"I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin, looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog has fleas."
"Then it isn't history?"
"Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old, both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good deal of land."
"So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests around here are yours."
"They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm—"
She stopped and laughed.
"Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one."
"He never could keep anything to himself."
"What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself."
"Honestly? You don't look it."