All her life she had longed to possess a parrot. The idea of a talking bird was fascinating to her — seemed to belong with especially rare and wonderful things, like orange-trees and peacocks and gold crowns and the Count’s glass fruit. Her mother, she whispered to Jacques, had often told her about a parrot kept in one of the great houses at home, which saw a servant steal silver spoons and told the master. Then there was the imprisoned princess who taught her parrot to say her lover’s name, and her cruel brothers cut out the bird’s tongue. Magpies were also taught to speak, but they could say only a word or two.

  At last she heard Pierre’s voice at the front door.

  “All ready, Monsieur Euclide?”

  Cécile jumped up from the sofa and ran into the shop.

  “We have been ready a long while, Pierre. I thought you had forgotten us.”

  “Little stupid!” Pierre pinched her ear.

  Auclair now looked at his daughter for the first time.

  “But I supposed you would wear the new dress from Aunt Blanche?”

  Cécile coloured a little. “I feel better like this. You don’t mind, Pierre Charron?”

  “Not a bit! This is a picnic, not a dinner of ceremony. Monsieur Auclair, will you be kind enough to bring some of those little nuts you burn to keep off mosquitoes?”

  “Ah yes, the eucalyptus balls! Certainly, that is a good idea. I will fill my pockets.” The apothecary put on the large beaver hat which he wore only to weddings and funerals, and they set off down the hill, the two men before, Cécile and Jacques following.

  Down on the water-front, at some distance behind the church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, a row of temporary cabins were put up each summer, where hot food was served to the sailors on shore leave. In one of these Renaude-le-lièvre, the butter-woman, and an old dame from Dinan sold fresh milk and butter and Breton pancakes to the seamen from that part of the world. Tonight they had prepared a special supper for the Captain, of whom all the Bretons were proud; he had come up from a mousse and had made his own way in the world. Pierre had ordered things he knew the Captain liked; a dish made of three kinds of shell-fish, a tête de veau, which la Renaude did very well, a roast capon with a salad, and for dessert Breton pancakes with honey and preserves.

  When the party arrived, their table was waiting for them, with a white cloth, and a lantern hung from a pole — already lit, though it was not yet dark and a pale moon was shining in a clear evening sky. While Pierre was giving instructions to the cooks, Captain Pondaven was being rowed ashore by two of his crew. He came up from the landing, his parrot on his shoulder, dressed as no one there had ever seen him before, in his Breton holiday suit, which he carried about the world with him in his sailor’s chest; a black jacket heavily embroidered in yellow, white knee-breeches, very full and pleated at the belt, black cloth leggings, and a broad-brimmed black hat with a shallow crown. He was a plain, simple man, direct in his dealings as in his glance, and he came from Saint-Malo, where the grey sea breaks against the town walls.

  At first Cécile thought him a little sombre and solemn, but after a mug of Jamaica rum he was more at his ease, and as the supper went on he grew very companionable. She had hoped he would begin to tell at once about his voyages and the strange countries he had seen, but he seemed to wish to talk of nothing but his own town and his family. He had four boys, he said, and one little girl.

  “And she is the only one who was born when I was at home. I am always a little anxious about her. The boys are strong like me and can take care of themselves, but she is more delicate, — not so sturdy as Mademoiselle here, though perhaps Mademoiselle is older.”

  “I was thirteen last month,” Cécile told him.

  “And she will be eleven in December. I am nearly always at home for her birthday.”

  Auclair asked him whether by home he meant Le Havre or Saint-Malo. The seaman looked surprised.

  “Saint-Malo, naturally. I was born a Malouin.”

  “I know that. But since you take on your cargo at Le Havre, I thought you perhaps lived there now.”

  “Oh, no! One is best in one’s own country. I run back to Saint-Malo after my last trip, and tie up there for the winter.”

  “But that must add to your difficulties, Monsieur Pondaven.”

