A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY

BOOKS BY AMY E. BLANCHARD

REVOLUTIONARY SERIES

A GIRL OF ’76. A Story of the Early Period of the War for Independence. 331 pages.

A REVOLUTIONARY MAID. A Story of the Middle Period of the War for Independence. 321 pages.

A DAUGHTER OF FREEDOM. A Story of the Latter Period of the War for Independence. 312 pages.

Price, $1.50 net each.

IN THE GIRLS’ BOOKSHELF

ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS. A Story. 284 pages.

ELIZABETH, BETSY AND BESS—SCHOOL-MATES. A Story. 308 pages.

THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS OF BRIGHTWOOD. A Story or How They Kindled Their Fire and Kept It Burning. 309 pages.

FAGOTS AND FLAMES. A Story of Winter Camp Fires. 306 pages.

IN CAMP WITH THE MUSKODAY CAMP FIRE GIRLS. A Story of Summer Camp Fires by Cabin and Lake. 310 pages.

A GIRL SCOUT OF RED ROSE TROOP. A Story for Girl Scouts. 320 pages.

A LITTLE MAID OF PICARDY. Story of a Little Refugee in France. 338 pages.

Each illustrated by Colored Frontispiece and with Colored Jacket.

Cloth Bound. Price, $1.35 net each.

Also Books in the AMERICAN GIRL SERIES.

A Little Maid of Picardy

By AMY E. BLANCHARD

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK T. MERRILL

W. A. WILDE COMPANY BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyrighted, 1919, By W. A. Wilde Company All rights reserved

A Little Maid of Picardy

CHAPTER I A GARDEN GROWS

“IL y a dans ce village

sang Lucie as she sat on a stone bench under a sheltering cherry tree. The “tra la la” suddenly ceased at a stir of the branches on the other side. Lucie glanced up with a twinkle in her eyes and changed the song to “Way down upon the Swanee river.”

“Lucie, Lucie, what are those funny words you sing?” called some one from over the wall.

“Ma foi, what ignorance!” returned Lucie with an uplift of her eyebrows. “As if one[10] could not tell. Did you never hear ‘the Old Folks at Home’?”

“What is this ‘Ole folk zat ome?’ I do not know,” returned the voice.

Lucie laughed. “Come over, come over, Annette, and I will teach it to you. It will be droll to hear you sing it.”

Annette climbed nimbly to the top of the stone wall, and presently dropped to her feet, avoiding bushes and vines in order to make her way to where Lucie was sitting. “It is droll enough to hear you sing it,” she remarked. “It is in English of course.”

“American English; a song my mother often sings and which every one knows over there in the United States.”

“And you will teach it to me, this song? I shall like to sing it for grandfather. How he will be amused when he hears it.”

“Then repeat after me.”

This Annette essayed to do, but her efforts brought such peals of laughter from Lucie that she stopped with a pout. “How you are a silly one,” exclaimed she. “Me, I am all French. Can I then be expected to know English? If you will perhaps write the words for me I may then be able to say them, but when you speak so fast and run the words together at such a rate I cannot follow you.” She produced a piece of paper and a stub of pencil. Lucie carefully[11] wrote out the first line, handed the paper back to Annette and waited with a gleeful smile.

“Vay don oopon ze Svanay reebair,” began Annette reading slowly. Then down fluttered the paper. “I cannot,” she cried. “This English is a monster! a Turkey! a pig! a thing impossible. I do not see how you can understand or speak it.”

“I speak it as well as I do French,” returned Lucie proudly. “Mamma wishes that I shall, for one day, behold! we go to her home to that same United States, then before my relations I shall not feel ashamed. I should consider myself a silly one if I could not understand them nor they me.”

“For me then there will arise no occasion for feeling shame, and therefore there is no need to learn this tongue, for I have no relatives in that country,” returned Annette complacently. “Would you not, Lucie, prefer to be all French. Is it not a sorrow to you that you are part English?”

“No, no,” Lucie shook her head. “I am not English, and I am very proud of my American blood and that I have American aunts and uncles. As for my mother, she tells me that she became French when she married a Frenchman, so this is now her country as well as my father’s and mine. I adore my France where I was born and where I hope I may die when my hour comes.[12] It is the land of my father, my mother, my dear old grandfather. No, you cannot say I am English, Annette.”

