Amy in Acadia Part 4

While Mrs. Lufkins was talking the practical Priscilla had taken out her notebook, in which she wrote the name of the station and other things that would help them.

"Do you think that your mother would like to change her plans?"

"Yes, indeed; she will think this just the thing. Probably there will be good material for sketching,--scenery, and odd people, and all that kind of thing. I am sure that she will like it."

"Thank you, Mrs. Lufkins," said Amy, as they turned away from the mistress of the little shop; and then in a particularly cheerful tone she added to Priscilla, "I feel as if I had found a gold-mine. Fritz was so very sure that he was to have a monopoly of the only French in Nova Scotia, that it will be great fun to write him about our French people."

"Then you think you will go there?"

"Certainly; mother will enjoy it, and it will be great fun for the rest of us. Wasn't Mrs. Lufkins entertaining? If she were Yarmouth-born, perhaps she wouldn't speak of us as Yankees. You know the first permanent settlement here was made about 1761, by Cape Codders. In fact, the name's from Yarmouth on the Cape, not from the English Yarmouth directly. I remember the names of two of the first settlers,--Sealed Landers and Eleshama Eldredge. Don't they sound like real old Puritans?"

"But how did they come to be English? Why didn't they stay on our side in the Revolution?" Priscilla's tone contained a whole world of reproach for Sealed and Eleshama.

"Oh, that's a long story. I dare say they were on our side--in their hearts; but they couldn't afford to give up all they had worked for, after coming here as pioneers. Many of the Yarmouth people were thought to be in sympathy with the American privateers that were always prowling about the coast. But the English managed to hold Nova Scotia, and in the War of 1812 the number of American vessels captured by Yarmouth was greater than the number of Yarmouth vessels captured by the Americans."

"When I left home," said Priscilla, "I did not know that there was so much history down here. I thought that we were just coming for change of air."

"Oh, the place is alive with history; only you must let me know if I bore you with too many stories."

"You could never bore me." Priscilla laid her hand affectionately on Amy's. She was an undemonstrative girl, though her likes and dislikes were well known to herself. But for her fondness for Amy she would hardly have made one of this summer party.

CHAPTER III

TOWARD METEGHAN

Amy rested her hand on her bicycle, waiting to mount.

"I did not think that it would be quite so lonely; but still, you're sure it's perfectly safe?"

"Oh, yes, Miss, and not a long way." There was a trace of accent in the speech of the man who replied to Amy's question. He had just deposited a pouch of mail in the vehicle in which sat Mrs. Redmond, Priscilla, and Martine, and had turned to adjust the harness of his meek-looking horse.

"You are not afraid, are you?" Priscilla's voice was anxious. "I wish that I had brought my bicycle, and could ride with you."

"You _do_ look like a maiden all forlorn,--spruce trees to right of you, spruce trees to left of you. Excuse my smiling;" and Martine's smile lengthened itself into a decided giggle.

"Don't," whispered Priscilla. "The driver will think that you are laughing at him." It always surprised her that Martine should show so little respect for Amy, who was several years her senior.

"Amy," interposed Mrs. Redmond, "do you object to our driving away and leaving you? Doubtless if we tried, we could find some kind of a conveyance to carry you and the bicycle."

"Not till after dinner, Madame." Their driver turned toward Mrs.

Redmond, lifting his hat politely,--"Every horse is away now."

"The only thing for Amy to do is to let you hold her on your lap, Priscilla, while I take the bicycle on mine." At which absurd suggestion even Priscilla was forced to laugh; for the vehicle sent down to Meteghan station for her Majesty's mail was as narrow and shallow as any carriage could well be that made even a pretence of holding four persons. But with the deftness that comes with experience the driver had managed to find room not only for his pa.s.sengers, but for their suit case and bags, for several packages that had come by train, and finally for his great pouch of mail.

"There must be a perfect cavern under the seat," whispered Martine to Mrs. Redmond. "I am sure that we could put Amy there."

