g hands
could not be kept from the steering wheel of his long blue racing car,
and I could bring down a hare out of the field with any gun he
possessed as unerringly as could he. I lived his life with him hour by
hour, learned to think as he thought, to speak his easy transatlantic
speech, and did equal trencher duty with him at all times, so that
muscle and brawn were packed on my tall, broad woman's body with the
same compactness as it was packed upon his, by the time I had reached
my twenty-first birthday. By that time he and I had been alone
together for eight long years, for my mother had left us with tiny,
misshapen Pierre as a heart burden but with only each other to be
companions.

The efforts of some of my mother's distant relatives and friends to
make me into the traditional young French Marquise had resulted in
giving to me a very beautiful _grande dame_ manner to use when I
stood in need of it, which I took a care was not too often. Because I
had been born to a woman's estate I considered I must manage well
beautiful skirts and lacy fans, but no oftener than was necessary, I
decided. I went for the most of my days habited in English
knickerbockers under short corduroy skirts, worn with a many-pocketed
hunting blouse. On the night of my presentation at the salon of my
distant relative, the old Countess de Rochampierre, I had to apologize
to a young Russian attache for searching with desperation for the bit
of lace called a handkerchief, among the laces and ruffles of my
evening gown in the regions where I had been accustomed to find
sensible pockets.

"And is it possible that Mademoiselle Americaine hunts as well as she
makes the dance?" was his delighted answer to my explanation, which
led into a half-hour description of a raw morning in the field just
three days before in England, where my father and I had gone over for
a week's hunting with Lord Gordon Leigh at Leigholm.

"And then some," I returned answer with delight at his sympathy in my
narration of the sport. I liked very well the American slang that my
father's friends were always glad to teach to me, and that gave to him
both amusement and delight when I used it in his presence.

Also I liked well that young Russian and he came many times to the
Chateau de Grez and Bye before he left to join his regiment of Russian
Cossacks in the Carpathians.

And this time it was from the Carpathians that I returned to the ship
deck to find wee Pierre laugh