"They are ducks!" she said. (She called it "docks," Melody; you cannot think how soft her speech was.) "Poor leetle docks, that go flap, flap; not yet zey have learned to swim, no! But here now, see a bird of ze water, a sea-bird what you call." She turned her wrist and sent the flat pebble flying; it skimmed along like a live thing, flipping the little crests of the ripples, going miles, it seemed to Petie and me, till at length we lost sight of it altogether. "Where did it go?" I asked. "I didn't hear it splash." "It went--to France!" said Mother Marie. "It make a voyage, it goes, goes,--at last it arrives. '_Voila la France!_' it say. 'That I go ashore, to ask of things for Marie, and for _petit Jacques_, and for Petie too, good Petie, who bring the apples.'" There were red apples in a basket, and I can see now the bright whiteness of her teeth as she set them into one. "What will the stone see?" I asked again; for I loved to make my mother tell me of the things she remembered in France, the country she always loved. She loved to tell, too; and a dreamy look would come into her eyes at such times, as if she did not see us near at hand, but only things far off and dim. We listened, Petie and I, as if for a fairy tale. "He come, zat leetle--non! _that lit_-tel stone." (Mother Marie could often pronounce our English "th" quite well; it was only when she forgot that she slipped back to the soft "z" which I liked much better.) "He come to the shore! It is not as this shore, no! White is the sand, the rocks black, black. All about are nets, very great, and boats. The men are great and brown; and their beards--Holy Cric! their beards are a bush for owls; and striped their shirt, jersey, what you call, and blue trousers. Zey come in from sea, their sails are brown and red; the boats are full wiz fish, that shine like silver; they are the herring, _petit Jacques_, it is of those that we live a great deal. Down zen come ze women to ze shore and zey--_they_--are dressed beautiful, ah! so beautiful! A red petticoat,--sometimes a blue, but I love best the red, striped wiz white, and over this the dress turned up, _a la blanchisseuse_. A handkerchief round their neck, and gold earrings,--ah! long ones, to touch their neck; and gold beads, most beautiful! and then the cap! _P'tit Jacques_, thou hast not seen caps, because here they have not the understanding. But! white, like snow in ze sun; the muslin clear, you understand, and stiff that it cracks,--ah! of a beauty! and standing out like wings here, and here--you do not listen! you make not attention, bad children that you are! Go! I tell you no more!"