This outbreak entirely satisfied Annette, who quite willingly changed the subject when her friend proposed that they should go further into the garden to see a certain rose now blooming gloriously. “Is it not magnificent?” Lucie asked as they stopped before the bush.

Annette viewed it with admiration. “It is truly,” she acknowledged, “more beautiful than my grandfather’s. Now he will be envious, that poor grandfather, for ours has not half the number of blooms.”

“They are very droll, those two old ones, your grandfather and mine,” remarked Lucie. “To hear them argue over a bed of cabbages one would think them the most important things in the world. They are never so happy as when they are discussing the merits of their gardens. For my part I cannot see that one is better than the other. They grow; there is enough and more than enough for our use, so what does it matter? Here comes Paulette now to gather vegetables. Shall we help her to pick the peas, Annette?”

“And shell them afterward?”

“Why yes, if you will.”

Paulette, rugged of feature, brown of skin, sharp-eyed and capable, came forward with a[13] basket on her arm. She wore a stuff skirt, a huge apron, a stout sacque and a little cap. Her face was rather grave and stern until she smiled, then her expression showed a kindly humor.

“May we help you gather the peas, Paulette?” asked Lucie, balancing herself on one foot.

Paulette scanned the vines. “Yes, if you will be careful to pick only the well-filled pods. One may not take those not fully matured. Guard well against that.”

“We know and we will be careful,” returned Lucie and forthwith the three set to work, the girls using their aprons to hold the gathered pods, Paulette giving them once in a while a sharp eye to see that they performed their task properly.

At last when peas, carrots, onions, lettuce had been gathered Paulette carried them into the house and the little girls sat down again on the stone bench to shell the peas. Paulette meantime bustled in and out to bring water, to wash the lettuce and swing it around and around in a wire basket that it might be freed from all moisture, to scrape the little potatoes, to pick over the herbs for the ragout. The warm air was scented with odors from the garden, the rose-bushes, the clambering vines and mellowing fruit. The two girls chattered away like magpies about pleasant, homely things: their lessons, their[14] pets, the growing garden, the good curé, the kind nuns. Outside the white wall the noises from the long street seemed only sociable sounds. Carts rattled along, children called to one another, men tramped home from the factories to their midday meal, stopping their whistling or singing to greet some friend. All this made a pleasant accompaniment to the drone of bees, and the drowsy crooning of hens in the chicken yard. There were homely, suggestive sounds,

too, from the kitchens.

The two little girls, Lucie Du Bois and Annette Le Brun, were great friends, as might be surmised since they were next door neighbors. Lucie, her father and mother, her grandfather, Paulette, their maid and her son Jean, occupied a comfortable, square house whose red-tiled roof could be seen when winter stripped the leaves from the trees, but which in summer was almost hidden by green. A white stucco wall separated the garden from that of the Le Bruns, but the wall was not an impassable barrier, for the two girls, by means of a ladder, or, when the ladder was lacking, by means of overhanging branches, were able to climb back and forth.

Dark-haired, brown-eyed Annette lived with her grandparents. She was a bright, ardent little soul, adoring her best friend, Lucie, who excelled her in imagination and sometimes[15] surprised her by her vivid way of telling things. Lucie, too, had dark eyes like her father’s, but her hair was a soft golden brown like her mother’s. She was about fourteen, Annette a year older. While the latter had legends of the saints at her tongue’s end, Lucie had far wider information concerning more modern tales. She never tired of hearing from her mother stories of the Indians and of her pioneer forefathers. These stories she would retell to Annette, who listened wide-eyed. Moreover there was a small collection of her mother’s girlhood books which Lucie was permitted to have and from which she gained a knowledge not only of her mother’s native tongue, but of things American. Therefore to Annette she was a very superior person whose companionship she greatly enjoyed, and preferred to that of any other girl she knew.

The big factory with the tall chimney over to the west belonged to the Du Boises; that on the other side of the town to the Le Bruns. Grandfather Du Bois had retired from active business, but still made a daily visit to the rooms where clattering machines whizzed and whirled all day long. He liked to talk over affairs with his son who had taken his place in the business. Monsieur Le Brun still remained head of his firm, having no son to succeed him, though he often spoke of the day when Annette should[16] marry and a petit fils should relieve him of his cares.

