“I have never been in Canada,” he said.  “I am sorry you did not care to have Etienne talk about your home.  I would like to know more about that country.”

“He was talking about me instead of my home in Tadousac.  I am not so important that I am to be talked about.”

“Where is Tadousac?”

Her vivacity returned, her dark eyes glowed.  “Ah, m’sieu’, you should go there.  It is in the country of the good habitants where the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay meet.  And now, as the sun is setting, the people are resting under the wide eaves of the little white houses, looking up where the hills are all so blue, or off across the wide bay.  The white houses are very small and they crowd along the road, and the farms are narrow, and there is not much money in the homespun clothes or in the old clock, but the good world is wide about them and the people are not sad like those who sit yonder.”

She pointed across the canal to rows of wooden tenement-houses many stories in height; on narrow porches, nicked one above another, and on fire-escapes which were slowly cooling after hours on the forge of the sun, men, women, and children were packed, seeking a breath of fresh air.

“They stand at loom and spinner and slasher all day,” she said.  “They are too tired to walk afar to the parks.  They wait there for good air to come and it does not come.”

“I don’t understand why they flock down here from Canada—­why they stay,” he declared, bluntly.

“Ah, you look at me when you say that!” she cried, arching her brows.  “You hear me talk about the sunset over the meadows and the hills, and you wonder why I am not there?  Well, listen!  There are fourteen sons and daughters of Onesime Dionne—­that’s my father—­for all the habitant folks marry young, and the priest smiles and blesses the household when there are many children.  And girls are not of much account in the house.  The sons claim and receive their shares of the arpents of land when those boys are grown and married.  The girl may marry—­yes!  But what if the right one does not ask?  What if the right one has a father who says to him that he must obey and marry one the father has chosen?  All kinds of things can happen in the habitant country, m’sieu’.  So, then, the girl is less account in the house.  And the letters come back from the girls who have gone down into the mills in the States.  The pictures come back showing the new gown and the smart hat—­and so!” She shrugged her shoulders and tossed her free hand.  “One more girl for the big mill!”

He stared at her with some curiosity.

“You ask yourself which one of those things happened to me, do you not?”

“Perhaps,” he confessed.

“I talk little about myself.  I talk about the habitant girls.  I am fortunate.  I do not breathe the air where the looms clack.  I inspect in the cloth-hall because I have sharp eyes and nimble fingers.”