“I am going to Brewster,” replied Anne.
The Indian woman eyed her sharply.
“You have run away from your mother and father,” she said sharply.
“My mother is dead, and my father is at sea,” Anne replied, feeling her face growing red under the sharp eyes of the squaw, and a little ashamed that she did not own that she was running away from Aunt Martha Stoddard. But she felt that Aunt Martha had been very unfair toward her.
The Indian woman’s face softened. “And you journey alone to find friends in Brewster?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed; I am to go to Rose Freeman, and ride with her and her father in their chaise to Boston, and wait at their house for my father.”
The squaw nodded. The name of Freeman was known to her, and though a sixty mile journey seemed a long way for so small a girl as Anne, the woman only wondered at the unkindness of the white women in letting a child go alone.
“Come,” she said, and Anne, gathering up her shoes and stockings and the rumpled white dress, followed her.
The squaw turned from the path and, as she walked swiftly on, gave several low calls which to Anne sounded like the notes of a bird. The last call was answered, and a moment later Nakanit appeared beside them. For a long time they went on in silence, and at last the squaw stopped suddenly.
“Oh!” exclaimed Anne, for directly in front of them was a wigwam, so cunningly built in behind a growth of small spruce trees that unless one knew of its whereabouts it might be easily passed by. The Indian girl laughed at Anne’s exclamation, and nodded at her in a friendly manner.