“Didn’t say it was your fault.”
“Then why do you take it like that?”
Cyril turned upon him quite fiercely.
“What’s the good of talking?” he cried. “You can’t understand. You go sailing about with your father and seeing things everywhere. I never go even into the forest. It’s horrible always shut up here with book-keeping and classics. I wish sometimes I was only one of the Indians, like that one yonder.”
Perry felt disposed to say, which one? for there was a second Indian close by; but wishing to brighten his companion, and turn the current of his thoughts, he merely said:
“Well, I shouldn’t wish to be a she Indian.”
“Those are not shes—they’re both men,” said Cyril sharply.
Perry looked at the pair incredulously, for they certainly had a most feminine aspect, being broad of figure and face, plump-cheeked, and with thick long hair cut square across the forehead and allowed to hang down behind. Their eyes were dreamy-looking and oblique, their faces perfectly devoid of hair, and to add to their womanish look, they wore a loose kind of cotton garment, which hung down from their shoulders nearly to their ankles.
“I say, what are they doing?” said Perry, as he stared at the pair.
“Taking snuff. That’s their way. They carry some in a little bag, and when they want to take any, they put the powder in that little siphon-like pipe, and hold it to their nose, and another one blows it up. That one sitting down’s the guide father is getting for you.—Here, hi!”