freshly ploughed field.

If Gabriel's eyes could have followed her around that bend in the road,
he would have seen a sight past his understanding: Mademoiselle Joyce
running at the top of her speed to meet a little goatherd in wooden
shoes and blue cotton blouse,--a common little peasant goatherd.

"It's Thanksgiving Day. Jules," she announced, gasping, as she sank down
on the ground beside him. "We're the only Americans here, and everybody
has gone off; and Cousin Kate said to celebrate in some way. I'm going
to have a dinner in the garden. I've bought a rabbit, and we'll dig a
hole, and make a fire, and barbecue it the way Jack and I used to do at
home. And we'll roast eggs in the ashes, and have a fine time. I've got
a lemon tart and a little iced fruit-cake, too."

All this was poured out in such breathless haste, and in such a
confusion of tongues, first a sentence of English and then a word of
French, that it is no wonder that Jules grew bewildered in trying to
follow her. She had to begin again at the beginning, and speak very
slowly, in order to make him understand that it was a feast day of some
kind, and that he, Jules, was invited to some sort of a strange,
wonderful entertainment in Monsieur Gréville's garden. "But Brossard is
away from home," said Jules, "and there is no one to watch the goats,
and keep them from straying down the road. Still it would be just the
same if he were home," he added, sadly. "He would not let me go, I am
sure. I have never been out of sight of that roof since I first came
here, except on errands to the village, when I had to run all the way
back." He pointed to the peaked gables, adorned by the scissors of his
crazy old ancestor.