“Maria is _very_ tidy!” she said. “Her bureau drawers are beautiful, and you know she got the prize for the best-made bed last year.”
For a moment all the girls stared, open-mouthed; then Patricia laughed her little silver laugh.
“Even if so?” she said. “We allow her that lofty virtue! My ring was in her pocket, you understand, my dear. Come, Moriole!” she added in a different tone. “A promise is a promise. We have told you what you wanted, now it is your turn. _What_ did you do in that place during seven whole days? We _must_ know!”
“I cannot!” thought Honor. And then--“I _must_!”
“Come then!” she said. “Sit down, all of you! The sand is as dry as dry. Loulou, I cannot tell if you hop on one foot. Listen then!”
She told them about the spinning and knitting; about the bridal quilt; about pretty Madelon, whom she had not seen, and Big Pierre, whom she had; about the carving, and all the marvels and mysteries of cheese-making.
About her three friends themselves she could not talk, she found. And no one knew, no one cared, no one could possibly understand--
“And I made the cheese all myself, the one we had for supper. Was it good?”
“Good? It was mirific! You made it yourself? Ah! Bah! Gretli let you stir it, pat it a little, like that!”
“Gretli did not touch it with the end of her finger! She told me, of course, what to do. ‘Take this and that! do thus and so!’ but not a finger did she put to it. Wait a little! When Margoton next has sour cream, I will make another, and you will see.”
“It must have been rather fun!” said Vivette. “I should like to make cheese, I think. Will you teach me, Moriole?”
“My dear! it would ruin your hands!” Jacqueline examined her own pearly fingertips, over which she spent much of the “meditation hour” when we sat alone in our little rooms and were supposed to think of holy things. Then with a glance at Vivette’s brown, rather stubby hands, she added, “But it might not after all make so much difference!”
“But, Moriole!” said Stephanie, who had been listening eagerly, “the animals! all those terrible animals! were you not in perpetual terror? Me, I never expected to see you alive again. I wept the whole of every night--”
“Thou snorest prettily in thy sleep all the same, Stephanie!” cried Rose Marie. “Heavens! it was a litany to all the saints at once!”