The Basque Country

THE CUCKOO

It was Nancy and Mrs. Brewster who had suggested the Basque country. This was partly because Cynthia needed a new type of child’s head for her covers for Little One’s Magazine, and partly because they thought it would be a new and amusing adventure. It bore also the extra recommendation of economy. Mrs. Brewster had a friend in a tiny village, well off the beaten track of tourists. He was an artist, he would see that Cynthia found good accommodations, if not in his own house, then in a house nearby. Good, she would write to him, find out for sure if he was still living. For he was, she said, old, old.

The Basque country seemed, to Cynthia, a very long way off from Paris, and from the Brewsters in Brittany, and from all the places she had grown to know. The scare and loneliness of Paris had been exorcised by her first success with the portrait of Nono. No place where you can earn a living can be, after you have proved yourself, really strange or unfriendly. But miles and miles away, in the southwestern corner of France it might be different.

Somewhat reluctantly, feeling a little forlorn and abandoned, Cynthia left the Brewsters in Britanny and returned to Paris. France is a great spider web of glittering rails of railways, but Paris, like a giant, not unfriendly, spider, sits in the heart, if not the exact center, and to go almost anywhere it is cheaper and easier to return to that city and start all over again.

An hour on the train, and the feeling of forlornness began to disappear. Under Nancy’s stern tutelage Cynthia’s French had improved enormously. Now she knew how to order a meal, where and how to buy her lunch, if there was no dining car on the train; knew that she must give up her ticket at the exit barrier, but retain it until then, and half a hundred other small things that went to make life and travel smoother and more pleasant. Going back to Paris was almost like going home again. Her own little room up near the roof in the Hotel St. Severin, or one very like it except that the wallpaper sprawled magenta fuschias on a green ground instead of huge coins of blue and gold and purple on a red ground. A dinner with Alice and the Murchisons, and a pressing invitation to bring over her bags from the hotel and stay with them as long as she could. Then she encountered, of all people, Stasia Carruthers, in front of the CafÉ de la Paix, and was carried off to Rumplemeier’s for one of their scrumptious teas.

News was exchanged. Stasia had been down to Switzerland, was back now for some fittings and to buy some new hats. Gaily Cynthia plunged into her own adventures, even to how she had sold three portraits of children in the little town of Le Conquet, once she had succeeded in breaking down the reserve of the villagers. For just a little while she found herself envying Stasia; her new, smart little Paris hat, her trick little silk suit, fresh from the scissors of Chanel. Looking up suddenly she surprised a strange expression in Stasia’s dark eyes. Could it be envy? Envy for the greater adventure of earning your way. Anyone could buy his way on a fat letter of credit. But to earn as you went, that was the greater risk, hence the greater adventure.

Cynthia chuckled to herself, tucked a stray curl beneath the brim of the hat she had bought for fifty francs in the Rue St. Roch, and ceased to envy Stasia.

Two days later, having restocked her box of water colors on the Boulevard Montparnasse, that parnassus of all good little art students, she took train at some uncanny hour of the early morning for Bordeaux. There, late in the afternoon and from the shouting hotel runners at the station, each screaming the particular merits of his own hotel, she chose the Hotel de New York. It seemed homelike as to name at least.

It proved dingy and down at heels, but with a charming view out over one of Bordeaux’ countless city squares. Cynthia yawned through her dinner, left an early call for breakfast, and was off again almost before daylight for Gotien, in the Basses-PyrÉnÉes. Three times that day she changed trains, until, from sheer weariness Gotien began to seem like some Never-never land, always retreating as one advanced. And beyond Gotien—the address she was bound for was Mouleon-Soule.

She had gone through the gate with her suitcase and sketch box and stood, almost shaking with weariness full in the afternoon sun that streamed across the dusty, cobblestoned plaza. No one could tell her how to get to Mouleon-Soule. But perhaps if she could find the station hotel, get a good dinner and a night’s sleep, she could grapple, tomorrow, with the problem.

Then from beyond the ragged plane trees that lined the plaza came a little shabby, stoop-shouldered man in a Basque beret timidly displaying a wide, toothless smile. His English savored quaintly of both French and American.

