Suddenly Mam’selle recalled the night before Donelle came: when she and Nick had bided with the little red cow.
"Of course," she blurted out, "I am going to keep her. I was only supposing."
"Oh! Mamsey, you are such fun, and you never hide any more. You’re really getting to be handsome. Do you know Mr. Alton, Mr. Richard Alton, says he’d like to paint you as ’The Woman With the Hoe.’ He says you’d show the man—I don’t know who he means—what a hoe can do for the right sort."
"Well, Mr. Richard Alton isn’t going to mess me up in his paints. It’s an awful waste of time for a full-grown man to make pictures all day. I wonder when he’s going home?"
"We’ll never have another boarder like him, child."
"I wish he’d stay through the summer. I’d like to fling him in the teeth of Marcel’s boarders."
"The Captain says he’s all ready for folks now; he’s opened sooner because Father Mantelle prophesies an early summer."
Then one night, after everyone was in bed, the _River Queen_ sneaked up to the wharf—there is no other word for her action—and a lone figure, with several bags and a trunk, was deposited.
Jean Duval, who had swung out the lantern from the pole, took charge.
"I’ll just take you up to Captain Longville’s," he said. "The Captain can manage."
The following morning Donelle found, upon going to the living room, that Alton had departed at daybreak.
"He wanted to see the sunrise on the river," Jo explained; "he took lunch enough to feed a dozen; fried chicken and doughnuts and pickles. He’s the biggest pickle eater I ever saw," Jo laughed. Then added: "Donelle, I’m going to the village to-day with my linens. The man in the shop over there has offered a tidy sum for them. I don’t think I can get back to-night. Molly acts like a colt, but her staying powers are nothing to boast of. You better go to Marcel——"
"Then I’ll go, Mamsey. I’d even go to that dirty old Pierre’s or to the Kelly’s if you would rest easier, Mamsey. Isn’t life just like a book?"
"It is!" murmured Jo with conviction. "It certainly is wonderfully like a book."
After Jo had gone and Donelle had put the little house in order she closed the door and windows and whistled to Nick.
"Come on, you old dear," she said, "and how thankful I am you can’t talk, Nick. You can look and thump your tail all you want to; no one understands that. Nick, when _he_ gets back, he’ll be tired. We’ll be there to meet him. Come on, Nick!"