'Cafe?' she said. 'O, please, madame! I make it.'
The little shed kitchen was cold and dreary, each plank of its thin
walls rattling in the gale with a dismal creak; the wind blew the
smoke down the chimney, and finally it ended on our bringing
everything into the cosey parlor, and using the hearth fire, where
Jeannette made coffee and baked little cakes over the coals.
The meal over, Jeannette sang her songs, sitting on the rug before the
fire,--Le Beau Voyageur, Les Neiges de la Cloche, ballads in Canadian
patois sung to minor airs brought over from France two hundred years
before.
The surgeon sat in the shade of the chimney-piece, his face shaded by
his hand, and I could not discover whether he saw anything to admire
in my protegee, until, standing in the centre of the room, she
gave as 'Ivry' in glorious style. Beautiful she looked as she rolled
out the lines,--
'And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,--
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,--
Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.'
Rodney sat in the full light now, and I secretly triumphed in his rapt
attention.
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