“Is it that this is the Mademoiselle Euanstead?”

Cynthia squinted against the sun. She was too weary to think. Was someone to meet her here?

“Yes, I’m Miss Wanstead.”

“Bon! We had the letter from Madame Brewster.” “Oh, then you are Monsieur Marge. How nice! I couldn’t discover a train for Mouleon.”

“No train,” he shook his head. “Only the tramcars. But come and meet my wife.”

Madame was a plump little dumpling in plain worn black, knitting on one of the benches beneath the trees. She beamed a silent welcome and carried her knitting with her, needles clicking without a break, into the tram which had been waiting, small town fashion, for Monsieur Marge to find his guest. For an hour, while Cynthia struggled to keep her eyes open, they rattled and banged through clouds of dust toward the tiny town of Mouleon, then out again into open country.

Sunset had passed and it was nearly dark when they reached their final stop and Cynthia stumbled up the path behind her hosts. Twice, during the simple dinner, she found herself nodding. Then at some brief remark from Madame, Monsieur Marge suggested kindly:

“My wife sees that you are very tired. I will light the candle and show you to your room.” Behind him a silly little cuckoo clock chirped nine times, as Cynthia stumbled up the bed. Cynthia woke slowly, aware of an unusual sound. Something, someone was snoring. Surely—no, the sound couldn’t possibly be human. She lay still a moment, listening, then decided she really must investigate, and sat up against her pillows.

She was in a high, story-book bed, such a bed as might have accommodated the princess of a Grimm fairy-tale. With four high posts, heavy dark draperies sweeping the floor, and, actually, three little steps of a ladder to lead up to it. She leaned over and peered down at them, then gave a delighted bounce. She had been too sleepy the night before to notice those steps, but she did remember her host’s very French warning that the night air was dangerous and that she must keep her windows tight closed. But after Madame and Monsieur had departed she had crossed to the casements and opened them wide.

Now she pattered, barefooted, down the steps and leaned out over the low sill. The curious snores came from just below. Grunts, not snores! Oh, the darlings! Pigs, little ones, and all ten of them very vocal and very hungry and directly beneath her window. “Well, I never thought I’d live over a pigpen,” laughed Cynthia. “Isn’t that France for you!”

At the end of the long room a dusty old mirror in a tall gold frame reflected the polished parquet floor with its dark oak inlay, the huge heavy furniture, built to last many lifetimes, the two high windows, and the Basque PyrÉnÉes, towering, blue, beyond the green of rolling fields. In the center of it all Cynthia herself, like some new kind of a blue-and-white striped, pyjamaed, fairy-tale princess; dark hair a tangle of curls, blue eyes wide and amused, bare pink toes pattering over the shining floor.

“Well, you certainly are an anach ... anachronism ... or however you pronounce it when you mean you’re out of place!” she twinkled at the fairy in the mirror. “Wonder what time they breakfast here! Gosh, I’m hungry!”

She tiptoed to the door. It swung silently on well-oiled hinges. No footsteps sounded below but there was a murmur of soft voices, the smell of toast—she sniffed—and chocolate. Then from somewhere in the house a bird call sounded. Nine times. A cuckoo clock. Nine cuckoos. My, but it was late! Hurry and get dressed, my dear. She scampered back to fling on her clothes. “Glory, what a day!”

She must have slept twelve hours solid. Goodness, how heavenly the pines smelled, how wonderful this peace and quiet after the hot asphalt, the ceaseless noise, the rattle and scream of Paris.

She ran a comb through her hair, gave a dab of powder to her nose and opened the door again. The wide shallow stairs led directly into the sun-drenched kitchen.

Madame, looking up, beamed good morning from her work over the stove. “Bon jour, bon jour,” and seemed very proud of even that much French. Her own language was Basque, of course.

“Good morning, Mam’selle Euanstead. You have slep’ well?”

“Gorgeously! Is this for me, Monsieur Marge?”