The task of shelling the peas was far from being a disagreeable one, for while their fingers split the fresh pods and raked the pale green globes from them, the two girls chattered incessantly and at last began the subject which they often discussed but never failed to enjoy. This time it was Annette who began by asking: “Have you really made up your mind which saint you prefer?”

“For me it is Saint Elizabeth of Hungary or Saint Ursula,” replied Lucie. “I adore that story of the loaves of bread turned into roses, and I also like Saint Ursula for she was of Brittany. It must have been wonderful to see her leading her eleven thousand virgins.”

“You would like to do that sort of thing, wouldn’t you, my Lucie? Have you no saint of your own country that you would like above all others?”

“My own country? France is my country.”

“I mean that country of the United States that you are always talking about.”

“How you are foolish,” returned Lucie crossly. “Why do you try to separate me from the land of my birth? I think you are very unkind. I don’t believe you want to acknowledge me as a compatriot.”

Annette looked a trifle abashed. She had[17] really meant only to tease. “Well,” she began to hunt around for an excuse, “you are continually telling me of its wonders, and you speak of the characters in those story books as if you were intimately acquainted with them, that Jo and her sisters in that ‘Leetle Veemen’ you so like.”

“Of course I am intimately acquainted with them, for I have read that book many times. One may have friends anywhere, but that does not mean one must adopt their countries.”

This argument proved Lucie’s case and Annette changed the subject back again to the favorite saints. “If you will have a sweet saint of France there is Saint Genevieve,” she remarked. “It was she whose prayers delivered Paris from Attila the Hun, you remember.”

“Yes, she is very nice,” Lucie acknowledged somewhat flippantly, not being in a mood to accept any suggestion, “but you see every one knows about her. I should like to have as my favorite some one more uncommon. I think I shall ask Sister Marie Ottilia to find me a saint that I can feel very near to because she has not too many followers.” She set the subject aside with an air of finality, and Annette felt that this time she had really gone too far in her desire to tease.

The two were silent till at last Lucie said: “There, Annette, these are the last. I will take them in. The pods Paulette can give to[18] the animals. See, already my pigeons are coming for a share of the peas. I can give them only a few, for Paulette will scold if she thinks I am wasting them. She has a sharp eye for food, that Paulette. Wait for me, Annette, I will bring a book.”

Emboldened by this overture of peace Annette ventured to say: “Not ‘Leetle Veemen.’ I cannot understand that.”

Lucie paused with the brown basin of peas in her hand and threw a laughing glance over her shoulder. “Perhaps you would better like something of Dickens,” she said.

“O, that Deekens! He is an impossible!” cried Annette, throwing out her hands with a gesture of rejection. “Not that, I beg of you.” Lucie made no reply but continued on her way to the kitchen. She was gone some time but at last returned with a green book under arm. She showed the title on the back to Annette with a gleeful laugh.

“Ma foi but you are a tease,” cried Annette. “I will not remain. I will go home at once.” She jumped up in order to carry out her decision.

Lucie forced her back upon the seat. “And why am I not to tease as well as you? To read does not hurt one’s feelings, but to be denied one’s country does,” she said.

“Did I really hurt your feelings?” Annette asked contritely.

[19]“Would it not hurt your feelings if one declared you did not belong to your native country, to France?”

“It would most surely,” Annette was obliged to confess, “but I was only teasing my Lucie. As for this Deekens, he bewilders, he confuses me. Is it because you are angry with me and wish me to go that you bring this so impossible book?”

“But this you know could not be,” Lucie assured her. “Wait till I have told you. I asked my mother to suggest something from her books which would be interesting to both you and me and she gave me this which she tells me is quite unlike any of the others of this Dickens. It is called ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and is about the French Revolution. The heroine has my own name of Lucie. My mother says the story is exciting beyond words.”

“Voila une autre chose,” returned Annette, accepting the situation without further protest. “Let us then proceed.”

Usually Lucie’s methods of translation were very free, to say the least. Her way was to skim over a page as rapidly as possible, then relate the contents in her own words. Anything that appeared uninteresting she skipped, consequently the abridged tale which Annette heard was shorn of many of its features and she was frequently bewildered in trying to keep track of[20] the plot and the characters. If she complained of this Lucie would laboriously try to translate literally, which was more bewildering still. Both girls, however, enjoyed such translations as Lucie took pains to make clear. The usual manner would run something like this, Lucie turning over the leaves rapidly:

“It was in the year 1775. There was a man in a coach who had a message brought to him. He was to meet a young lady at Dover.”