  “It is nothing to me. I know the Channel like my own town. All my equipage are glad to get home. They are all Malouins. I should not know how to manage with men from another part.”

  “You Malouins stick together like Jesuits,” Pierre declared. “Yet by your own account you were not so well treated there that you need love the place.”

  Captain Pondaven smiled an artless smile. “Perhaps that is the very reason! He means, Monsieur Auclair, that the town brought me up like a stepmother. My father was drowned, fishing off Newfoundland, and my mother died soon afterwards. With us, when an orphan boy is twelve years old, he is given a suit of clothes and a chest and is sent to sea as a mousse. They sent me out with a hard master my first voyage. But when I came back from Madagascar and showed how my ears were torn and my back was scarred, the townspeople took up my case and got my papers changed. My townspeople did not do so badly by me. When I was ready for a command, they saw that I had my chance. They put their money behind me, and I have been half-owner in my boat for five years now.”

  Though she liked the Captain very much and gave polite attention to his talk, Cécile’s mind was on the parrot. He sat forgotten on the back of the chair, attached to his master’s belt by a long cord. He seemed of a sullen disposition — there was nothing gay and bird-like about him. Neither was he so brilliant as she had expected. He was all grey, except for rose-coloured tail-feathers, and his plumage was ruffled and untidy, for he was moulting. He gave no sign of his peculiar talent, but sat as silent as the stuffed alligator at home, never moving except to cock his head on one side. When the leek soup put a temporary stop to conversation, she ventured a question.

  “And what is your parrot’s name, if you please, Monsieur Pondaven?”

  The Captain looked up from his plate and smiled at her. “His name is Coco, mademoiselle, and he will make noise enough presently. He is a little shy with strangers, not seeing many on board.”

  Then the shell-fish came on, and Auclair asked the Captain what people at home thought of the King’s peace with the English.

  He said he did not know what the inland people thought. “But with us on the coast it will make little difference. The King cannot make peace on the sea. Our people will take an English ship whenever they have a chance. They are looking for good plunder this summer. We must have our revenge for the ships they took from us last year.”

  “They are fine seamen, the English,” Pierre Charron declared. Cécile had noticed that he was in one of his perverse moods, when he liked to tease and antagonize everyone a little.

  The Captain answered him mildly. “Yes, they are good sailors, but we usually get the better of them. They are a blasphemous lot and have no respect for good manners or religion. That never pays.”

  Auclair reminded him that last summer the English had captured one of the boats bound for Canada.

  “I remember well, Le Saint-Antoine, and the Captain is a friend of mine. They took the boat into Plymouth and sold her at auction. Many of our merchants lost heavily. Your Bishop, Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier, had sent some things for the missions over here by Le Saint-Antoine. Some bones of the saints and other holy relics were packed in an oak chest, and the Captain, out of respect, put it in his own cabin. The English, when they plundered the ship, came upon this chest and supposed it was treasure. When they opened it, they were furious. After committing every possible sacrilege they took the relics to the cook’s galley and threw them into the stove where their dinner was cooking.”

  Cécile asked whether no punishment had come upon those sailors.

  “Not at the time, mademoiselle, but I shouldn’t like to put to sea with such actions on my soul, — and I am no coward, either.”

  “Sales cochons anglais, sales cochons!” said another voice, and she realized that at last the parrot had spoken. Jacques put his hand over his mouth to stifle a cry. Pierre and her father laughed, and applauded the parrot, but Cécile was much too startled to laugh. She had supposed that the speech of parrots called for a good deal of imagination on the part of the listener, like the first efforts of babies. But nobody could possibly mistake what this bird said. Had he been out of sight, in the shed kitchen with Mère Renaude, she would have thought some queer old person was in there, talking in a vindictive tone.

  “Oh, monsieur, isn’t he wonderful!” she gasped.

  The Captain was pleased. “You find him amusing? Yes, he is a clever bird; you will see. Now let us all clink our cups together, — you, too, little man, — and perhaps he will say something else.”