A single place at the kitchen table was set with a bowl of hot cocoa on a red checked napkin. There was another napkin, a big spoon, crisp hot bread fresh toasted in the oven, and a huge sweet orange.

“An egg also?” asked Monsieur Marge from the doorstep where he sat with his pipe. “No? Then when you have finished a second cup of cocoa I shall show you my hive’ and my bee’ and my studio.”

The latter proved to be a small, dingy, not too well-lighted building behind the rambling, whitewashed, red-roofed house. Here dusty canvases and dried tubes of paint, bits of old tapestry and ancient stretcher-frames were piled and presided over by two of those artist’s lay figures that resemble life-sized, wigless dolls.

Monsieur Marge turned over the quaint old pictures to display them and Cynthia murmured appreciation, trying hard to find something to admire in each. But they were of such an ancient manner, of the “brown gravy” school, with shadows dead as brown paint and thick, lifeless color, that proper applause was difficult.

“You know I paint in America too?” he asked her proudly.

“Yes, Mrs. Brewster told me. Where was that?” “I live in Philadelphia fifteen years. That was before the war. Then I live in South America with my son, long time. Many Basque live in South America. Then I come home here, to my old farm I buy when I young man ... many year ago. That was before you were born.” He chuckled at his own age. “Long ago I paint those panorama for the World Fair in Chicago.”

“Goodness! Did you? I’ve heard of them but never saw one.”

“Yes, indeed. They be gre-e-a-t painting.” He spread his arms to indicate an immense canvas. “And figures modeled like life. I paint twelve of those. They go all round the country. Twelve Battle of Gettysburg, with men in uniform in the wheat field. Battle of Gettysburg, she was fought in a wheat field.” He chuckled again and sucked on his empty pipe. “We work all night, many night, on that to get her ready for the opening of the Fair. We were all French, the artists who work on her. But the day after the opening we close the doors again, take her down and paint again all night long.”

“Oh, why?” cried Cynthia. “Because,” he grinned in cheerful toothlessness. “We have paint French wheat field. Full of puppies. American wheat field have no puppies.” And he roared with laughter over the ancient jest.

“Pup ...” for a moment Cynthia was puzzled. Then she too laughed. “Oh yes, poppies!” For all day yesterday she had admired the glorious silky red flowers blooming among the wheat beside the railway.

“You want to paint this morning?” And, when Cynthia decided that she might as well start immediately, “Go down the road and then turn right, by the mill. That is near and pretty, and tomorrow you can go further. You have everything you want? Oil? Turpentine? Oh, you paint in the water color. That is pretty, too.”

So Cynthia settled down contentedly on the old Basque farm. It was two miles through the hot sunlight to the nearest village but she found plenty to paint within easy walking distance of the Marge house; nearby houses with their Spanish iron balconies overhung with roses and vines; the sturdy Basque farmers at work in the fields, and their great cream colored oxen that paced so slowly along the road. The houses were white with steep roofs and wide eaves of deep gray and heavy shutters painted green, and the vines, sprayed with arsenic green made rich shadow patterns on the old walls. Then she found an old stone church with the three-peaked tower so characteristic of Basque village churches and beneath its porch an iron grill to discourage the pigs from entering the place of worship. She peeped through the stone doorways where the lintels bore blurred dates of the early seventeenth century, to peer into the dim, dark timbered kitchens on whose table-high hearthstones a tiny fire of twigs burned beneath the black kettle on a crane. With many of the women she had a pleasant nodding and smiling acquaintance, but she spoke no word of their language and found that her French was not understood. Besides, these people seemed unusually reserved. She could establish no contact with them.

Cynthia began to suspect that Monsieur Marge was in a similar position and was very lonely because of it. He had lived so long in America that he had lost touch with these, his own people, and when he had returned to them found that they considered him a foreigner. He was now neither Basque nor American.

It was a valley of enchantment hidden between the high snow capped peaks of the PyrÉnÉes. Each day was as clear-skied, as sunny and warm as the one before it and Cynthia woke each morning in her fairytale bed to look forward to another bright morning of painting, another sleepy afternoon of sketching. Still, she reminded herself after a week of this, she wasn’t getting any further with her job for the month. She had come down here to do a Basque cover for the Little Ones’ Magazine. Somewhere she must find herself a model.

