Selfish Catharine! foolish idle girl!"

Poor Louis was overwhelmed with grief at the sight of his cousin's
tears, and as the kind-hearted but thoughtless boy bent over her to
soothe and console her, his own tears fell upon the fair locks of the
weeping girl, and bedewed the hand he held between his own.

"If you cry thus, cousin," he whispered, "you will break poor Louis's
heart, already sore enough with thinking of his foolish conduct." "Be
not cast down, Catharine," said her brother, cheeringly: "we may not be
so far from home as you think. As soon as you are rested we will set out
again, and we may find something to eat; there must be strawberries on
these sunny banks."

Catharine soon yielded to the voice of her brother, and drying her eyes,
proceeded to descend the sides of the steep valley that lay to one side
of the high ground where they had been sitting.

Suddenly darting down the bank, she exclaimed, "Come, Hector; come,
Louis: here indeed is provision to keep us from starving:"--for her eye
had caught the bright red strawberries among the flowers and herbage on
the slope; large ripe strawberries, the very finest she had ever seen.

"There is indeed, ma belle," said Louis, stooping as he spoke to gather
up, not the fruit, but a dozen fresh partridge eggs from the inner
shade of a thick tuft of grass and herbs that grew beside a fallen
tree. Catharine's voice and sudden movements had startled the partridge
_[FN: The Canadian partridge is a species of grouse, larger than
the English or French partridge. We refer our young readers to the
finely arranged specimens in the British Museum, (open to the public,)
where they may discover "Louis's partridge."]_ from her nest, and the
eggs were soon transferred to Louis's straw hat, while a stone flung
by the steady hand of Hector stunned the parent bird. The boys laughed
exultingly as they displayed their prizes to the astonished Catharine,
who, in spite of hunger, could not help regretting the death of the
mother bird. Girls and women rarely sympathise with men and boys in
their field sports, and Hector laughed at his sister's doleful looks as
he handed over the bird to her.

"It was a lucky chance," said he, "and the stone was well aimed, but it
is not the first partridge that I have killed in this way. They are so
stupid you may even run them down at times; I hope to get another before
the day is over. Well, there is no fear of starving to-day, at all
events,"