  They rattled their pewter mugs several times, and the bird came out with: “Vive le Roi, vive le Roi!” Jacques began jumping up and down with excitement.

  “He is a loyal subject of the King,” said Pondaven. “He has been taught to say that when the cups clink. But for the most part, I don’t teach him; he picks up what he likes.”

  “And do you always take him to sea with you, monsieur?”

  “Nearly always, mademoiselle. My men believe he brings us good luck; they like to have him on board. I have his cage swung in my cabin, and when the ship pitches badly, I tie it down.”

  “But how does he endure the cold?” Auclair asked. “These are tropical birds, after all.”

  “Yes, his brother died of a chill on his first voyage — I had two of them. But this one seems to stand it. When he begins to shiver, I give him a little brandy in warm water — he is very fond of it — and I put a blanket over him. He will live to be a hundred if I can keep him from taking cold.”

  Conscious that he was the centre of attention, the parrot began to croon softly: “Bon petit Coco, bon petit Coco. Ici, ici!”

  Jacques and Cécile left their places and stood behind the Captain’s chair to watch the bird’s throat. Pondaven explained that he was an African parrot, and that was why he had so many tones of voice, harsh and gentle, for the African birds have a much more sensitive ear than the West Indian.

  “Should you like to hear him whistle a tune, mademoiselle? He can, if he will. We will try to have a little concert.” He put the parrot on his knee, took a piece of maple sugar from the table, and held it before the unblinking yellow eyes. Then the Captain began to whistle a song of his own country:

  A Saint-Malo, beau port de mer,

  Trois gros navires sont arrivés.

  After a few moments the bird repeated the air perfectly — his whistle was very musical, sounded somewhat like a flute. He was given the sugar, and stood on one foot while he fed himself with the other. The company now became interested in the tête de veau, but Jacques and Cécile scarcely tasted the dish for watching Coco. They were both wishing they could carry him off and keep him in the apothecary shop for ever.

  “Has Coco a soul, Cécile?” Jacques whispered.

  “I wonder! I will ask the Captain after a while, but we must listen now.”

  Captain Pondaven was relating some of the wonderful happenings in his own town. Presently he told them the story of how a great she-ape, brought to Saint-Malo as a curiosity by the Indian fleet, had one day broken her chain and run about the town. She dashed into a house, snatched a baby from its cradle, and ran up to the house-tops with it, — and in Saint-Malo, he reminded them, the houses are four and even five storeys high. While all the terrified neighbours gathered in the street, the mother fell on her knees, shut her eyes, and appealed to the Blessed Virgin. The ape clambered along the roofs until she came to a house where an image of Our Lady stood in a little alcove up under the eaves. Into this recess the beast thrust the baby, and left it there, as safe as if it were with its own mother.

  The children and the apothecary thought this a charming story, but Pierre sniffed. “Oh, you have nothing over us in the way of miracles!” he told the Captain. “Here we have them all the time. Every Friday the beaver is changed into a fish, so that good Catholics may eat him without sin. And why do you look at me like that, Mademoiselle Cécile?”

  “Everyone knows he is not changed, Pierre. He is only considered as a fish by the Church, so that hunters off in the woods can have something to eat on Fridays.”

  “And suppose in Montreal some Friday I were to consider a roast capon as a fish? I should be put into the stocks, likely enough!”

  Captain Pondaven smiled and shook his head. “Mademoiselle has the better of you, Charron. A man can make fun of the angels, if he sets out to. But I was going to tell the little boy here that in our town, when a child is naughty, we still tell him the she-ape will get him; and the children are as much afraid of that beast as if she were alive.”

  The time had come for story-telling; Pondaven and Pierre Charron began to entertain each other with tales of the sea and forest, as they always did when they got together.

