If so, then it could not have been a dream. It had really happened. She found voice to protest timidly:

“Perhaps he did not mean to trick me, mother. Perhaps he really thought that he heard you calling me.”

“Pouf, child! How could he, when I did not call? There! a truce to the talk while I brew the posset. I hope that Catherine is not coming down with sickness.”

She hurried into the kitchen, while Jeanne, wondering greatly at what had taken place, took her little sister into the garden, and sat down under another tree.

CHAPTER VI

JEANNE’S HARSH WORDS

“The miracle of this girl’s life is best honored by the

simple truth. ”

SAINTE-BEUVE.

So, half from shyness, half from fear of ridicule, the child told no one of her strange experience, but often did the thought of the happening come to her, and she wondered what it could mean. Indeed so much did she dwell upon it that Mengette rallied her upon her abstraction.

“What has come over you, Jeanne?” asked the latter one day when she and Jeanne in company with other girls and women were at the river engaged in one

of the periodical washings of the village. “Twice have I spoken to you, yet you have not answered. Has your mother been scolding you?”

“Mother scolding? Why, no!” Jeanne glanced up in surprise. “There is naught the matter, Mengette. I was just thinking.”

“Of what?” questioned her friend, but as Jeanne made no reply she lowered h

63er

voice and said with some asperity: “You are thinking too much, Jeanne D’Arc.

You are not a bit like yourself, and every one is noticing it. Why, when you come to a washing you come to laugh, to sing, to talk, and to have a good time; but you do naught but mope.” And Mengette gave the garments she was washing a

vicious thump with the clothes-beater.

“Well, I haven’t moped so much but that my clothes are as clean as the ones you are washing,” retorted Jeanne, holding up some linens for inspection, and regarding her friend with a quizzical glance. “Mengette, those poor garments will be beaten to a thread if you pound them much harder.”

Mengette let her paddle drop, and pushed back her hair with her wet hands.

“I’d willingly beat them to a thread to hear you laugh, Jeanne. Now come up closer, and I will tell you something that Hauviette told me last night. I don’t want any one else to hear it.”

So, wooed for the time being from her thoughts, Jeanne moved her washing table closer to her friend’s, and the two girls were soon deep in a low toned conversation, punctuated by many peals of merriment. All along the bank of river the village women and girls kneeled over their box-shaped washing tables, open at one side, set in the water’s edge, talking as they worked, or sometimes singing roundels and catches. As Mengette had said, the pleasure of washing lay in the meeting of many women and girls, and in the chatting, laughter and news-telling between the thump, thump of the clothes-beaters. The sound of the paddles could be heard along the valley as they beat and turned and dipped and

turned again the coarse garments of their families. Thus labor that would have proved irksome performed by two or three alone was lightened by the

communion and fellowship of the many.

It was pleasant by the river, despite the heat of the day. Bluebells and tall white plumes of spiræa vied with the brownish-yellow of mignonette and the rose of meadow pink in embroidering a delicate tracery of color against the vivid green of the valley. The smell of new mown hay made the air fragrant, and hills and meadows smiled under a cloudless sky. The workers laughed, and sang, and chatted, plying always the paddles; but at length the washing was finished. The sun was getting low behind the Domremy hills when the last snowy pieces were

stretched upon the grass to bleach, and then, piling large panniers high with the garments that were dried the women lifted them to their backs, thrusting their arms into the plaited handles to steady them, and so started homeward. Isabeau

Romée lingered to speak to her daughter.

“Leave the tables and paddles, little one,” she said, as she saw Jeanne preparing to take them from the water. “I will send the boys for them, and you have done

enough for one day. Know you where the lads are? I have seen naught of them

since dinner.”

“Father said that since the hay was cut, and there was no sign of rain, they might have the afternoon for themselves, mother. I think they went somewhere down the river to fish.”

“’Tis most likely,” said Isabeau. “I hope that they will not meet the Maxey boys anywhere. If they do, home will they come all bruised and bleeding, for never do boys from this side of the river meet those from the Lorraine side that there is

not a fight. I like it not.”

“’Tis because the boys of Domremy and Greux are Armagnacs, and those of Maxey-sur-Meuse are Burgundians,” explained Jeanne, who did not know that ever since the world has stood boys of one village always have found a pretext to fight lads of another, be that pretext the difference between Armagnacs and Burgundians, or some other. “How can they help it, mother, when even grown people fight their enemies when they meet?”

“True; ’tis no wonder that they fight when there is naught but fighting in the land.” Isabeau sighed. “Would there were no war. But there, child, let’s talk of it no more. I weary of strife, and tales of strife. Since the boys are somewhere along the river they needs must pass the bridge to come home. Do you, therefore, wait here for them, and tell them that they are to bring the tables and the paddles home. I will go on to get the supper.”

“Very well, mother,” assented Jeanne. So while her mother went back to the cottage, the great pannier of clothes towering high above her head, the little girl rinsed the box-shaped washing tables carefully, then drew them high on the banks; after which she sat down near the bridge to watch for her brothers.

She did not have long to wait. Suddenly there came shouts and cries from the Lorraine side of the river, and soon there came Jean and Pierre, her brothers, followed by other Domremy lads running at full speed, and in their wake came

many Maxey boys, hurling insults and stones at their fleeing adversaries.

On Pierre’s head was a long, deep gash that was bleeding freely, and at that sight Jeanne burst into tears. She could not bear the sight of blood, and a fight made her cower and tremble. At this juncture there came from the fields Gérardin d’Épinal, a Burgundian, and the only man in Domremy who was not of the King’s party. He gave a great laugh as he saw the boys of his own village running from those of Maxey. Then knowing how loyal Jeanne was to the Dauphin, he cried teasingly:

“That is the way that the Burgundians and English are making the ‘Little King of Bourges’ run. (A term applied to the Dauphin Charles by his enemies.) Soon he

will be made to leave France, and flee into Spain, or perhaps Scotland, and then we will have for our Sovereign Lord, Henry King of England and France.”

At that Jeanne grew white. Her tears ceased to flow, and she stood up very straight and looked at him with blazing eyes.

“I would that I might see thy head struck from thy body,” she said in low intense

tones. Then, after a moment, she crossed herself and added devoutly: “That is, if it were God’s will, Gérardin d’Épinal.”

The words were notable, for they were the only harsh words the girl used in her life. Long afterward Gérardin d’Épinal told of them. Now he had the grace to blush, for he had not meant to rouse the little creature to such passion. With a light laugh he turned and went his way, saying:

“Don’t take such things so much to heart, Jeanne.”

The Domremy boys had reached their own side of the river by this time, and therefore were safe from further attack from their rivals. Now they gathered about Jeanne, for they had heard what she had said to Gérardin.

“How did you come to speak so to him, Jeanne?” cried Jean.

Jeanne hung her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Yes; it was because of what he said about the gentle Dauphin; and too, I think, because of the cut in Pierre’s head.” And with that she put her arm about her brother, and drew him to her. “Does it hurt much?” she asked tenderly. “Come! let me wash it off before we go home.