course, was particularly proud of the boy. As he grew,
and found his feet, and began to wander about the house and the front
yard, with a gait in which a funny little swagger was often
interrupted by sudden and unpremeditated down-sittings, she was keen
to mark all his manly traits.

"Regard him, m'sieu'," she would say to me when I dropped in at the
cottage on my way home from camp--"regard this little brave. Is it not
a boy of the finest? What arms! What legs! He walks already like a
_voyageur_, and he does not cry when he falls. He is of a marvellous
strength, and of a courage! My faith, you should see him stand up to
the big rooster of the neighbour, Pigot. Come, my little one, my
Jacques, my Jimmee, one day you will be able to put your father on his
back--is it not?"

She laughed, and Pat laughed with her.

"That arrives to all fathers," said he, catching the little Jacqueline
as she swayed past him and swinging her to his knee. "Soon or late the
_bonhomme_ has to give in to his boy; and he is glad of it. But for
me, I think it will not be very soon, and meantime, m'sieu', cast a
good look of the eye upon this girl. Has she not the red cheeks, the
white teeth, the curly hair, brown like her mother's? But she will be
pretty, I tell you! And clever too, I am sure of it! She can bake the
bread, and sew, and keep the house clean; she can read, and sing in
the church, and drive the boys crazy--_hein_, my pretty one--what a
comfort to the old _bonhomme_!"

"He goes fast," laughed Angelique; "he talks already as if she were in
long dresses with her hair done up. Without doubt, m'sieu' amuses
himself to hear such talk about two infants."

But the thing that amused me most was the beginning-to-talk of the
twins themselves. It was natural that the mother and father should
speak to me in their quaint French _patois_; and the practice of many
summers had made me able to get along with it fairly well. But that
these scraps of humanity should begin their adventures in language
with French, and such French, old-fashioned as a Breton song, always
seemed to me surprising and wonderfully smart. I could not get over
the foolish impression that it was extraordinary. There is something
magical about the sound of a baby voice babbling a tongue that is
strange to you; it sets you thinking about the primary difficulties in
the way of human intercourse and wondering just how it was that people
began to talk to each other.

Long be