  At about ten o’clock Father Hector Saint-Cyr came out from the Château, where he had been to lay before Count Frontenac a petition from the Christianized Indians of his mission at the Sault. He lingered on the terrace to enjoy the prospect, — he got to Quebec but seldom. The moon was high in the heavens, shining down upon the rock, with its orchards and gardens and silvery steeples. The dark forest and the distant mountains were palely visible. This was not the warm white moonlight of his own Provence, certainly, which made the roads between the mulberry-trees look like rivers of new milk. This was the moonlight of the north, cold, blue, and melancholy. It threw a shimmer over the land, but never lay in velvet folds on any wall or tower or wheat-field. Out in the river the five ships from France rode at anchor. Some sailors down in the Place were singing, and when they finished, their mates on board answered them with another song.

  Why, the priest wondered, were these fellows always glad to get back to Kebec? Why did they come at all? Why should this particular cliff in the wilderness be echoing tonight with French songs, answering to the French tongue? He recalled certain naked islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence; mere ledges of rock standing up a little out of the sea, where the sea birds came every year to lay their eggs and rear their young in the caves and hollows; where they screamed and flocked together and made a clamour, while the winds howled around them, and the spray beat over them. This headland was scarcely more than that; a crag where for some reason human beings built themselves nests in the rock, and held fast.

  Down yonder by the waterside, before one of the rustic booths, he could see a little party seated about a table with lanterns. He could not see who they were, but he felt a friendliness for that company. A little group of Frenchmen, three thousand miles from home, making the best of things, — having a good dinner. He decided to go down and join them.

  IV

  THE APOTHECARY, IN his shirt-sleeves, was standing on a wooden bench, taking down from the shelves of a high cabinet large sheets of paper, to which dried plants were attached by narrow strips of muslin gummed down with gum Arabic. This was his herbarium, his collection of medicinal Canadian plants which he meant to take back to France. Cécile, busily knitting, had been watching him for a long while. When at last he got down and began assorting the piles of paper, she spoke to him.

  “Papa, what will become of Jacques when we go back to France?”

  Her father was engaged with a plant of the milkweed kind, which the French colonists called le cotonnier. He did not look up.

  “Ah, my dear, I have the Count’s perplexities and my own, — I cannot arrange a future for your little protégé.”

  “But, Father, how can we leave him, with no one to look after him? I shall always be thinking of him, and it will make me very unhappy.”

  “You will soon have your little cousins for companions; Cécile, and André, and Rachel. Cousin André will fill Jacques’s place in your heart.”

  “No, Papa. My heart is not like that.”

  She spoke quickly, almost defiantly, in a tone she had never used to her father before. He did not notice it; he was trying to decide which of two gentians was the better preserved. For a month now he had been distracted and absent-minded. Cécile went quietly into the salon. She almost hated that little André who was so fortunate, who had a wise and charming mother to watch over him, a father to provide for him, and a rich aunt to give him presents. Laying aside her knitting, she put on her cap and went out to walk about the town.

  This was the first week of October. The autumn had been warm and sunny, — but rather sad, as always. After the gay summer, came the departures. First Pierre Charron had gone back to Montreal. Then Captain Pondaven, who had been coming to the apothecary shop so often that he seemed like a familiar friend, had suddenly set sail for his old town where the grey sea beat under the castellated walls. Three new ships had come in during September: La Garonne, Le Duc de Bretagne, Le Soleil d’Afrique. But La Garonne did not bring the Breton sailor Jacques waited for, and his mates reported that he had shipped on a boat in the West India trade.

  None of the ships brought the word Cecile’s father and the Governor were so impatiently expecting. A dark spirit of discontent and restlessness seemed to be sitting in the little salon behind the shop. All peace and security had departed. The very furniture looked ill at ease, as if it did not believe in its own usefulness any more. Perhaps the sofa and the table and the curtains had overheard her father say that he could not take them home with him, but must leave them to be scattered among the neighbours. Cécile wished that she could be left and scattered, too. She stayed out of doors and away from the house as much as possible. Her father cared little about his dinner now — sometimes forgot to go to market. So why should she spend the golden afternoons indoors?