“The fish are hardly worth the taking,” he returned, disparagingly.
“Do you remember the flies I made for you when you came home that Easter with Cousin Alfred?” she suggested, glancing up a trifle coyly. He hesitated to seem ungrateful.
“Oh, yes. Fine flies—beautiful flies,” he replied at random, for indeed he had forgotten them,—he was almost a young man at the time, and had taken scant note of the little girl yet in the schoolroom.
She was laughing quietly to herself, as she stood gazing out for a moment on the scene—for she had made them no flies; they had sought her assistance, and she had denied them.
“What amusements have they in this country?” she demanded, as she began to walk on slowly, and he kept step at her side.
“Well—scalpings, and burnings, and the torture are the most striking recreations of the country,” he said, perversely.
“You can’t make me afraid of the Indians,” she returned, lifting her head proudly, “while my father is in command.”
He had a sudden appalled realization of the limitations of the commandant’s power in which she trusted so implicitly; he was recollecting that her father’s predecessor in command, Captain Coytmore, had been treacherously slaughtered by the Cherokees in a conference at the gate of this fort, within twenty paces of the spot where she now stood.
“I did not mean to alarm you,” he said hastily.
“I know you didn’t.” She cast on him a look seeming full of sweet generosity. “You only meant to be witty.”