However, it signified little to the youthful mistress-of-the-bells, Maryette Courtray, called "Carillonnette," for her Yankee lover still lay in his distant hospital--her muleteer, "Djack." So mules might bray, and negroes fill the Sainte Lesse meadows with their shouting laughter; and the lank, hawk-nosed Yankee muleteers might saunter clanking into the White Doe in search of meat or drink or tobacco, or a glimpse of the pretty bell-mistress, for all it meant to her. Her Djack lived; that was what occupied her mind; other men were merely men--even his comrades, Sticky Smith and Kid Glenn, assumed individuality to distinguish them from other men only because they were Djack’s friends. And as for all other muleteers, they seemed to her as alike as Chinamen, leaving upon her young mind a general impression of long, thin legs and necks and the keen eyes of hunting falcons. ------------------ She had washing to do that morning. Very early she climbed up into the ancient belfry, wound the drum so that the bells would play a few bars at the quarters and before each hour struck; and also in order that the carillon might ring mechanically at noon in case she had not returned to take her place at the keyboard with her wooden gloves. There was a light west wind rippling through the tree tops; and everywhere sunshine lay brilliant on pasture and meadow under the purest of cobalt skies. In the garden her crippled father, swathed in shawls, dozed in his deep chair beside the river-wall, waking now and then to watch the quill on his long bamboo fish-pole, stemming the sparkling current of the little river Lesse. Sticky Smith, off duty and having filled himself to repletion with café-au-lait at the inn, volunteered to act as nurse, attendant, remover of fish and baiter of hook, while Maryette was absent at the stone-rimmed pool where the washing of all Sainte Lesse laundry had been accomplished for hundreds of years. "You promise not to go away?" she cautioned him in the simple, first-aid French she employed in speaking to him, and pausing with both arms raised to balance the loaded clothes-basket on her head. "Wee--wee!" he assured her with dignity. "Je fume mong peep! Je regard le vieux pêcher. Voo poovay allay, Mademoiselle Maryette." She hesitated, then removed the basket from her head and set it on the grass. "You are very kind, Monsieur Steek-Smeet. I shall wash your underwear the very first garments I take out of my basket. Thank you a thousand times." She bent over with sweet solicitude and pressed her lips to her father’s withered cheek: "Au revoir, my father _chéri_. An hour or two at the meadow-_lavoir_ and I shall return to find thee. _Bonne chance, mon père!_ Thou shalt surely catch a large and beautiful fish for luncheon before I return with my wash." She swung the basket of wash to her head again without effort, and went her way, following the deeply trodden sheep-path behind the White Doe Inn.