"What brings you, brother? You are welcome—that I need not say. But you two are the last I should have looked to see walk in here out of Pearl Street. Tell me all! How are my brethren of the Long House? Have any challenged the Warders of the Door? What news from beyond the Lakes? Are the French——?"
"God-a-mercy!" protested Master Burnet. "Accept reason, Ormerod. A question at a time, and in due order, if it pleases you. And may a guest sit in your house?"
I laughed again—as I doubt not he intended—and waved to all three of them.
"Prithee, content yourselves," I bade. "Y'are not such strangers as to require an invitation."
The governor let himself down into my armchair. Tawannears, his white teeth exposed in a pleasant grin—for, like all Indians, he had a keen sense of humor—sank upon the bearskin rug, and after a moment's hesitation, Corlaer imitated him.
"My brother will not take it amiss if Corlaer and Tawannears slight his chairs?" inquired the Indian in his cadenced, musical English that took on something of the sonorous rhythm of his own tongue. "We forest people are not used to setting our haunches at right angles to our feet. I learned much from the missionaries when I went to school with them as a boy, Gaengwarago,* but I never became accustomed to the white man's chairs. Hawenneyu, the Great Spirit, meant the earth to sit on, as well as to walk on. It is the only chair I know."
* "Great Swift Arrow"—Indian name for Governor of New York.
"But Corlaer, it seems, has been to school to your people to better advantage than you were with us," retorted the governor.
"The white man learns more readily than the Indian," affirmed the Seneca. "That is the reason why he will some day push the Indian from his path."
"From his path?" I repeated, interested as always in the thoughts of this learned savage, who combined in his own mind to an amazing degree the philosophy of the civilized white man and the mental reactions of his untutored people.