healthy urchins.

But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters.
When the Cigarette went off to make inquiries, I got out upon the
bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once
the centre of much amiable curiosity. The children had been joined
by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm;
and this gave me more security. When I let slip my first word or
so in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up
air. 'Ah, you see,' she said, 'he understands well enough now; he
was just making believe.' And the little group laughed together
very good-naturedly.

They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and
the little girl proffered the information that England was an
island 'and a far way from here--bien loin d'ici.'

'Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,' said the lad with one
arm.

I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to
make it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first
saw the day. They admired the canoes very much. And I observed
one piece of delicacy in these children, which is worthy of record.
They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with
petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune
next morning when we came to start; but then, when the canoes were
lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. Delicacy? or
perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel? I hate
cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless perhaps the