“I am almost glad I’ve decided to bury the tomahawk.”

“And leave me the last of the noble race?”

“You’ll have to whoop alone.”

“I’ll often think of you in your log cabin with the white man,” I said.  “On winter nights I’ll flatten my nose against the window-pane and have a little peek in; next day you’ll recognize my footsteps in the snow.”

“I’d be sure to know them by their size.”

“I’m going to take ten dollars off your wedding present for that”

“It was one of our rules we could say anything we liked.”

“It was a life of savage freedom.  It takes one a little time to get into it again.”

“You used to say things, too.”

“I can’t remember saying anything as horrid as that.”

“Well, you couldn’t, you know,” she said, and put out the tip of a little slipper.

“I thought all the while it was to be Captain Cartwright—­that Englishman with the eyeglass.”

“I thought so, too.”

“I read of the engagement in the papers, and I can not recollect that it was ever contradicted or anything.”

“Oh, it wasn’t,” she said.  “Ax least, not till later—­lots later.”

“I suppose I ought to hurriedly talk about something else,” I remarked.

“You needn’t feel like that at all,” she returned.  “The captain and I are very good friends—­only be doesn’t play in my yard any more.”

“I can’t remember Gerard Malcolm very well,” I went on.  “Wasn’t he rather tall and thin, with a big nose and a hidden-away sister who was supposed to be an invalid?”

“That’s one way of describing him.”

“I’d rather like to hear yours.”

“Oh, I’m quite silly about him.”

“That must have happened later,” I said.  “It certainly didn’t show at the time.”

“Everything must have a beginning, you know.”

“That’s what I want to get at,—­what made you get a transfer from the captain?”

“It all happened through an automobile,” she said.

“Oh, an automobile!” I exclaimed.

“It was an awfully up-to-date affair altogether!”

“I suppose it ran away and he caught it by the bridle at the risk of his life?”

“No, he didn’t stop it,” she said.  “He made it go.”

“It isn’t everybody can do that with an automobile.”

“You ought to have seen the poor captain turn the crank!” she exclaimed, with a little laugh of recollection.

“So the captain was there, too?” I said.  “He never struck me as the kind of man that could make anything go, exactly.”

“Oh, he didn’t,” she said.

“I am surprised that he even tried.”

“But Gerard is a perfectly beautiful mechanic.  You ought to see how respectful they are to him at the garage—­especially, when there’s a French car in trouble.”

“They are respectful to me, too.”

“That’s only because you’re rich,” she returned.