with odors from the garden, the rose-bushes, the clambering
vines and mellowing fruit. The two girls chattered away like magpies
about pleasant, homely things: their lessons, their pets, the growing
garden, the good curé, the kind nuns. Outside the white wall the noises
from the long street seemed only sociable sounds. Carts rattled along,
children called to one another, men tramped home from the factories to
their midday meal, stopping their whistling or singing to greet some
friend. All this made a pleasant accompaniment to the drone of bees,
and the drowsy crooning of hens in the chicken yard. There were homely,
suggestive sounds, too, from the kitchens.
The two little girls, Lucie Du Bois and Annette Le Brun, were great
friends, as might be surmised since they were next door neighbors.
Lucie, her father and mother, her grandfather, Paulette, their maid and
her son Jean, occupied a comfortable, square house whose red-tiled roof
could be seen when winter stripped the leaves from the trees, but which
in summer was almost hidden by green. A white stucco wall separated the
garden from that of the Le Bruns, but the wall was not an impassable
barrier, for the two girls, by means of a ladder, or, when the ladder
was lacking, by means of overhanging branches, were able to climb back
and forth.
Dark-haired, brown-eyed Annette lived with her grandparents. She was
a bright, ardent little soul, adoring her best friend, Lucie, who
excelled her in imagination and sometimes surprised her by her vivid
way of telling things. Lucie, too, had dark eyes like her father’s,
but her hair was a soft golden brown like her mother’s. She was about
fourteen, Annette a year older. While the latter had legends of the
saints at her tongue’s end, Lucie had far wider information concerning
more modern tales. She never tired of hearing from her mother stories
of the Indians and of her pioneer forefathers. These stories she would
retell to Annette, who listened wide-eyed. Moreover there was a small
collection of her mother’s girlhood books which Lucie was permitted to
have and from which she gained a knowledge not only of her mother’s
native tongue, but of things American. Therefore to Annette she was
a very superior person whose companionship she greatly enjoyed, and
preferred to that of any other girl she knew.
The big factory with the tall chimney over to the west belonged to
the Du Boises; that on the other side of the town to the Le Bruns.
Grandfather Du Bois had retired from active business, but still made a
daily visit to the rooms where clattering machines whizzed and whirled
all day long. He liked to talk over affairs with his son who had taken
his place in the business. Monsieur Le Brun still remained head of his
firm, having no son to succeed him, though he often spoke of the day
when Annette should marry and a _petit fils_ should relieve him of his
cares.
The task of shelling the peas was far from being a disagreeable one,
for while their fingers split the fresh pods and raked the pale green
globes from them, the two girls chattered incessantly and at last began
the subject which they often discussed but never failed to enjoy. This
time it was Annette who began by asking: “Have you really made up your
mind which saint you prefer?”
“For me it is Saint Elizabeth of Hungary or Saint Ursula,” replied
Lucie. “I adore that story of the loaves of bread turned into roses,
and I also like Saint Ursula for she was of Brittany. It must have been
wonderful to see her leading her eleven thousand virgins.”
“You would like to do that sort of thing, wouldn’t you, my Lucie? Have
you no saint of your own country that you would like above all others?”
“My own country? France is my country.”
“I mean that country of the United States that you are always talking
about.”
“How you are foolish,” returned Lucie crossly. “Why do you try to
separate me from the land of my birth? I think you are very unkind. I
don’t believe you want to acknowledge me as a compatriot.”
Annette looked a trifle abashed. She had really meant only to tease.
“Well,” she began to hunt around for an excuse, “you are continually
telling me of its wonders, and you speak of the characters in those
story books as if you were intimately acquainted with them, that Jo and
her sisters in that ‘Leetle Veemen’ you so like.”
“Of course I am intimately acquainted with them, for I have read that
book many times. One may have friends anywhere, but that does not mean
one must adopt their countries.”
This argument proved Lucie’s case and Annette changed the subject back
again to the favorite saints. “If you will have a sweet saint of France
there is Saint Genevieve,” she remarked. “It was she whose prayers
delivered Paris from Attila the Hun, you remember.”
“Yes, she is very nice,” Lucie acknowledged somewhat flippantly, not
being in a mood to accept any suggestion, “but you see every one knows
about her. I should like to have as my favorite some one more uncommon.