Her second week in the Basque country had started. Monday slipped by, Tuesday evening she sat, as usual on the doorstep after a late dinner. Monsieur Marge smoked placidly, Madame knitted in the half dark of the vine-hung verandah. There was a sound of cattle bells far down the smooth winding road and the mountains leaned, purple dark, against the sunset.

Cynthia and the old man had been comparing their memories of old songs. Astonishing how many of the old ones, the really old ones that belonged to mother’s, even to grandmother’s day, he remembered from his years in America. There was “Sweet Marie” and “Sweet Rosey O’Grady,” and “Sidewalks of New York.”

“Oh yes, they sing that still,” cried Cynthia and whistled it with him. Madame hummed and smiled placidly while her fingers seemed to twinkle in time to the gay little tune.

“A Bicycle Built for Two,” he suggested.

Yes, Cynthia knew that one. She had heard it in the movies. A moment of silence then, while they paused to think of more, and from the dark room behind them came a cheerful “Cuck ... oo. Cuckoo ...!”

“What makes the bird in the clock cuckoo?” asked Cynthia when she had finished counting nine warbles.

“Wait, I show you.” Monsieur sprang to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen, to return a moment later with the clock beneath his arm.

Madame gave a little chuckle and Monsieur explained. “We bought this on our wedding trip, in Switzerland, almost fifty years ago.” He set it down on the step and returned for a lamp, which he lighted and placed beside the clock. Then, with delicate fingers he removed the screws in the back and exposed the carved wooden works for Cynthia to see. Unlike the usual cuckoo-clock this was all self-contained, without the long pendulum and the heavy iron weights that usually hang down below the little box. Its face and the surrounding frame was like old lace, interwoven with tiny intricate figures and small deer and cows and squirrels, the whole dark with age and good French furniture polish.

“See,” explained the old man. “There are two little b’lows, here, and here,” and his finger indicated the tiny bellows of leather, like those used to blow a fire, “Now watch. I make him sing.”

He turned the white hands to ten o’clock, and the cuckoo popped out, opened his little red mouth and warbled. One small bellow went Cu ... ck, and the other, immediately afterwards, went ooooo. Cuck ... oo. Cuck ... oo! Over and over. Ten times.

“Oh, I never knew what made him do it,” cried Cynthia. “Now let me try.” The bird popped out in such a quaintly serious fashion that one wanted to laugh every time he appeared.

“I will keep him here and oil him in the morning,” decided Monsieur Marge. “Perhaps, in the night, he will attract other cuckoos, yes?” Madame chuckled.

“Does she understand English?” asked Cynthia, getting up to put the clock on the verandah table.

“I un’ stand,” murmured Madame, in the darkness and her husband shook his head. “Only little. But she too lazy to speak anything but Basque. We are conservative peepul, we Basque. Per’aps it is as well. Otherwise we could not remain so entrench’ against the centuries of invaders, and of change.” And as the night deepened and the stars came out Cynthia heard old tales of Charlemagne and of his blond barbarians from the north who had been defeated in these very hills. Of how the Basque had dwelt here for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years, unconquered, unchanging.

“It may be because our language is so difficul’,” explained the old man with pride. “We have a saying that the Devil once came here, to our country and stayed seven years. In that time he learn but two words. ... “By” for “Yes,” and “Es,” for “No.” At las’ disgusted by his waste of time, he flew away again, and soon forgot even those two. That is why the evil never comes here.”

He sighed in the darkness and Cynthia felt a pang of pity. Even here, among his own people, he was homesick, denied a closer contact with them because of his long years in America.

The next morning Cynthia unfolded the camp stool, on which she sat to sketch, beneath the vines at the side of the farmhouse. A stone-paved walk ran back to the little ramshackle studio and M. Marge pottered about in the sunlight with his beehives. Cynthia opened her sketch book, squeezed color onto her palette and set to work.

