"Nothing less than a dear, I must needs be sure."
He apprehended her sarcasm. Then, too absorbed to be angry, he reverted to himself.
"Oh," he cried with bitterness, "why do you let me go about in worshipful company with my hair like this?—" he clutched at his tousled locks.
"Yes—yes, I see. It always goes to the head," said Odalie, demurely.
"Don't laugh at me," he exclaimed, "but how had you the heart—and Sandy's hair always in such trim-wise, and you and Fifine like people of fashion."
Odalie could but laugh in truth; she had known such splendors as colonial life at that day could present and she was well aware how the ill-equipped wife of a pioneer on the furthest frontier failed of that choice aspect.
"I thought," she said, still laughing, "that you were ambitious of the fashion of such coiffure as Mr. Gilfillan affects—oh, poor man!—and had made up your mind to plait your hair no more."
Hamish took this very ill, and in dudgeon would not divulge the name and quality of the fair maiden the sight of whom had so gone to his head. But it was the next evening only that they were to attend a ball in the officers' mess-hall at the fort, in celebration of the joys of Christmastide, and Odalie perceived the rancor of resentment gradually departing when he came and begged—not her pardon—but that she would do him the infinite favor to plait his hair. Try as he would, and he had tried for an hour, he could not achieve a coiffure that seemed satisfactory to him in the solicitous state of his feelings. This ceremony she performed, perched upon what she called a tabouret, which was nothing but a stout, square billet of wood with a cover and valance of a dull blue fustian, while he sat at her feet, and Sandy looked on with outward gravity, but with a twinkle in his sober eyes that made Hamish's blood boil to realize that she had told his brother of the sudden reason for a change of heart touching the mode of wearing his hair, and that they had quietly laughed at him about it. Nevertheless, now he valued every strand of it as if it were spun gold, and would have parted with it as hardly.
The Christmas ball was indeed an affair of much splendor. Profuse wreaths of holly, with berries all aflame, decorated the walls of the great hall, and among them the lines of buffalo horns and the antlers of deer and the waving banners showed with enhanced effect. From the centre of the ceiling the mystic mistletoe depended with such suggestively wide-spreading boughs that it might seem that no fair guest could hope to escape the penalty; this was the broad jest of the masculine entertainers. The hosts, all the commissioned officers being present, were in full uniform, seeming brilliant against the decorated walls and in the great flare of the fire; even lace ruffles were to be seen and many a queue was braided and tied as fairly as Hamish's own. A huge Yule log, such as could not be discredited by any that had ever sent up sparks and flame at this sacred season, made the great chimney place one vast scarlet glow; the door of necessity stood open, although the snow was on the ground, and the dark, bare branches of the rows of trees left in military alignment, down the centre of the parade, whitely glimmered with frost and ice akin to the chilly glitter of the wintry stars which they seemed to touch with their topmost boughs.