“I love all things British, saving and excepting their manners and their mortar,” Nancy soliloquized. Nancy’s temper was ruffled, that morning. As she had left the table, Barth had followed her to the parlor where, apparently apropos of an inoffensive Frenchman crossing the Place d’Armes, he had been drawn into strictures concerning American and French peculiarities of speech and manner. The talk had been impersonal; nevertheless, Nancy had been quick to discern that its text lay in the growing friendship between herself and St. Jacques. For a time, she had listened in silence to the Britisher’s accusing monologue. Then her temper had given way completely. Flapping the American flag full in his face, she had loosed the American eagle and promptly routed Barth and driven him from the field, with the British Lion trudging dejectedly at his heels.
“I want him to understand that he’s not to say American to me, in any such tone as that!” Nancy muttered vindictively, as she pinned on her hat.
Then she went out to walk herself into a good temper.
The good temper was still conspicuous by its absence, when, regardless of appearances, she dropped down in the grass by the hospital gate, and fell to picking the scraps of mortar out of the meshes of her rough cloth gown.
“I believe I am all kinds of an idiot,” she continued to herself explosively. “First, Joe’s letter rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t see how he could be so stupid as to imagine I’m homesick. Of course, I am glad he is coming up here; but an extra man, in any relation, does have a tendency to complicate things. And then Mr. Brock didn’t come to breakfast. I know he was cross, last night, because I took Mr. Barth’s part. And now Mr. Barth has made me lose my temper again. I believe he does it, just for the sake of seeing me abase myself afterwards. Dear me! Everybody is cross, and I am the crossest of the lot.”
Beside her on the grass, the shadow of the union Jack above the hospital moved idly to and fro. Behind her was the low, squat bulk of the third Martello Tower whose crumbling mortar Nancy was even now removing from her clothing. The fourth Martello Tower, hidden somewhere within the dingy confines of Saint Sauveur, had eluded all her efforts to find it; the other two had been too obviously converted to twentieth-century purposes. This had looked more inviting, and Nancy had spent a chilly hour in its depths. By turning her back upon the dripping icehouse in its southern edge, and focussing her mind upon the mammoth central column which supported its arching roof, she had been able to force herself backward into the days when a Martello Tower was a thing for an invading army to reckon with. In the magazine beneath, the drip from the icehouse had spoiled the illusion; but the open platform above, albeit now snugly roofed in, still offered its battlements and its trio of dismounted cannon to her cynical gaze. Nancy left the dim interior, bored, but sternly just. In some moods and with certain companions, even the third Martello Tower might be interesting. Meantime, she was conscious of a distinct wish that the relics of the crumbling past might not have such marked affinity for her shoulder-blades.
“Miss Howard!”
She looked up. Cap in hand, St. Jacques was standing before her.
“I am glad I have found you,” he added directly. “I was wishing that something good might happen.”
Nancy’s smile broadened to a laugh.
“Are you cross, too?” she queried, without troubling herself to rise.
“Very,” St. Jacques assented briefly.
“I am so glad. Let’s be cross together.”
“Here?”
“Why not?”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t like the place. The associations are not pleasant.”
“I don’t see why. It looks a very comfortable place to be ill.”
“Yes; but who wants to think of being ill?”
“Nobody,” Nancy returned philosophically. “Still, now and then we must, you know. Witness Mr. Barth.”
St. Jacques smiled.
“Yes. But even Mr. Barth had a good nurse.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. Even my level best is none too even,” Nancy replied enigmatically, with scant consideration for the alien tongue of her companion.
He ignored her words.
“If I should be ill, would you take care of me?” he asked suddenly.
Still laughing, the girl shook her head.
“Never. I like you altogether too well, M. St. Jacques, to risk your life with my ministrations. Instead of that, though, I will come out here to see you as often as you will grant me admission.”
“Not here. They would never grant me admission in the first place,” St. Jacques responded dryly.
“Why, then?”
“Because I am Catholic.”
“Oh, how paltry!” Nancy burst out in hot indignation.
“It is true, however.”
With a sweep of her arm, Nancy pointed to the union Jack whose scarlet folds stained the sky line.
“Then the sooner they pull that down, the better,” she said scornfully. “I thought that the British flag stood for religious freedom.”
“But you are not Catholic,” St. Jacques said slowly.
“What difference does that make? I am not a Seven-Day Baptist, either. Neither fact makes me ignore the rights of my friends who are.”
St. Jacques still stood looking down at her. His face was unusually grave, that morning; and it seemed to Nancy that his swarthy cheeks were flushed more than it was their wont to be.
“You have friends who are Catholics?” he asked.
“One, I hope,” she answered quietly. Then she rose to her feet. “What are you doing out here at this hour?” she added.
“Walking, to tire myself,” he answered. “Will you come?”
For her only answer, she dropped into step at his side, and they turned down the steep slope leading into Saint Sauveur, crossed Saint Roch and the Dorchester Bridge and came out on the open road to Beauport.
Never a garrulous companion, St. Jacques was more silent than ever, that morning, and Nancy let him have his way. Moreover, at times she was conscious of something restful in the long pauses which came in her talk with St. Jacques. When he chose, the young Frenchman spoke easily and well. Apparently, however, he saw no need of talking, unless he had something to say. In their broken talk and their long silences, Nancy had gained a better understanding of St. Jacques, a more perfect sympathy with his point of view and his mood than she had gained of Brock in all their hours of chattering intercourse.
For a long mile, they walked on without speaking. Shoulder to shoulder, they had gone tramping along the narrow plank walk with the sure rhythm of perfectly adapted step.
“How well we walk together!” Nancy said, suddenly breaking the silence.
“Yes,” St. Jacques assented briefly. “I have always noticed it.”
Some men would have used her random words as the theme for a sentimental speech. To St. Jacques, they were too obvious; emotion should not be wasted upon anything so matter of fact. Long since, Nancy had become accustomed to that phase of his mind. It gave a certain restfulness to their int............