“Killin’s bad enough,” said Granny grimly, “when it happens to them you love. Wait and see!” She paused suddenly, her face tense. “Queer, to hear turkeys gobbling in the corn this time of year. I must have imagined it, talking about Indians. They used to make sounds like that; or like whippoorwills—”
At that moment the note of a whippoorwill sounded, distinct and clear. Granny pulled herself together, with a short laugh.
“I declare I’m getting as timid and notional as town folks, scaring myself with my own tales! Well, Polly, I started to tell you why I’ve come out again to the sort of place I never expected to see more. ’Twa’n’t to help you when the baby borned—plenty of neighbor women to do that, nowadays. ’Twas because—I didn’t like what I was hearin’ about my granddaughter, Johnny’s girl. It didn’t seem to me you was doin’ us credit. Always mopin’ and pindlin’ around, humoring yourself!
“Why, Polly, my child, don’t you know ’tis a wife’s first duty to go cheerful about her house, even if she don’t feel to be cheerful inside? And why you shouldn’t feel to be cheerful beats me!”
Polly laid her cheek against her grandmother’s knee, a caressing, disarming gesture that was very sweet.
“Listen,” said Granny, more gently. “I got to confess something. When Simon Kenton come and told me he was making up a party of our boys to go and rescue a blue-eyed child he’d seen in a tepee over in the Ohio country, Polly, I prayed—it wa’n’t you. I did so! Many’s the hour I’d spent on my knees, asking God to see that you was dead, thanking Him for taking your parents before they knew what had come to you—you so pretty and tender, just coming into womanhood. And when runners come in ahead to say it really was you they’d found and were fetching back, I says to myself: To what? What is there in life for a girl who’s been the—the plaything of savage brutes? What decent man would marry her after this, and let her mother his children? Ah, I’d seen captives brought back before, and I knew what it meant!
“But Simon Kenton made me ashamed of those black thoughts. He told me that out here in the wild places men had come to realize that purity is something which comes from within, not without; that a woman’s honor couldn’t possibly be harmed by anybody or anything, except herself. And then he told me that one of the finest young men in his company had already bespoke your hand. Eh, that was a wonderful hearing, a brave and beautiful hearing!”
Polly sprang erect, and spoke proudly.
“But I did not wish to be married to one of his young men!”
