Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather

close to his side,
inquiring about her health and her father’s. As he talked to her, his eyes took on a look of uneasy, mocking playfulness,
with a slightly sarcastic curl of the lips. Cécile was not afraid of him. He had always been one of the important figures in
her life; when she was little she used to like to sit on his knee, because he wore such white linen, and satin waistcoats
with jewelled buttons. He took great care of his person when he was at home. Nothing annoyed him so much as his agent’s
neglecting to send him his supply of lavender-water by the first boat in the spring. It vexed him more than a sharp letter
from the Minister, or even from the King.
    After replying to his courtesies Cécile began at once:
    “Monsieur le Comte, you know little Jacques Gaux, the son of La Grenouille?”
    The old soldier nodded and sniffed, drooping the lid slightly over one eye, — an expression of his regard for a large
class of women. She understood.
    “But he is a good little boy, Monsieur le Comte, and he cannot help it about his mother. You know she neglects him, and
just now he is very badly off for shoes. I am knitting him some stockings, but the shoes we cannot manage.”
    “And if I were to give you an order on the cobbler? That is soon done. It is very nice of you to knit stockings for him.
Do you knit your own?”
    “Of course, monsieur! And my father’s.”
    The old Count looked at her from out his deep eye-sockets, and felt for the hard spots on her palm. “You are content down
there, keeping house for your father? Not much time for play, I take it?”
    “Oh, everything we do, my father and I, is a kind of play.”
    He gave a dry chuckle. “Well said! Everything we do is. It gets rather tiresome, — but not at your age, perhaps. I am
very well pleased with you, Cécile, because you do so well for your father. We have too many idle girls in Kebec, and I
cannot say that Kebec is exceptional. I have been about the world a great deal, and I have found only one country where the
women like to work, — in Holland. They have made an ugly country very pretty.” He slipped a piece of money into her hand.
“That is for your charities. Get the frog’s son what he needs, and Picard will give Noël Pommier an order for his shoes. And
is there nothing you would like for yourself? I have never forgot what a brave sailor you were on the voyage over. You cried
only once, and that was when we were coming into the Gulf, and a bird of prey swooped down and carried off a little bird
that perched on one of our yard-arms. I wish I had some sweetmeats; you do not often pay me a visit.”
    “Perhaps you would let me look at your glass fruit,” Cécile suggested.
    The Count got up and led her to the mantelpiece. Between the tall silver candlesticks stood a crystal bowl full of
glowing fruits of coloured glass: purple figs, yellow-green grapes with gold vine-leaves, apricots, nectarines, and a dark
citron stuck up endwise among the grapes. The fruits were hollow, and the light played in them, throwing coloured
reflections into the mirror and upon the wall above.
    “That was a present from a Turkish prisoner whose life I spared when I was holding the island of Crete,” the Count told
her. “It was made by the Saracens. They blow it into those shapes while the glass is melted. Every piece is hollow; that is
why they look alive. Here in Canada it reminds one of the South. You admire it?”
    “More than anything I have ever seen,” said Cécile fervently.
    He laughed. “I like it myself, or I should not have taken so much trouble to bring it over. I think I must leave it to
you in my will.”
    “Oh, thank you, monsieur, but it is quite enough to look at it; one would never forget it. It is much lovelier than real
fruit.” She curtsied and thanked him again and went out softly to where Picard was waiting for her in the hall. She wished
that she could some time go there when the Count was away, and look as long as she