Old Chapdelaine’s voice was husky but still cheerful as he answered:  “Tough!  Edwige, tough!  The pea-soup will soon be ready.”

And in truth it was not long before Maria, once more on the door-step, shaping her hands to carry the sound, sent forth the ringing call to dinner.

Toward evening a breeze arose and a delicious coolness fell upon the earth like a pardon.  But the sky remained cloudless.

“If the fine weather lasts,” said mother Chapdelaine, “the blueberries will be ripe for the feast of Ste. Anne.”

CHAPTER V

THE VOWS

The fine weather continued, and early in July the blueberries were ripe.

Where the fire had passed, on rocky slopes, wherever the woods were thin and the sun could penetrate, the ground had been clad in almost unbroken pink by the laurel’s myriad tufts of bloom; at first the reddening blueberries contended with them in glowing colour, but under the constant sun these slowly turned to pale blue, to royal blue, to deepest purple, and when July brought the feast of Ste. Anne the bushes laden with fruit were broad patches of violet amid the rosy masses now beginning to fade.

The forests of Quebec are rich in wild berries; cranberries, Indian pears, black currants, sarsaparilla spring up freely in the wake of the great fires, but the blueberry, the bilberry or whortleberry of France, is of all the most abundant and delicious.  The gathering of them, from July to September, is an industry for many families who spend the whole day in the woods; strings of children down to the tiniest go swinging their tin pails, empty in the morning, full and heavy by evening.  Others only gather the blueberries for their own use, either to make jam or the famous pies national to French Canada.

Two or three times in the very beginning of July Maria, with Telesphore and Alma Rose, went to pick blueberries; but their day had not come, and the gleanings barely sufficed for a few tarts of proportions to excite a smile.

“On the feast of Ste. Anne,” said their mother by way of consolation, “we shall all go a-gathering; the men as well, and whoever fails to bring back a full pail is not to have any.”

But Saturday, the eve of Ste. Anne’s day, was memorable to the Chapdelaines; an evening of company such as their house in the forest had never seen.

When the men returned from work Eutrope Gagnon was already there.  He had supped, he said, and while the others were at their meal he sat by the door in the cooler air that entered, balancing his chair on two legs.  The pipes going, talk naturally turned toward the labours of the soil, and the care of stock.

“With five men,” said Eutrope, “you have a good bit of land to show in a short while.  But working alone, as I do, without a horse to draw the heavy logs, one makes poor headway and has a hard time of it.  However you are always getting on, getting on.”