Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/30

14 as to patronage, but he had other views. So he was going. Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied that it was too late. The harm was not to be undone.

As Muroc spoke, every one turned toward Medallion. He came over and filled a glass at the table and raised it.

"I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that line old puffing forgeron, Lajeunesse," he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room. Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. "I knew Madelinette as did you all when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories and listen to her sing French chansons—the best in the world. She has gone on, we stay where we are. But she proves her love to us, by taking her husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never find a spot so good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!"

He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his glass, Medallion let it fall on the stone floor. It broke into a hundred pieces.

He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. "Give her my love," he said. "Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses she gave me when she was five and I was thirty!" Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.

"Why did he drop his glass?" asked Gingras the shoemaker.

"That's the way of the aristocrats when it's the damnedest toast that ever was!" said Duclosse the mealman. "Eh, Lajeunesse, that's so, isn't it?"

"What the devil do I know about aristocrats!" said Lajeunesse.