But even as she spoke Amy had mounted, and was up the hill ahead before the driver had taken his seat. Yet although Amy had taken the hill so well, she was soon out of breath. The road was soft, and the hill steeper than she had thought, and when a little chubby boy darted directly toward her, she slipped from her wheel and bent down to talk to the little fellow.

To her surprise, at first he did not respond to her "What's your name?"

but hung his head shyly. Then it occurred to her that he did not understand, and when she repeated her question in French his "Louis, Mademoiselle," showed that her venture had been right.

"Does every one here speak French, Monsieur?" she asked, as the carriage approached.

"Yes, all," responded the driver, stopping beside her for a moment.

"And no English?"

"Oh, many, though some have no English."

Martine and Priscilla praised the bright eyes of little Louis. Mrs.

Redmond handed him an ill.u.s.trated paper that she had brought from the train, and the driver started up his horse.

"You follow me," he called back to Amy.

"Yes, yes," cried Amy, laughing, knowing that she could soon pa.s.s him; but while she loitered to talk with the child, the carriage was soon so far ahead that she could barely discern the fluttering of the long veil that Martine held out to stream in the wind like a flag.

After leaving little Louis, Amy pedalled along leisurely. At first she pa.s.sed only one or two houses, but each of them offered her something to think of. In front of one, two or three barefooted children were playing hop-scotch, with the limits marked out in lines drawn by a stick on the dusty road. "I should think they'd stub their toes," she thought, as she watched them, "but they're so well-dressed, except their feet, that I suppose they prefer to go without shoes."

In the doorway of a second cottage, set like the other, close to the road, a mother was standing with a baby in her arms, and a tiny little girl clinging to her skirts. These children, like all the others she had seen, had the brightest of black eyes. Beside the door was a well, boarded in, with a bucket beside it.

The woman looked so friendly that Amy stopped for a drink of water, and, making use of her best French, she spent a few minutes talking with the woman.

A fine team of oxen hauling an empty hay wagon, beside which walked a strapping youth in blue jeans and a flapping straw hat, was the next reminder to Amy that she was indeed in a foreign country. After she had returned the cheerful _bonjour_ of two or three bareheaded women whom she met trudging along toward a hayfield, Amy was recalled to herself.

Her mother and the others were out of sight. "The driver will think that I am not even following;" and making good speed up a long, gradual hill, she saw the carriage waiting for her some distance ahead.

"This way, this way," shouted Martine. The driver waved his whip toward the left, and when Amy caught up, they had changed their direction, and she could feel the soft fresh breeze blowing in from St. Mary's Bay.

"Did you ever see such a clear blue sky?"

"Oh, yes, Martine,"--Amy was thinking of cloudless days on the North Sh.o.r.e,--"but none bluer, perhaps."

"But it seems so foreign," interposed Priscilla, in a tone that expressed some disapproval of foreign things. "I'm not sure that I like it."

"It seems different from other places, though I can't tell why."

"This child is part of the why. Just look at him." Martine pointed to a little boy of about eight, dressed in black, with deep embroidered ruffles of white falling about his wrists, and a broad ruffled collar on his coat. He wore a hat that was something like a tam-o'-shanter, and something like a mortar-board, and he carried a large slate under his arm.

"He's evidently on his way home from school. See the crowd of children behind him."

As the children drew nearer, some stood still, the better to see the party of strangers. Thus the latter had a chance to note various peculiarities of dress and general appearance. One or two little girls wore sunbonnets, one or two wore hats, and several had on their heads black _couvre-chefs_, that made them look like little old women. The st.u.r.dy little boys in blouses were more like other boys, and they indeed were too busy racing and tumbling over one another to pay attention to the travellers.

"Amy," exclaimed Martine, "you should have kept beside us all the way, we have been hearing such wonderful stories. Down there by the bridge there are several descendants of the Baron d'Entremont, and other people whose ancestors came from France hundreds of years ago."

"The Baron d'Entremont!" Amy felt a thrill of pleasure. Surely that was one of the names that Fritz had mentioned in connection with Pubnico, and if she too could come across some of his descendants, how delightful this would be!