"What's wrong, young man?" asked the winterer. "We lonely fellows up north see visions. We leap out of our moccasins at the sound of our own voices; but you young chaps, with all the world around you"—he waved towards the crowded hall as though it were the metropolis of the universe—"shouldn't see ghosts and go jumping mad."
I sat down abashed.
"Yes, a white squaw," repeated the jovial priest. "Sure now, white ladies aren't so many in these regions that I'd be likely to make a mistake."
"There's a difference between squaws and white ladies," persisted the jolly father, all unconscious that he was emphasizing a difference which many of the traders were spelling out in hard years of experience.
"I've seen papooses that were white for a day or two after they were born——"
"Effect of the christening," interrupted the youth, whose head, between flattered vanity and the emptied contents of his drinking cup, was very light indeed.
"Take that idiot out and put him to bed, somebody," commanded Cameron.
"For a day or two after they were born," reiterated the priest; "but I never saw such a white-skinned squaw!"
"Where did you see her?" I inquired in a voice which was not my own.
"On Lake Winnipeg. Coming down two weeks ago we camped near a band of Sioux, and I declare, as I passed a tepee, I saw a woman's face that looked as white as snow. She was sleeping, and the curtain had blown up. Her child was in her arms, and I tell you her bare arms were as white as snow."