as a
mocking-bird carries a flake of thistle-down to its nest. Once there,
nothing could be more reasonable or more logical than the terrible
danger to which Gabriel would be exposed. While it lasted, Nan's feeling
of anxiety and alarm was both real and sincere. Mrs. Absalom could never
enter into this world of Nan's; she was too practical and downright. And
yet she had a ready sympathy for the girl's troubles and humoured her
without stint, though she sometimes declared that Nan was queer and
flighty.

Mrs. Dorrington, on the other hand, inheriting the sensitive and
artistic temperament of Flavian Dion, her father, was able to enter
heartily into the most of Nan's vagaries. Sometimes she humoured them,
but more frequently she laughed at them as the girl grew older.
Occasionally, in her twilight conversations with her father, whose
gentleness and shyness kept him in the background, Mrs. Dorrington
would deplore Nan's tendency to exploit her imagination.

"But she was born thus, my dear," Flavian Dion would reply, speaking the
picturesque patois of New France. "It will either be her great misery,
or her great happiness. How was it with me? Once it was my great misery,
but now--you see how it is. Come! we will have some music, if
Mademoiselle the Dreamer is willing."

And then they would go into the parlour, where, with Mrs. Dorrington at
the piano, Flavian Dion with his violin, and Nan with her voice, which
was rich and strong, they would render the beautiful folk-songs of
France. Moreover, Flavian Dion had caught many of the plantation
melodies, of which Nan knew the words, and when the French songs were
exhausted, they would fall back on these. It frequently happened that
Mademoiselle the Dreamer would add feet as well as voice to the negro
melodies, especially if Tasma Tid were there to incite her, and the way
that Nan reproduced steps and poses was both wonderful and inimitable.

The reader who takes the trouble to make inferences as he goes along,
will perceive that Nan's solicitude for Gabriel was no compliment to
him; it was not flattering to the heroism of a young man who was
threatening to grow a moustache, for a young lady to believe, or even
pretend to believe, that he needed to be rescued from some imaginary
danger. Gabriel was strong enough to take a man's place at a
log-rolling, and he would have had small relish for the information if
he had been told that Nan Dorrington was planning to rescue him.