The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories

								

surprise you.  These are a wonderful people who live across the Lake."
Annette was lolling in the hammock under the big catalpa-tree some days
later, when the gate opened, and Natalie's big sun-bonnet appeared.
Natalie herself was discovered blushing in its dainty depths.  She was
only a little Creole seaside girl, you must know, and very shy of the
city demoiselles.  Natalie's patois was quite as different from
Annette's French as it was from the postmaster's English.
"Mees Annette," she began, peony-hued all over at her own boldness, "we
will have one lil' hay-ride this night, and a fish-fry at the end.
Will you come?"
Annette sprang to her feet in delight.  "Will I come?  Certainly.  How
delightful!  You are so good to ask me.  What shall--what time--"  But
Natalie's pink bonnet had fled precipitately down the shaded walk.
Annette laughed joyously as Philip lounged down the gallery.
"I frightened the child away," she told him.
You've never been for a hay-ride and fish-fry on the shores of the
Mississippi Sound, have you?  When the summer boarders and the Northern
visitors undertake to give one, it is a comparatively staid affair,
where due regard is had for one's wearing apparel, and where there are
servants to do the hardest work.  Then it isn't enjoyable at all.  But
when the natives, the boys and girls who live there, make up their
minds to have fun, you may depend upon its being just the best kind.
This time there were twenty boys and girls, a mamma or so, several
papas, and a grizzled fisherman to restrain the ardor of the amateurs.
The cart was vast and solid, and two comfortable, sleepy-looking mules
constituted the drawing power.  There were also tin horns, some
guitars, an accordion, and a quartet of much praised voices.  The hay
in the bottom of the wagon was freely mixed with pine needles, whose
prickiness through your hose was amply compensated for by its delicious
fragrance.
After a triumphantly noisy passage down the beach one comes to the
stretch of heavy sand that lies between Pass Christian proper and
Henderson's Point.  This is a hard pull for the mules, and the more
ambitious riders get out and walk.  Then, after a final strain through
the shifting sands, bravo! the shell road is reached, and one goes
cheering through the pine-trees to Henderson's Point.
If ever you go to Pass Christian, you must have a fish-fry at
Henderson's Point.  It is the pine-thicketed, white-beached peninsula
jutting out from the land, with one side caressed by the waters of the
Sound and the other purred over by the blue waves of the Bay of St.
Louis.  Here is the beginning of the great three-mile trestle bridge to
the town of Bay St. Louis, and to-night from the beach could be seen
the lights of the villas glittering across the Bay like myriads of
unsleeping eyes.
Here upon a firm stretch of white sand camped the merry-makers.  Soon a
great fire of driftwood and pine cones tossed its flames defiantly at a