This was the winter that Madame Corbusier was named godmother at the christening of the new church bells and was allowed the honor of taking up the collection dressed in the same silken cloth that draped the bells behind the sanctuary railing. The Saturday before, the two girls had watched her practice the sweeping curtsy she would make after each Plantscheman dropped his or her money into the basket. After supper they had to bathe her, paint and powder her cheeks, and curl her hair. Not a hair must be out of place, and when at last she was all fixed up she dared not go to bed lest she spoil it but sat up all night in her finery till early-morning mass. Simone could hardly wait to get into their own bed, which shook with long-bottled-up laughter, but Stone Girl lay unmoved beside her.

Was this to be her lot from now on? she asked herself. To go through life with heaviness on her heart? The festival came that the Plantscheman called Noël, and the Yengwe, Christmas. Midnight mass at St. Anne’s was crowded with residents, soldiers, voyageurs, farmers and their wives all in their brightest colors. Many had to stand outside. On His Majesty’s birthday the cannon of the fort roared three times and were answered by the six swivel guns on the sloop. That night gaiety ran through the town. Yengwe officers and Plantscheman ladies came to Madame Corbusier’s house to celebrate. But Stone Girl could feel no pleasure in it.

It must be the sickness that came on every woman left alone on the earth, Stone Girl told herself. Even Mardi Gras failed to lift her. Days before, she and Simone had been sent through the fort and countryside with invitations to Madame Corbusier’s house for Virez les Crêpes, or the Tossing of the Pancakes. The rooms that evening were crowded. Ladies and gentlemen in their fine dress came out in the kitchen to try their hand. First they held the long handle of the pan while another poured in the batter. Then they heated it over the fire and finally had to toss the pancake up in the air and catch it in the pan when it came down. The higher they tossed, the higher the laurels, the greater the cries of admiration, and if it touched the ceiling that was the acme of perfection. Screams of laughter rang out when a pancake missed and fell to the floor. Pyramids of hot cakes with butter and maple sugar between them were their supper and dancing with music of the fiddle followed.

All was gay until the first stroke of twelve from the clock with the white china face on the wall. Then as if the Plantscheman god himself had shouted down the chimney, all eating, drinking, dancing, and laughter ceased. Stone Girl gazed at the suddenly sobered faces of the guests. One minute they had been lively, filled with lighthearted enjoyment. Now mourning had overtaken them and there would be no more pleasure till the white festival of Pâques, which the Yengwe called Easter.