I think I shall ask Sister Marie Ottilia to find me a saint that I can
feel very near to because she has not too many followers.” She set the
subject aside with an air of finality, and Annette felt that this time
she had really gone too far in her desire to tease.
The two were silent till at last Lucie said: “There, Annette, these
are the last. I will take them in. The pods Paulette can give to the
animals. See, already my pigeons are coming for a share of the peas. I
can give them only a few, for Paulette will scold if she thinks I am
wasting them. She has a sharp eye for food, that Paulette. Wait for me,
Annette, I will bring a book.”
Emboldened by this overture of peace Annette ventured to say: “Not
‘Leetle Veemen.’ I cannot understand that.”
Lucie paused with the brown basin of peas in her hand and threw a
laughing glance over her shoulder. “Perhaps you would better like
something of Dickens,” she said.
“O, that Deekens! He is an impossible!” cried Annette, throwing out her
hands with a gesture of rejection. “Not that, I beg of you.” Lucie made
no reply but continued on her way to the kitchen. She was gone some
time but at last returned with a green book under arm. She showed the
title on the back to Annette with a gleeful laugh.
“_Ma foi_ but you are a tease,” cried Annette. “I will not remain. I
will go home at once.” She jumped up in order to carry out her decision.
Lucie forced her back upon the seat. “And why am I not to tease as well
as you? To read does not hurt one’s feelings, but to be denied one’s
country does,” she said.
“Did I really hurt your feelings?” Annette asked contritely.
“Would it not hurt your feelings if one declared you did not belong to
your native country, to France?”
“It would most surely,” Annette was obliged to confess, “but I was only
teasing my Lucie. As for this Deekens, he bewilders, he confuses me. Is
it because you are angry with me and wish me to go that you bring this
so impossible book?”
“But this you know could not be,” Lucie assured her. “Wait till I have
told you. I asked my mother to suggest something from her books which
would be interesting to both you and me and she gave me this which
she tells me is quite unlike any of the others of this Dickens. It is
called ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and is about the French Revolution. The
heroine has my own name of Lucie. My mother says the story is exciting
beyond words.”
“_Voila une autre chose_,” returned Annette, accepting the situation
without further protest. “Let us then proceed.”
Usually Lucie’s methods of translation were very free, to say the
least. Her way was to skim over a page as rapidly as possible,
then relate the contents in her own words. Anything that appeared
uninteresting she skipped, consequently the abridged tale which
Annette heard was shorn of many of its features and she was frequently
bewildered in trying to keep track of the plot and the characters.
If she complained of this Lucie would laboriously try to translate
literally, which was more bewildering still. Both girls, however,
enjoyed such translations as Lucie took pains to make clear. The usual
manner would run something like this, Lucie turning over the leaves
rapidly:
“It was in the year 1775. There was a man in a coach who had a message
brought to him. He was to meet a young lady at Dover.”
“A young man was this?” Annette queried.
“No, an old. He was a banker or something. He had to tell the young
lady that her father was living.”
“Didn’t she want him to be living?”
“That I do not know yet, but anyway she thought him dead. He had been
in prison for eighteen years.”
“_Ma foi_, Lucie, for what was he imprisoned? He must have been a very
bad man. Eighteen years! A lifetime.”
“It doesn’t say why he was imprisoned. He may not have been a wicked
person. Anyway they went to see him. He was in a tower making shoes.”
“Shoes? My Lucie, why should he make shoes?”
“O, just to pass away the time.”
“But so curious is this. It would not entertain me to spend my time
making shoes.”
“It might if you wanted to pass away the time and could find nothing
else to do. I should think it rather interesting myself.”
“For me I should prefer something else; dresses, maybe, or hats. I
should not mind at all making hats.”
“Men’s hats or ladies’ hats? Straw hats or what?”
“O, not men’s hats of course, beautiful hats upon which one could use
ribbons and lace flowers.”
“Where could you get all those things if you were in prison?”
“I haven’t an idea. I suppose in the same manner that the man got
leather for the shoes. Does it tell?”
“Not yet. Maybe it will. We shall see.” So the tale went on till the
midday meal was ready and a voice from the other side of the wall
called: “Annette, Annette, _le dejeuner est servi_.” Then over the wall
climbed Annette, leaving the fortunes of Lucie Manette, Evremonde and
Sidney Carton to be followed another day.