Thirty-six hours after his banquet, St. Jacques reappeared in the dining-room. Barth eyed him narrowly. “Back again?” Nancy queried in blithe greeting.
“At last.”
“It was a good while. How are you feeling?”
Barth felt a shock of surprise. Did American girls have no reservations?
“A good deal the worse for wear,” the Frenchman was replying, with equal frankness.
Nancy laughed.
“Any particular spot?” she inquired.
“Yes, my head. There’s nothing much to show; but it feels swollen to twice its usual size, to-day.”
“I am so sorry,” she answered sympathetically. “Can I do anything for it?”
St. Jacques laughed, as his face lighted with the expression Nancy liked so well.
“Does your pity go a long way?” he asked.
“At your service.”
“To the extent of a walk, after dinner?”
“Yes, if you feel up to it,” she answered. “It is a delightful day, and you know I want to hear all about it.”
Towards the middle of the morning, Barth sought the Lady.
“Really, it is none of my affair; but what is the girl thinking of?” he demanded.
The Lady’s mind chanced to be upon the problem involved in a departing waitress.
“What girl?” she asked blankly.
“Miss Howard.”
“What is the matter with Miss Howard now?”
“I don’t know. What can she be thinking of, to go for a walk with a man in his condition?” he expostulated.
“Whose condition?”
“That French Catholic, Mr. St. Jacques.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with his condition. It is only his head,” the Lady explained.
“Oh, yes. That is what I mean. She knows it, too.”
“Of course. We all know it, and we all are so sorry.”
Barth was still possessed of his self-made idea, and continued his argument upon that basis.
“Naturally. One is always sorry for such things. Sometimes even good fellows get caught. Still, that is no reason a girl should speak of it, to say nothing of going to walk with the fellow. Really, Miss Howard’s father ought to put a stop to it.”
This time, even the Lady lost her patience.
“Really, Mr. Barth, I don’t see why. On your own showing, you asked Miss Howard to let you walk home from the library with her, two days ago.”
“Yes. But that was different.”
“I don’t see how. M. St. Jacques is as much a gentleman as you are.”
“Oh. Do you think so? But what about his head?”
For the instant, the Lady questioned the stability of Barth’s own head.
“I really can’t see how that enters into the question at all. Even a gentleman is liable to be hit on the head, when he is playing lacrosse.”
“Lacrosse?”
“Yes. M. St. Jacques spent yesterday at Three Rivers with the lacrosse team from Laval.”
“Oh.” In his mortification at his own blunder, Barth’s oh was more dissyllabic even than usual. “I didn’t understand. I thought it was only the result of the banquet.”
The Lady looked at him with a steady, kindly smile.
“Mr. Barth,” she said; “I really think that idea was not quite worthy of you.”
And Barth shut his lips in plucky acceptance of the rebuke.
The haunt of tourists and the prey of every artist, be his tools brushes or mere words, Sous-le-Cap remains the crowning joy of ancient Quebec. The inconsequent bends in its course, the wood flooring of its roadway, the criss-cross network of galleries and verandas which join the two rows of houses and throw the street into a shadow still deeper than that cast by the overhanging cape, the wall of naked rock that juts out here and there between the houses piled helter-skelter against the base of the cliff: these details have endured for generations, and succeeding generations well may pray for their continued endurance. Quebec could far better afford to lose the whole ornate length of the Grand Allée than even one half the flying galleries and fluttering clothes-lines of little Sous-le-Cap.
“And yet,” St. Jacques said thoughtfully; “this hardly makes me proud of my countrymen.”
From the many-colored garments flapping on the clothes-lines, Nancy glanced down at a scarlet-coated child playing in the open doorway of a shop at her side.
“Don’t think of the sociological aspect of the case,” she advised him. “Once in a while, it is better to be simply picturesque than it is to be hygienic. I have seen a good deal of America; I know nothing to compare with this.”
St. Jacques picked his way daintily among the rubbish.
“I hope not. I also hope there’s not much in France.”
“You have been there?” Nancy questioned.
“Not yet. After two more years at Laval.”
“To live there?”
“Only to study. My home is here.”
“Not in Quebec?”
“No. In Rimouski. I am a countryman,” he added, with a smile.
“And shall you go back there?”
“It is impossible to tell. I hope not; but my father is growing older, and there are little children. In a case like that, one can never choose for himself,” he said, with a little accent of regret.
“But your profession,” Nancy reminded him. “Will there be any opening for it there?”
St. Jacques shrugged his shoulders.
“There is always an opening. It is only a question whether one feels too large to try to enter it. If I were as free as Mr. Brock, I would come back here, or go to The States. As it is, I am not free.”
“Tell me about Rimouski,” Nancy urged him.
“What do you care to know? It is a little place. The ocean-going steamers stop there; there is a cathedral and a seminary.”
“Is it pretty?”
His eyes lighted.
“I was born there, Miss Howard. It is impossible for me to say. Perhaps sometime you may see it for yourself.”
“I wish I might,” the girl assented idly.
The next minute, she felt herself blushing, as she met the eager look on the face of her companion, and she hurried away from the dangerous subject.
“How long shall you be abroad?” she asked hastily.
“Two years.”
“Nearly five years before you go into your professional work.”
“Yes.” His accent dropped a little. “It is long to wait.”
“It depends on the way the time goes,” Nancy suggested, with a fresh determination to drive the minor key from his ............