‘Trouble with her she learned to dance all wrong,’ Prince remarked to the bunk after having deposited his breathless pupil on the table.  ’She’s quick at picking up; yet I could do better had she never danced a step.  But say, Kid, I can’t understand this.’  Prince imitated a peculiar movement of the shoulders and head—­a weakness Madeline suffered from in walking.

‘Lucky for her she was raised in the Mission,’ Malemute Kid answered.  ’Packing, you know,—­the head-strap.  Other Indian women have it bad, but she didn’t do any packing till after she married, and then only at first.  Saw hard lines with that husband of hers.  They went through the Forty-Mile famine together.’  ’But can we break it?’ ’Don’t know.

’Perhaps long walks with her trainers will make the riffle.  Anyway, they’ll take it out some, won’t they, Madeline?’ The girl nodded assent.  If Malemute Kid, who knew all things, said so, why it was so.  That was all there was about it.

She had come over to them, anxious to begin again.  Harrington surveyed her in quest of her points much in the same manner men usually do horses.  It certainly was not disappointing, for he asked with sudden interest, ’What did that beggarly uncle of yours get anyway?’ ’One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch.  Rifle broke.’  She said this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.

She spoke fair English, with many peculiarities of her husband’s speech, but there was still perceptible the Indian accent, the traditional groping after strange gutturals.  Even this her instructors had taken in hand, and with no small success, too.

At the next intermission, Prince discovered a new predicament.

‘I say, Kid,’ he said, ’we’re wrong, all wrong.  She can’t learn in moccasins.

’Put her feet into slippers, and then onto that waxed floor—­phew!’ Madeline raised a foot and regarded her shapeless house-moccasins dubiously.  In previous winters, both at Circle City and Forty-Mile, she had danced many a night away with similar footgear, and there had been nothing the matter.

But now—­well, if there was anything wrong it was for Malemute Kid to know, not her.

But Malemute Kid did know, and he had a good eye for measures; so he put on his cap and mittens and went down the hill to pay Mrs. Eppingwell a call.  Her husband, Clove Eppingwell, was prominent in the community as one of the great Government officials.

The Kid had noted her slender little foot one night, at the Governor’s Ball.  And as he also knew her to be as sensible as she was pretty, it was no task to ask of her a certain small favor.

On his return, Madeline withdrew for a moment to the inner room.  When she reappeared Prince was startled.