The cuckoo clock behind her ticked steadily with no relation to the hour of the day. Cynthia, rapidly sketching in the grape arbor and the green door in the white wall beyond it, wondered how to get the effect of spattered sunlight where the light dribbled down through leaves, and discovered with a little thrill that part of the trick lay in breaking the color, patting it on in little spats of the brush with flecks of white paper showing between, part in letting the shadow actually dribble off her brush so that it was lightest farthest from the leaves.

A small, cooing voice sounded behind her. Turning, she saw on the path, a little girl of six or maybe less, very Basque in her bright blouse and dark blue cotton skirt and bare brown feet thrust into rope soled espadrilles. Her eyes were soft and brown and her hair had been plaited into two pigtails, so tight that they seemed actually to drag her eyelids upwards at the corners.

“Oh, you duck!” breathed Cynthia. “What fun if I could paint you!”

The brown eyes danced with mischief, and the small mouth was puckered into a demure rosebud. What could have drawn her up the path from the road? Cynthia’s glance followed the child’s. The tick of the clock? But surely she had heard a clock before. Then Cynthia remembered that a moment before it had erratically struck eleven. Laughing, she gestured a query towards the clock. Was that it? The small one nodded shyly.

“Sure, I’ll show it to you,” Cynthia offered. “Want to see the birdie, do you?” She put down book and brushes and led the way up the steps. Then she turned the hands gently as she had seen M. Marge do the night before. The bird answered with a startled “Cuck ... oo!”

“Oh!” The brown eyes danced with delight, the small hands clapped ecstatically. The child came closer.

“Now the next will be twelve,” Cynthia said, though of course that wouldn’t mean anything to this infant, and turned the hands again. This time the bird gave a most satisfactory performance. By the time his song was finished the child’s face was so close to the little flapping doors that Cynthia was afraid she would pop inside, out of sheer rapturous delight.

“If I could get her, just so, with her head turned like that, and those quaint little pigtails, and the sunlight behind her—but I’m afraid I’m not clever enough,” mourned Cynthia. “No; it’s impossible.” Then to the child, “Birdie’s all gone, my dear. No more today. I refuse to ruin M. Marge’s wedding present just because a Basque baby wants to hear the cuckoo clock. Sit down won’t you, and amuse me while I work.”

Monsieur Marge came up the walk from his beehives. He said something in Basque to the child, who answered stammeringly. “She should not be here,” he explained. “She lives down there, the Yturbe house. She is the only one left. The two sons died in the war, and this is the only grandchild. The old people worship her. I will take her home.”

Cynthia was sorry to see her go. “I wish I could paint her,” she thought again wistfully, but she knew M. Marge was not on good enough terms with his neighbors to make the unusual request. This was not Paris, where everyone knew about artists and where models seem to drop ripe from every lamp-post, blossom in every zinc with your breakfast cocoa.

That afternoon a hive of bees swarmed and M. Marge was so busy with them that the little cuckoo clock waited another night unoiled, upon the verandah. “I’ll do the job tomorrow and put it back in the morning,” he promised Madame. “It is quite safe there.” But apparently it wasn’t so safe. At least when Cynthia came down to breakfast M. Marge reported the clock was gone.

“Gone? ... The cuckoo clock?” Cynthia heard herself repeating idiotically. “Well! but goodness! Who on earth would take it?”

M. Marge shook his head and Madame, pouring the morning chocolate, murmured something in Basque.

“She says she is sorry to lose our wedding present.”

“Oh dear, I feel terribly responsible,” mourned Cynthia. “If I only hadn’t asked you to bring it out and show me.”

“It is my own fault.” The old man became firmly cheerful. “Mais non, Mademoiselle, I am a careless old man. I should not have left the clock on the verandah. But the Basque are honest peepul. We do not steal and we are too far from the town for gypsies or tramps. I cannot figure it out.”

Cynthia painted that morning with a wretched feeling of responsibility. “I could get them a new clock,” she told herself, “but it wouldn’t be the same.” She had chosen a spot down the main road, where two small stone, white-washed houses, overgrown with rambling roses, were as theatrically picturesque as a scene from the Follies. But the sketch was not very satisfactory. “It’s not my kind of thing,” she fretted. “It’s fun to do, but I’d rather paint people. Wonder where my little friend of yesterday is. She must live in one of those houses. ...”

