Alice of Old Vincennes | Page 7

close to Alice. She was almost as tall as he.
"The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed face with a red-flowered cotton handkerchief; "and from the look of the sky yonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How is Madame Roussillon to-day?"
"She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well," said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bake pies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but you needn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for your teeth!"
"My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hours since--some broiled young squirrels with cress, sent me by Rene de Ronville. He never forgets his old father."
"Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day every time I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took out a pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so good smelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?"
"How could I know, my child?"
"Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beret get.'"
"Why so, daughter?"
"Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told Mother Roussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble about it."
"Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill the taste for these silly romances."
"I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it's no use; your books are dull and stupidly heavy. What do I care about something that a queer lot of saints did hundreds of years ago in times of plague and famine? Saints must have been poky people, and it is poky people who care to read about them, I think. I like reading about brave, heroic men and beautiful women, and war and love."
Pere Beret looked away with a curious expression in his face, his eyes half closed.
"And I'll tell you now, Father Beret," Alice went on after a pause, "no more claret and pies do you get until I can have my own sort of books back again to read as I please." She stamped her moccasin-shod foot with decided energy.
The good priest broke into a hearty laugh, and taking off his cap of grass-straw mechanically scratched his bald head. He looked at the tall, strong girl before him for a moment or two, and it would have been hard for the best physiognomist to decide just how much of approval and how much of disapproval that look really signified.
Although, as Father Beret had said, the sun's heat was violent, causing that gentle soul to pass his bundled handkerchief with a wiping circular motion over his bald and bedewed pate, the wind was momently freshening, while up from behind the trees on the horizon beyond the river, a cloud was rising blue-black, tumbled, and grim against the sky.
"Well," said the priest, evidently trying hard to exchange his laugh for a look of regretful resignation, "you will have your own way, my child, and--"
"Then you will have pies galore and no end of claret!" she interrupted, at the same time stepping to the withe-tied and peg- latched gate of the yard and opening it. "Come in, you dear, good Father, before the rain shall begin, and sit with me on the gallery" (the creole word for veranda) "till the storm is over."
Father Beret seemed not loath to enter, albeit he offered a weak protest against delaying some task he had in hand. Alice reached forth and pulled him in, then reclosed the queer little gate and pegged it. She caressingly passed her arm through his and looked into his weather-stained old face with childlike affection.
There was not a photographer's camera to be had in those days; but what if a tourist with one in hand could have been there to take a snapshot at the priest and the maiden as they walked arm in arm to that squat little veranda! The picture to-day would be worth its weight in a first-water diamond. It would include the cabin, the cherry-tree, a glimpse of the raw, wild background and a sharp portrait-group of Pere Beret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photograph of the same spot now would give a perfect impression of the historic atmosphere, color and conditions which cannot be set in words. But we must not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly trained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes on the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had his printed story! What a