“A young man was this?” Annette queried.

“No, an old. He was a banker or something. He had to tell the young lady that her father was living.”

“Didn’t she want him to be living?”

“That I do not know yet, but anyway she thought him dead. He had been in prison for eighteen years.”

“Ma foi, Lucie, for what was he imprisoned? He must have been a very bad man. Eighteen years! A lifetime.”

“It doesn’t say why he was imprisoned. He may not have been a wicked person. Anyway they went to see him. He was in a tower making shoes.”

“Shoes? My Lucie, why should he make shoes?”

“O, just to pass away the time.”

“But so curious is this. It would not entertain me to spend my time making shoes.”

[21]“It might if you wanted to pass away the time and could find nothing else to do. I should think it rather interesting myself.”

“For me I should prefer something else; dresses, maybe, or hats. I should not mind at all making hats.”

“Men’s hats or ladies’ hats? Straw hats or what?”

“O, not men’s hats of course, beautiful hats upon which one could use ribbons and lace flowers.”

“Where could you get all those things if you were in prison?”

“I haven’t an idea. I suppose in the same manner that the man got leather for the shoes. Does it tell?”

“Not yet. Maybe it will. We shall see.” So the tale went on till the midday meal was ready and a voice from the other side of the wall called: “Annette, Annette, le dejeuner est servi.” Then over the wall climbed Annette, leaving the fortunes of Lucie Manette, Evremonde and Sidney Carton to be followed another day.

CHAPTER II THE FIRST BREAK

“MOUSSE! Mousse! Where is Mousse?” Lucie began calling her pet cat as she ran from kitchen to dining-room to library. At the door of the last named room she stopped short to look around upon the little group gathered there. “Such serious faces, all of you,” she exclaimed. “What is it? Mamma, papa, grandfather, you look as if you had lost your last friends.” She perched upon her grandfather’s knee and began pulling his moustache so as to make the corners of his mouth turn up. “Smile, cher grandpère,” she said.

He took her hands gently away and held them in his. “It is a time to be serious, my child,” he said. “One cannot smile when there is war to face. I who remember 1870 cannot smile now.”

“War? Not for us, not France. What has she done?” Lucie looked around incredulously.

“She has done nothing but be her true self,” said her grandfather shaking his head sadly.

“But it is not near, this war. It will not touch us here in our home.”

“Alas, it is very near. The Germans have invaded Belgium, and are marching on to Paris[23] where, they boast, they will eat their Christmas dinner.”

“Oh but,” Lucie began, looking toward her father, whose face wore a stern, set look. “Papa,” she cried springing up and throwing herself into his arms, “you are going! It is this that makes you all look so. You are going to the war, to be a soldier. O, papa!”

He stroked her hair softly. “Yes, little one, I am going as all good Frenchmen will go. We are not ready, we of France, but we shall do our best. For this hour Germany has been preparing for forty years. She is the one country which desires and is ready for war. The rest of us have been taken unawares but—” He shrugged his shoulders.

“And is it soon, at once, that you must go?” Lucie asked tremulously.

“At once. There is no time to lose. You must be brave, little one, and cheer mamma. You are a daughter of France, remember, and her women do not quail before danger. You will remember that and be brave always, always, no matter what comes?” He took her face between his hands and kissed her on each cheek.

Lucie winked back the tears and, though her voice quavered, she answered: “I will be brave, always, always, papa. I will remember.”

“That is my dear daughter. Try to help all[24] you can. There will be much to be done and you must do your part.”

Lucie looked across the room. “But grandfather is not going,” she said.

He lifted his head with a sudden, proud gesture. “Not yet, my pigeon, but if I am called I shall answer in spite of that old wound the Prussians gave me nearly fifty years ago.”

“And Jean, does Paulette’s Jean go?” Lucie continued her questions.

“Oh, yes, Jean must go,” her father told her. “He has enlisted already in my company.”

“Poor Paulette!” Lucie looked grave. She realized that it was indeed no time to make merry.