"I’d go—don’t look at me that way, Donelle—I’d go to St. Michael’s-on-the-Rocks." *CHAPTER XVII* *THE BLIGHTING TRUTH* Then spring came softly, fragrantly up the hill from the river. Almost every day a new little flower showed its head. Tom Gavot came back grim, tired, and eager. He found his cabin swept and shining, a fire upon the hearth, and a bunch of timid snow blossoms in a cracked mug on the table—that made him laugh. But at the sight of them Tom’s weariness vanished and he sat down by his own fireside with a sigh of complete content. Jo sang at her work that spring, actually sang "A la Claire Fontaine." She sang it boldly, without reservations, and Nick forgot his years and a growing dimness of the eyes. He smelled around among the delectable new things in the woods, found the scent for which he was searching, and trotted off gaily, feeling young and dapper once again. Molly, the sturdy horse, felt her oats; she almost ran away once, tossing Jo from the shaft into the muddy road. But Jo only laughed aloud. It was all so absurd and natural. "The little red cow," Jo said to Donelle that spring, "is old, old. I really do not know that it’s wise to keep her longer. She eats her head off." "But you are going to keep her, Mamsey, aren’t you? You just couldn’t send her away? Think of all her pretty calves, and she has been so faithful." Suddenly Mam’selle recalled the night before Donelle came: when she and Nick had bided with the little red cow. "Of course," she blurted out, "I am going to keep her. I was only supposing." "Oh! Mamsey, you are such fun, and you never hide any more. You’re really getting to be handsome. Do you know Mr. Alton, Mr. Richard Alton, says he’d like to paint you as ’The Woman With the Hoe.’ He says you’d show the man—I don’t know who he means—what a hoe can do for the right sort." "Well, Mr. Richard Alton isn’t going to mess me up in his paints. It’s an awful waste of time for a full-grown man to make pictures all day. I wonder when he’s going home?" "I wonder?" whispered Donelle. "We’ll never have another boarder like him, child." "Oh! never, Mamsey." "I wish he’d stay through the summer. I’d like to fling him in the teeth of Marcel’s boarders." "Oh! Mamsey." "The Captain says he’s all ready for folks now; he’s opened sooner because Father Mantelle prophesies an early summer." Then one night, after everyone was in bed, the _River Queen_ sneaked up to the wharf—there is no other word for her action—and a lone figure, with several bags and a trunk, was deposited. Jean Duval, who had swung out the lantern from the pole, took charge. "I’ll just take you up to Captain Longville’s," he said. "The Captain can manage." The following morning Donelle found, upon going to the living room, that Alton had departed at daybreak.