By night her
eyes might be dark circled and her step slow, but each morning there
was interest in her looks to see what the strange day was about to
bring. I had seen this nature in men many times; I had not thought
that it belonged to women who are framed to follow rather than to look
ahead.
For twenty-four hours we held little more intercourse than dumb people,
but the second day she came to me.
"Monsieur, would you teach me?" she asked. "Would you explain to me
about the Indian dialects?"
I agreed. I threw her a blanket, which she wrapped around her, and we
cowered close to the bole of a pine. I took birch bark and a crayon
and turned schoolmaster, explaining that the Huron and Iroquois nations
came of the same stock, but that most of the western tribes were
Algonquin in blood, and that, though they had tribal differences in
speech, Algonquin was the basic language, as Latin is the root of all
our tongues at home. I took the damp bark, and wrote some phrases of
Algonquin, showing her the syntax as well as I had been able to reduce
it to rule myself. She had a quick ear and the power of attention, but
after an hour of it I tore the bark in pieces.
"We will not try this again," I told her roughly, and we scarcely met
or spoke for the next day.
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