taken a fancy to you and, I want to see a little more of you and
learn how you live, if you will kindly tell me. I am interested in
your people, the French-Canadians."
This sounds very clumsily put and so it did then, but I was obliged
to explain my actions in some way and what is better than the truth?
Lies, I have no doubt to some people, but I was compelled to be
truthful to this man who carried a gentle and open countenance with
him. No gentleman could have answered me more politely than he did
now.
"Sir I am astonish--_oui un peu_, but if there is anyting I can tell
you, anyting I can show you I shall be ver glad. The mill--how do
you find dat, Sir?
"I like to watch you work very much, but the noise"--
Netty laughed, showing his radiant white teeth.
"_Mais oui_, de noise is bad, but one soon custom to dat. I am in de
mill for four year. I come from up in de north--from the Grand
Calumet--do you know there, Sir?"
"That is an island is it not? Yes, I know where it is, near Allumette,
but I have never been so far up on the Ottawa. And the Gatineau,
that is a river, is it not? What pretty names these French ones are!
Gatineau!" I repeated thinking. "That comes, I fancy having heard
somewhere, from Demoiselle Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis, wife of
one of the first French settlers. By the way your name is a curious
one. Say it again."
Netty very gravely repeated, "Etienne Guy Chezy D'Alencourt."
"Was your father a native Canadian?"
"_Oui Monsieur_."
"The name seems familiar to me," I remarked. "I daresay if you cared
to look the matter up, you might find that your great grandfather
was something or other under the Intendant Bigot or Vaudreuil, or
earlier still under Maisonneuve the gallant founder of Montreal. Ah!
how everybody seems to have forgotten those old days. Even in Canada,
you see, there is something to look back upon."
My companion seemed rather puzzled as I talked in this strain. Very
probably it was over his head. I found he could neither read nor
write, had been reared in the pine-clad and icy fastnesses of Grand
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