"Bonaventure," said Zosephine,--this was as they were returning from church, the wide rawhide straps of their huge wooden two-wheeled vehicle creaking as a new saddle would if a new saddle were as big as a house,--"Bonaventure, I wish you could learn how to dance. I am tired trying to teach you." (This and most of the unbroken English of this story stands for Acadian French.) Bonaventure looked meek for a moment, and then resentful as he said: "'Thanase does not dance." "'Thanase! Bah! What has 'Thanase to do with it? Who was even thinking of 'Thanase? Was he there last night? Ah yes! I just remember now he was. But even he could dance if he chose; while you--you can't learn! You vex me. 'Thanase! What do you always bring him up for? I wish you would have the kindness just not to remind me of him! Why does not some one tell him how he looks, hoisted up with his feet in our faces, scratching his fiddle? Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure--the fiddle would just suit you. Ah, if you could play!" But the boy's quick anger so flashed from his blue eyes that she checked herself and with contemplative serenity added: "Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!" Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin. "It's no such a thing!" exclaimed Zosephine so forcibly that Madame Sosthene's sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to Bonaventure: "Oh, you--you can't even guess well." She was about to say more, but suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a quiet trot. The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree--from hat to spurs you might have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders, thighs, and all.