In spite of himself the Englishman smiled, though a softer feeling shown in his eyes. How beautiful and yet how childish she looked kneeling there with the anxious pucker between her brows. Poor little princess, how very hard she worked to serve him!
“It takes a long time, Wildenai,” he observed, “dost thou try it often?”
“Never for myself,” she answered gravely. “I have no need. But I do it gladly for you.” She smiled brightly back at him, then rose and moved swiftly to the doorway. “Another thing I do for you today. Wait!”
And when she returned a few minutes later she brought with her, carefully wrapped in cool green leaves, a fish freshly caught that morning.
“A brook trout, on my word, such as I have often taken in the streams at home!” exclaimed Lord Harold, amazed.
“I got it far up the canyon before the sun was risen,” she answered, delighted at his surprise.
This, having quickly dressed it, she wrapped again in leaves and placed under the hot ashes to bake, and it being, evidently, a feast out of the ordinary, a merry-making to which a third guest might be bidden, suddenly Wildenai left the cavern again to return this time with a tiny gray fox perched familiarly upon her shoulder.
“'Tis Onatoa, senor Englishman,” she announced, gently stroking the bushy tail of the little creature as it lay about her neck.
But from his vantage point above his rival, Onatoa merely sniffed disdainfully with his sharp black nose. He looked far from friendly.
The princess laughed softly.