"I shall gladly do so," cried the young lady, "and without pay, too. I shall never forget your goodness."
I heard a low chuckling sound behind me. It was Barclay swallowing a laugh.
They went away in the course of a few days and we corresponded for a long time; but Mrs. Barclay never fulfilled her promise to cultivate the muse; nor in her several letters did she refer to her poetical gift. Perhaps her husband told her of the pious fraud we practised upon her on Christmas Day, 1860. But whether he did so or not, I have taken the liberty, fifty-three years after the event, of exposing the part I took in the deception and craving forgiveness for my manifold sins and wickednesses on that occasion.
What became of the Russian princess with the pretty manners, the white hands and the enchanting eyes and the sweet "child" Bertie? They were back at Grass Valley almost as soon as Forbes and Barclay got there, and from my correspondence I learned that they shared in the prosperity of the Maloney claim, and that Mme. Fabre and her son returned to Russia to live among her noble kin.
CHAPTER XL.
EVOLUTION OF THE SONGHEES.
I often pass through the Songhees Reserve, and the recent controversy respecting the reserve, and the dilapidated state of the former homes of the Indians, induce me to recall the reserve as I knew it first, when it was swarming with "flatheads," men, women and children. The term "flathead" was applied to the Songhees on account of the shape of his head, which was pressed flat with a piece of board strapped to his forehead while he was in a state of infancy.
In this state of bondage, if I may so term it, the "tenass man" (infant) passed his infancy. He was fed, took his sleep, and carried on his mother’s back by a strap passing around his mother’s forehead; thus he got his fresh air and exercise.
The mother, in fact all the females, chewed gum. I have always credited our American cousins with having originated this beastly practice, but now I suppose the credit for the discovery belongs to the Songhees, who must have taught our friends, and then gave it up themselves. Groups of men may have been seen carving miniature canoes with carved Indians paddling in them, also totem poles and bows and arrows, while three or four Indians would be at work shaping a full-grown canoe which might possibly hold half a dozen Indians. It was very interesting watching them at work and many an hour I have spent watching them when a boy. The women, while their "papooses" were playing about, worked also. Many made fancy articles out of tanned deer hide, embroidered with pearl buttons and beads, moccasins mostly, and for which there was a good sale. They were worn for slippers. I have bought many pairs at fifty cents a pair. The blankets they wore were decorated with rows of pearl beads down the front, red blankets being the favorite color, as they showed off the pearl beads to advantage.