The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1883-09-01
PIERRE BRANT0ME'S GRAND
DAUGHTER,

The proverbial straw had broken the
metaphorical camel's back. The pa
eience of Charlotte Brantome, usually
equal to the exigencies of the occasion,
was exhausted. The twins, as matter
of course, were the cul prits. They,
however, with the complacency natural
TO bows of or Whereabouts, were iDdif-
terent to the tempest of despair which
raged in their sisters breast. They had
considerably refrained from adding de-
ceit to their guilt, but had confessed,
fully and unreservedly, to ritling the
canary's nest. to tearing jacket, and
losing hat down the well, to eating
the strawberries that were saved for
supper, and TO catching their most
faithful hen with tshhook. That fish
hook represented the straw; Charlotte
the camel. She could have borne any
thing better than downright cruelty de-
yelOped so early in one of her own blood.
She never was boy.
And man was here, went on Pop
sey; "a big man, volunteered Wopsey,
the other twin. "And he asked us about
everything. and we said our mother
wasn't very well and our sister was an
old maid school-ma am.
Charlotte WINGED. Where had he
picked up that expression? And had it
come to that?
you must not talk to strange men
about mother or me. What did he
want?'
"llc wanted to see YOU"
"MeY Visions of tramps, of spying
burglars only they had nothing to'bur-
Gle, y as Popscy said one day, came into
her miud
.iow did he look?'
Ale was beautiful ''He was dread
fnl, said the twins in duet
Further questioning elected these
facts: He was young; he was old; he
was short; he was tall; he wore specta-
eleS; he had mustache, and was n
bug-man. In the last and browning fact
the boys agreed.
Practice had made Miss Brantome a
tolerable clairvoyant, so far as reading
those two small minds was concerned. |
She Jumped at the conclusion that some
wandsring naturalist chasing an elusive
bug had CHANGED that way, and gave
the subject no more attention. She had
other things to think of than bug
men or any men, and the problems of |
how to provide new hat for Wopsey
and how to instill remorse into the
hearts Of her charges drove other
thoughts away.
Sitting down on the low doorstep of
the house that had been home to her
for six and twenty happy years she tried
TO reason it out. The sun was yet high,
the days were at their longest. Behind
her flowed the tireless river; in front of
her, across the prairie. the hills were
green. In the field of rye over the way
cleaned large white wooden cross.
Her grandfather in whose veins flowed
some Of the blue blood of France, had
bought home in this Western country
when the remnant OF an Indian tribe
sun had property to sell. The deed of
sale provided for the preservation of
their little burying- ground. Here among
The sinking graves Pierre Brantome had
built the cross. 1t had been renewed
several times since then, but had always
seemed the same, and was ever the pa
aenc protector, solemnly holding its
white arms out as if to defend the
moldering sleepers. The grain grew
thick. around, but the tiny village OF tho
dead was never disturbed by spade or
pillow.
Old Pierre. however. had never pros
pered. Neither did Pierre the Younger;
and one night when, riding home, his
horse SHE'D at the sight Of the white
cross in the moonlight and threw him
with his head against a stone, he left no
legacy but the homestead and debt to
his wife and children. There was q
gap of some twenty years between
Charlotte and the twin babies, and she
really had third infant on her hands.
for the mother was nothing more use.
full than that after her husbands death.
She was not Predetermined exactly. but
painfully gentle - strange and unac.
!