A team of oxen plodded slowly down the dusty road, brilliantly golden beneath the shadow of the blue dyed sheepskin that lay atop their heavy yoke, their eyes hidden behind a heavy fringe of bright colored net. Their driver walked ahead, his makhila over his shoulder rested on the yoke to guide the animals.

Cynthia listened to the soft jangle of bells till it died in the distance, then decided she was hungry; that was what must be wrong with her sketch, and packed up her materials. The Marges never ate lunch. Cynthia had discovered that a continental breakfast did not sustain one very well from eight A.M. till five in the afternoon, and after two days of semi-starvation had persuaded Madame to give her a cold meal at noon. Today there was sliced duckling and a pleasant salad set on the red checked table cloth beneath the sun spangled arbor.

She finished her raspberries, with the thick pat of rich sour cream and the crust of warm bread and idly watched M. Marge talking to someone beyond the beehives. It looked like the old man in the Yturbe household, Thomasina’s grandfather. Cynthia wondered at that, for she knew the two men were not close friends. “I wish I could get that child to paint,” she thought idly, remembering the small eager face of the day before.

M. Marge came slowly and alone up the stone flagged walk and sat down on the step beside Cynthia’s luncheon table.

“There must be gypsies here,” he stated, “For Thomasina has been stolen.”

“Thomasina!” cried Cynthia, aghast. “How perfectly dreadful!” and felt her throat tighten. For a moment she could not speak for fear of bursting into tears. Little Thomasina! “When ... how long?” she asked after a moment.

“Perhaps not stolen ... perhaps. ... But she has been gone since early this morning. It is two now. She did not come home for her noon meal. Her grandfather came to ask if we had seen her. She has never gone from the dooryard before, not until yesterday when she came here. Her father thinks she may have strayed down the road and met someone; she was very unhappy over a little thrush they had, which died. She may have been looking for him.”

Cynthia knew those little thrushes in their willow cages which hung outside so many French doorways.

“They are afraid of the canal, and the mill-pond.”

“Oh, but surely ...” Cynthia shivered and was silent. No, nothing like that could happen to someone that one knew! Absently she pushed away the last of her raspberries. They were her favorite fruit but she had lost any appetite for them.

“Painting this afternoon?” asked her host, trying to be cheerful.

Yes, Cynthia had thought she’d take the tram into the tiny village and sketch the interior of the old ruined fort, with the remains of the sally-port and guardhouse. Monsieur Marge surveyed the sky, unflinchingly blue. “Too hot to go into town,” he commented. “Why not stay and we go hunt for mushrooms. Madame wishes some for the dinner tonight. I know deep woods, cool, where the sun does not strike.”

City-bred Cynthia had never gathered mushrooms; it sounded like a new and amusing experience, and it would certainly be cooler than sketching on that hot and sunny hill beyond the town. Besides she didn’t really want to go far from the house, in case little Thomasina should be found ... no, when she should be found.

Cynthia went to her room for a wide shade hat and came downstairs again to find M. Marge ready for her. He bore a leather bound makhila, the Basque walking stick, with its graven brass binding and leather strap.

“Won’t we need a basket or something?”

“No. I show you.”

The method, it seemed, was to string the fungus on a long thin peeled rod. They were big things, flabby and pale lavender, rather like unpleasantly raw liver, but Monsieur assured her they were delicious when cooked. They had found the grove about two miles from the house up an old logging road now nearly overgrown with brush and deep damp moss. The pines rose huge and straight and the air was cool, but after an hour or more of scrabbling over dead logs and grubbing among fallen leaves for the mushrooms Cynthia was glad to sink wearily to a seat on a mossy stone.

“Ouff but I’m weary. Goodness, how you can walk!” she exclaimed to the pleased old man.

“I have been hard worker in my time.”

