I
spoke the truth: I _have_ no such lover. But you I will
not accept as one; your very sight is already hateful
to me." And turning, with flushed cheek and gleaming
eyes, she entered the cosy, cleanly-kept little cottage
of her father. But she soon reflected that she had been
guilty of an unpardonably inhospitable act in not asking
the strangers to enter. Suddenly turning, she walked
rapidly back, and overtook the crest-fallen wooer and
his companion, and said in a voice from which every trace
of her late anger had disappeared.
"Entrez, Messieurs."
M. Riel's countenance speedily lost its gloom, and,
respectfully touching his hat, he said:
"Oui, Mademoiselle, avec le plus grand plaisir." Tripping
lightly ahead she announced the two strangers, and then
returned, going to the bars where the cows were lowing,
waiting to be milked. The persistent sportsman had not
by any means made up his mind to desist in the wooing.
"The colt shies," he murmured, "when she first sees the
halter. Presently she becomes tractable enough." Then,
while he sat waiting for the evening meal, blithely
through the hush of the exquisite evening came the voice
of the girl. She was singing from _La Claire Fontaine_:
"A la claire fontaine
Je m'allait promener,
J'ai trouve l'eau si belle
Que je me suis baigne."
Her song ended with her work, and as she passed the
strangers, with her two flowing pails of yellow milk,
Riel whispered softly, as he touched her sweet little
hand:
"Ah, ma petite amie!"
The same flash came in her eyes, the same proud blood
mantled through the dusk of her cheek, but she restrained
herself.
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