"Marcel, I haven’t lived my life for nothing. No man fixes my life for me nor labels me or mine. Donelle is nothing but a child. Why, look at her! When she’s a woman, if a man wants her, he’s going to hear something that I’m keeping just for him, and unless he believes it, he’s not fit for the girl. In the meantime, my boarder is my boarder." With this Marcel had to be content, and the others also. For they were waiting for the result of the interview like hungry animals afraid to go too near the food supply, but full of curiosity. Yet for all her scornful words, Jo watched the man within her house. She realized that he was still young and for all his leanness and brownness, handsome, in a way. He had a habit, after the evening meal was done, of sitting astride a chair, and, while smoking, laughing at Donelle. "He’d never do that if he saw in her a woman," thought Jo with relief. "She amuses him." And that surely Donelle did. Her mimicry was delicious, her abandon before Alton most diverting. She knew no shyness, she even returned his teasing with a quick pertness that disarmed Jo completely. "Well, Mr. Richard Alton," Donelle said one night as she watched him puff his pipe, "I went up to the wood-cabin to-day to see how much painting you’d done and I found it locked. I looked into the window and there was something hung inside." "Little girls mustn’t snoop," said Alton. Donelle twisted her mouth and cocked her head. "Very well," she said, "keep your old cabin. I know another that is never locked against me." "Meaning whose?" "You’ll have to hunt and find, Mr. Richard Alton." Norval laughed and turned to Jo. "Why don’t you spank her, Mam’selle?" he asked. "She’s a little rascal." Then: "Whose fiddle is that?" for Donelle never played. Donelle’s eyes followed his and rested upon the case standing against the wall. "How did you know it was a fiddle?" she asked. "Well, it’s a fiddle case. Of course, Mam’selle may keep cheese in it!" "It’s—it’s my fiddle," Donelle’s gaiety fled, "but I don’t play it any more." "Why?" "Well, everything that went with the fiddle has gone! I’m trying to forget it." "Mam’selle," Norval frowned his darkest, "have you ever heard of a bird who could sing and wouldn’t?" "No, Mr. Alton, never!" Jo was quite sincere. Her boarder was always giving her interesting information. "It can be made to, Mam’selle. Again, I advise spanking." Surely there was no fear that her boarder and Donelle might come to grief! Jo laughed light heartedly. Her own bleak experience in the realm of love and danger was so far removed that it gave her no guidance. She might have felt differently had she seen what happened the following day. But at that time she was diligently building her wood pile while Donelle, among the trees on the hilltop, was supposed to be instructing a couple of boys in sawing wood.