The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cursed Patois, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The Cursed Patois
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23247]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSED PATOIS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE CURSED PATOIS

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

As his boat shot to the camp dock of beach stones, the camper thought he
heard a child's voice behind the screen of brush. He leaped out and drew
the boat to its landing upon a cross-piece held by two uprights in the
water, and ascended the steep path worn in leaf mould.

There was not only a child, there was a woman also in the camp. And
Frank Puttany, his German feet planted outward in a line, his smiling
dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creatures whom he had
evidently introduced, in foolish helplessness gave his partner the usual
greeting:

"Veil, Prowny."

"Hello, Puttany. Visitors?"

Brown pulled off his cap to the woman. She was pretty, with eyes like
a deer's, with white teeth showing between her parted scarlet lips, and
much curling hair pinned up and blowing over her ears. She had the rich
tint of a quarter-breed, lightened in her case by a constant suffusion
which gave her steady color. She was dressed in a mixture of patches,
but all were fitted to her perfect shape with a Parisian elegance sensed
even by-backwoodsmen. Pressed against her knee stood the dirtiest and
chubbiest four-year-old child on the borders of Brevoort Lake--perhaps
the dirtiest on the north shore of Michigan. The Indian mixed with his
French had been improved on by the sun until he was of a brick redness
and hardness of flesh; a rosy-raeated thing, like a good muskalonge.
Brown suddenly remembered the pair. They were Joe La France's wife and
child. Joe La France was dead. Puttany had recently told him that Joe
La France left a widow and a baby without shelter, and without relations
nearer than Canada.

After greeting Brown the guest resumed her seat on one of the
camp-chairs, a box worn s