“What is your uncle’s cottage like, Monsieur Scott?”

“It is not unlike your own.  It is in a grove of pines, and a happy brook goes chattering by it all the summer.  Will you come fishing in it with me, ma petite?”

“Oui, avec le plus grand plaisir, Monsieur,” and she looked so happy, there was so much sun in her eyes, so many divine little dimples in her cheek, in contemplation of all the promised happiness, that it would not require much keenness to discover the secret of the dear little maiden.

“Of course, you shall fish with a pin-hook.  I am not going to see you catch yourself with one of the barbed hooks, like those which I shall use.”

“O, Monsieur Scott!  Why will you always treat me as a baby!” and there was the most delicate, yet an utterly indescribable sort of reproach in her voice and attitude, as she spoke these words.

“Then it is not a baby by any means,” and he looked with undisguised admiration upon the maiden, with all the mystic grace and perfect development of her young womanhood.  “It is a woman, a perfect little woman, a fairer a sweeter, my own mignonette, than any girl ever seen in this part of the plains since first appeared here human footprint.”

“O, Monsieur is now gone to the other extreme.  He is talking dangerously; for he will make me vain.”

“Does the ceaseless wooing of the sweet wild rose by soft winds, make that blossom vain? or is the moon spoilt because all the summer night ten thousand streams running under it sing to it unnumbered praises?  As easy, ma Marie, to make vain the rose or the moon as to turn your head by telling your perfections.”

“Monsieur covers me with confusion!” and the little sweet told the truth.  But it was a confusion very exquisite to her.  It sang like entrancing music through her veins; and gave her a delightful delirium about the temples, flow fair all the glorious great round of the night, and the broad earth lit by the moon, seemed to her now, with the music of his words coursing through her being.  Everything was transfigured by a holy beauty, for Love had sanctified it, and clothed it with his own mystic, wonderful garments.  It was with poor Marie, then, as it has some time or other been with us all:  when every bird that sang, every leaf that whispered, had in its tone a cadence caught from the one loved voice.  I have seen the steeple strain, and rock, and heard the bells peal out in all their clangourous melody, and I have fancied that this delirious ecstasy of sound that bathed the earth and went up to heaven was the voice of one slim girl with dimples and sea-green eyes.

The mischievous young Scotchman had grown more serious than Marie had ever seen him before.

“I hope, my child, that you will be happy here; the customs of the people differ from yours, but your nature is receptive to everything good and elevated, so that I am certain you will soon grow to cherish our civilization.”