“There’s a funny noise about here,” Cynthia commented after a moment of silence. “Sounds rather like a cricket, yet not. ... I wonder. ...” She listened again and as the old man started to speak held up her hand for silence. There was no breeze. The pine boughs high overhead scarcely moved. There were certainly no crickets about, yet what was that noise?

Then from a thicket just a few yards away came a familiar call. “Cuck ... oo! Cuck ... ooooo!”

“Your clock!” Cynthia almost shouted, and jumped to her feet. Monsieur Marge was right behind her as she parted the brush, looked downward. She chuckled and held back the branch that he might see.

There, wrapped in an old shawl and fast asleep was Thomasina Yturbe. In her arms, its placid little face turned to the skies, ticked the imperturbable cuckoo clock.

“Well, we’ve found one kidnapper at least,” laughed Cynthia somewhat shakily. “Shall we wake her up?” Poor little thing, she had come a long way in this heat and the clock was quite a weight for those small arms.

“It is too far to carry her home,” advised the old man.

The child stirred at his voice, opened one sleepy eye. Her face was pink as a seashell from the rough warmth of the old shawl beneath her. For a moment she blinked like a little owl, then recognized them and beamed, murmuring something. Monsieur chuckled and repeated it for Cynthia’s benefit.

“She said the bird wouldn’t sing.”

“Come on honey. Time to go home.” Cynthia’s words might not have been understood, but her brightly matter of fact tone was sufficient. Thomasina scrambled to her feet. “Here, better let me take the clock. No? All right. But let me carry the shawl, anyway. I wonder why she brought the shawl?” she puzzled.

Monsieur had the suggestion that it had been one thrown over the thrush’s cage at night.

“Poor kid,” murmured Cynthia.

It was a long journey back. Monsieur had the two long sticks of mushrooms. Cynthia, toward the last, was so far trusted as to be allowed the clock but Thomasina kept one hand in Cynthia’s. One was to understand that she was not weary, but she wanted closer contact with her little bird. The clock itself ticked steadily throughout the journey and twice it even cuckooed.

It was late and the sun was low, throwing long shadows across the road as they came down it towards the Yturbe farm. Cynthia heard the soft cooing of doves, the grunt of the little pigs that lived beneath her window. Thomasina stumbled once or twice.

They neared the doorway with its seventeenth century date on the lintel. Someone inside was sobbing. “I won’t go with you.” Cynthia pushed the child forward and nodded that Monsieur Marge was to follow her. This might be—who could tell?—just the right moment for him to become a Basque again.

Thomasina, the clock again in her arms, stumbled through the doorway. Cynthia heard nothing for a moment, then such a heartfelt cry of delight and joy as made her, for the second time that day, brush away the tears. Followed, in three voices, much talk in the rapid Basque tongue, and after a moment Grandmother Yturbe came out, to throw her arms about the petite Americaine.

“She says,” twinkled Monsieur behind her, “that you are wonderful, that you found her little cabbage.”

“Non—non. It was Monsieur,” Cynthia gestured towards her host. “It’s all right anyway, Thomasina would have come home for dinner,” protested the embarrassed Cynthia.

They got away at last, but there was more to come.

After dinner Cynthia and Madame were sitting beneath the vines. Madame’s fingers flew steadily as her needles ate up the gray yarn, and moonlight bright as day dripped through the dark leaves of the arbor. Someone came slowly up the stone walk and spoke in Basque. It was Thomasina’s grandfather.

“He has come to thank the American lady,” explained M. Marge after a moment’s conversation and added that he had told M. Yturbe that Thomasina was to keep the clock for herself. “After all, we have no grandchildren ourselves.” And a moment later he translated again, “He asks if the American lady will do him a portrait of his little one; he will of course be proud to pay for it.”

“I’d adore it,” cried Cynthia, “Oh, what a day!”

The men moved off together, talking. Cynthia saw them cross the road slowly, two old men together.

Madame, chuckling richly, made one of her rare remarks in English: “They not be back till late.” But she seemed more pleased than concerned.

“I guess that means M. Marge has become all Basque at last,” thought Cynthia sleepily.