that’s so.”
“Then why—may I not talk to them? And, oh, Seth”—the girl’s eyes danced with mischief—“he is such a romantic fellow. You should hear him talk in English. He talks—well, he has much more poetry in him than you have.”
“Which is mostly a form of craziness,” observed Seth, quite unruffled.
“Well, I like craziness.”
“Ah!”
Seth’s occasional lapses into monosyllables annoyed Rosebud. She never understood them. Now there came a gleam of anger into her eyes, and their color seemed to have changed to a hard gray.
“Well, whether you like it or not, you needn’t be so ill-tempered about it.”
Seth looked up in real astonishment at this unwarrantable charge, and his dark eyes twinkled as he beheld Rosebud’s own evident anger.
He shook his head regretfully, and cut out a bunch of weeds with his hoe.
“Guess I’m pretty mean,” he said, implying that her assertion was correct.
“Yes.” Rosebud’s anger was like all her moods, swift rising and as swift to pass. Now it was approaching its zenith. “And to show you how good Wanaha is, look at this.” She unfolded her parcel and threw the paper down, disclosing the perfect moccasins the Indian had made for her. “Aren’t 74 they lovely? She didn’t forget it was my birthday, like—like——”
“Ah, so it is.” Seth spoke as though he had just realized the fact of her birthday.
“Aren’t they lovely?” reiterated the girl. Her anger had passed. She was all smiles again.
“Indian,” said Seth, with a curious click of the tongue, which Rosebud was quick to interpret into an expression of scorn.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, firing up again, and her eyes sparkling. “And I like Indian things, and I like Indian people, and I like Little Black Fox. He’s nice, and isn’t always sneering. And I shall see them all when I like. And—and you can do the hoeing yourself.”
She walked off toward the house without the least regard for the potatoes, which now suffered indiscriminately. Her golden head was held very high, but she had less dignity than she thought, for she stumbled in the furrows as she went.
She went straight into the house and up to her room; but she could not fling herself upon her bed and cry, as she probably intended to do. Three large parcels occupied its entire narrow limits. Each was addressed to her, wishing her all happiness on her birthday, and the biggest of the three was from Seth. So, failing room anywhere else, she sat in her rocking-chair, and, instead of an angry outburst, she shed a few quiet, happy tears.
Meanwhile Seth continued his work as though 75 nothing had interrupted him. It was not until supper-time, and he was making his way to the house, that he happened to observe the newspaper which Rosebud had left lying among the potatoes. He stepped across the intervening furrows and picked it up. Newspapers always interested him, he saw so few.
This one, he saw at once, was an English paper. And from London at that. He glanced at the date, and saw that was nearly a month old, and, at the same time, he saw that it was addressed to Nevil Steyne, and beside the address was a note in blue pencil, “Page 3.”
His curiosity was aroused, and he turned over to the page indicated. There was a long paragraph marked by four blue crosses. It was headed—
“The Estate of the Missing Colonel Raynor.”
Seth read the first few lines casually. Then, as he went on, a curious look crept into his dark eyes, his clean-shaven face took on an expression of strained interest, and his lips closed until they were lost in a straight line which drew down at the corners of his mouth. He read on to the end, and then quietly folded up the paper, and stuffed it into the bosom of his shirt. Once he turned and looked away in the direction in which Nevil Steyne’s hut lay tucked away on the river bank. Then he shouldered his hoe and strolled leisurely homeward.
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