Ambrose had related the anecdote of Tom Beavertail who, upon seeing a steamboat for the first time, had made a paddle-wheel for his canoe, and forced his sons to turn him about the lake.

“Exactly like them!” said John Gaviller with his air of amused scorn.  “Ingenious in perfectly useless ways!  Featherheaded as schoolboys!”

“But I like schoolboys!” Ambrose protested.  “It isn’t so long since I was one myself.”

“Schoolboys is too good a word,” said Gaviller.  “Say, apes.”

“I have a kind of fellow-feeling for them,” said Ambrose smiling.

“How long have you been in the north?”

“Two years.”

“I’ve been dealing with them thirty years,” said Gaviller with an air of finality.

Ambrose refused to be silenced.  Looking around the luxurious room he felt inclined to remark, that Gaviller had made a pretty good thing out of the despised race, but he checked himself.

“Sometimes I think we never give them a show,” he said with a deprecating air, “We’re always trying to cut them to our own pattern instead of taking them as they are.  They are like schoolboys, as you say.

“Most of the trouble with them comes from the fact that anybody can lead them into mischief, just like boys.  If we think of what we were like ourselves before we put on long trousers it helps to understand them.”

Gaviller raised his eyebrows a little at hearing the law laid down by twenty-five years old.

“Ah!” he said quizzically.  “In my day the use of the rod was thought necessary to make boys into men!”

Ambrose grew a little warm.  “Certainly!” he said.  “But it depends on the spirit with which it is applied.  How can we do anything with them if we treat them like dirt?”

“You are quite successful in handling them?” queried Gaviller dryly.

“Peter Minot says so,” said Ambrose simply.  “That is why he took me into partnership.”

“He married a Cree, didn’t he?” inquired Gaviller casually.

Colina glanced at her father in surprise.  This was hardly playing fair according to her notions.

“A half-breed,” corrected Ambrose.

“Of course, Eva Lajeunesse, I remember now,” said Gaviller.  “She was quite famous around Caribou Lake some years ago.”

Ambrose with an effort kept his temper.  “She has made him a good wife,” he said loyally.

“Ah, no doubt!” said Gaviller affably.  “Do you live with them?”

“I have my own house,” said Ambrose stiffly.

Here Colina made haste to create a diversion.

“Aren’t the Indian kids comical little souls?” she remarked.  “I go to the mission school sometimes to sing and play for them.  They don’t think much of it.  One of the girls asked me for a hair.  One hair was all she wanted.”

The subject of Indian children proved to be innocuous.  They took coffee in John Gaviller’s library.