Two small boys and a girl running through the hall stopped to stare at him. Frank Hopkins called to them and they approached slowly. "These are Thomas, Benjamin and Abigail, Nicole and Frank's children," said Pierre. _Their other children_, thought Auguste, wondering whether Nicole herself knew what he knew about her. Abigail stood close to her father, her mouth and eyes wide open. Thomas, the biggest of the three, said, "Gosh almighty, I got a real Injun for a cousin!" Benjamin walked slowly over to Auguste, suddenly reached out and gripped the deerhorn handle of the knife at his belt. Auguste tensed. But Benjamin grinned up at Auguste and let go of the knife without trying to pull it out of its scabbard. Then he ran back to his father. Grandpapa Elysee beckoned, and as Auguste walked toward him he noticed that the soles of his moccasins were striking a hard surface. He looked down to see that the floor of the lodge was covered with flat stones. Auguste and the others followed Grandpapa across the length of the floor to a stone hearth so big a man could stand inside it. They passed three long, cloth-covered platforms raised as high above the floor as the sleeping platforms in Sauk and Fox summer lodges. "Those are tables," Pierre said. Auguste remembered the word from a book of words and pictures Pere Isaac had shown him. On the tables lay a confusion of shiny objects. A man standing by the hearth, who appeared as old as Elysee, stepped forward and bowed. He had a round, bright red nose and white whiskers that stood out on either side of his face. "This is Guichard, our majordomo," said Pierre. "Ma-ja domo," repeated Auguste. "Guichard came over from France with us thirty years ago." Guichard said, "I greet you, Auguste." Auguste was amazed to hear him speak in the Sauk language. He spoke with a lisp, though, and Auguste noticed when he opened his mouth that he had no front teeth. Pierre clapped Guichard on the shoulder. "I do not know how he does these things, but he always surprises us with what he has learned. And by his care for us in so many ways." Guichard stepped back with another bow, and Pierre turned to a short man and a plump woman also standing before the hearth. The woman's full lips curved in a smile of greeting for Pierre; then she plucked at her skirts, lifting them a bit, and bent her knees and ducked her head. "This is Marchette Perrault," Pierre said, and Auguste noticed that his normally pale face was flushed. "She reigns over our kitchen." Auguste did not need to rely on his special sense to see that there was a loving secret between Marchette and his father. The man standing beside Marchette, short and powerful-looking, with a bristling brown beard, was staring at Pierre with hatred in his face, his eyes narrowed. His mouth was invisible in his beard, but Auguste knew that his lips were pressed together, his teeth clenched. He also knew that this short man was as strong as a bull buffalo.