I went back
to the fort alone.
For several days I saw nothing of Rodney. When at last we met, I said,
'That was a wild freak of Jeannette's at the Arch.'
'Planned, to get a few shilling out of us.'
'O Doctor! I do not think she had any such motive,' I replied, looking
up deprecatingly into his cold scornful eyes.
'Are you not a little sentimental over that ignorant, half-wild
creature, Aunt Sarah?'
'Well,' I said to myself, 'perhaps I am!'
The summer came, sails whitened the blue straits again, steamers
stopped for an hour or two at the island docks, and the summer
travellers rushed ashore to buy 'Indian curiosities,' made by the nuns
in Montreal, or to climb breathlessly up the steep fort-hill to see
the pride and panoply of war. Proud was the little white fort in those
summer days; the sentinels held themselves stiffly erect, the officers
gave up lying on the parapet half asleep, the best flag was hoisted
daily, and there was much bugle-playing and ceremony connected with
the evening gun, fired from the ramparts at sunset; the hotels were
full, the boarding-house keepers were in their annual state of wonder
over the singular taste of these people from 'below,' who actually
preferred a miserable white-fish to the best of beef brought up on ice
all the way from Buffalo! There were picnics and walks, and much
confusion of historical dates respecting Father Marquette and the
irrepressible, omnipresent Pontiac.
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