Bates, quietly. "I took you
at first for your father's sake, and I kept you for your own. It's a long
time since I have met a girl like you; I didn't suppose there was one
left in the whole town. You are one of _us_--the old settlers, the
aborigines. Do you know what I'm going to do some time? I'm going to have
a regular aboriginal pow-wow, and all the old-timers shall be invited.
We'll have a reel, and forfeits, and all sorts of things; and off to one
side of the wigwam there shall be two or three beautiful young squaws to
pour firewater. Will you be one of them?"
"Well," Jane hesitated, "I'm not so very young, you know; nor so very
beautiful, either."
"You are to me," responded Mrs. Bates, with a caloric brevity.
"Nobody shall come," she went on, "who wasn't here before the War. Those
who came before the Incorporation--that was in '37, wasn't it?--shall be
doubly welcome. And if I can find any one who passed through the Massacre
(as an infant, you understand), he shall have the head place. I mean to
ask your father--and your mother," she added, with a firm but delicate
emphasis. "I must call on her presently."
She fixed her eyes on the fireplace. "I suppose I was silly--the way I
acted when your father married," she went on, carefully. "We were only
friends; there was really nothing between us; but I was piqued and--oh,
well, you know how it is."
"I!" cried Jane, routed by her alarm from her contrite and tearful mood.
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