“The girl’s speech ‘bewrayeth her,’ as Peter’s did in the Bible.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, it is easy and perfectly safe to infer from her speech a good deal of her life-history.”
“Go on, I am interested.”
“Well, you observe that she has almost a phenomenal gift of unconscious imitation. She has been with you for only a very brief while, yet in the main her pronunciation, her inflection, and even her choice of words are those of a young woman brought up in Virginia. She says ‘gyarden,’ ‘cyart,’ and the like, and her a’s are quite as broad as your own when she talks of the grass or the basket. Now when she lapses into her own dialect, there is a distinctively French note in her syntax, from which I argue that she has lived among French-speaking people for a time, catching their construction. But, on the other hand, her English is so good that I cannot think her life has been mainly passed among French-speaking people. Have you tried her in French itself?”
“Yes, and she speaks the most extraordinary French I ever heard.”
“Well, that fits in with the other facts. This morning she spoke of a hashed meat at breakfast as ‘pemmican,’ though she quickly corrected herself; she often uses Indian terms, too, by inadvertence. Then again, her accomplishments all smell of the woods. Putting all things together, I should say that she has spent a good deal of time among, or at least in frequent contact with, Canadian Frenchmen and Indians.”
“I think you are right,” said Dorothy, “and yet some part of her life has been passed in company with a well-bred and accomplished woman.”
“Your body of facts, please?” said Kilgariff.
“Her speech, for one thing; for in spite of its oddities it is mainly the speech of a cultivated woman. She never uses slang; indeed, I’m sure she knows no slang. Her constructions, though often odd, are always grammatical, and her diction is that of educated people. Then again, her scrupulous attention to personal neatness tells me much. More important still, at least in my woman’s eyes, is the fact that she perfectly knows how to make a bed and how to make the most of the little ornaments and fripperies of a room. She did not learn these things from squaws or half-breeds. Moreover, she does needlework of an exquisite delicacy which I never saw matched anywhere. That tells of a highly bred woman as an influence in her life and education.”