“Aye,” he said, “there’s the rub. ‘Just as well!’ Do you remember Mark Twain’s statement that he could speak seven languages ‘equally well’?... But, forgive me. I am not going to bother you again.”
She looked straight at him, her head bent slightly and her eyes glancing up through half-closed lids. It was a mask of a face she presented, absolutely poised, with all expression removed save a flirting gleam about the eyes and the faintest suggestion of a smile on the lips. The steady gaze was too much for him; somehow it shamed him and made the blood slowly rise to his face. His ear-tips had begun to burn when he arose abruptly and asked:
“Will you do me a favour for all my hard work?”
It would depend; she was also business-like and did not make impossible promises. But he did not want much; he asked merely for the key to “Grandfather’s Room” where the relics of Chief Red Jacket were kept.
She would do more than give him the key; she would personally conduct him.
“But it must be done with ancient ceremonies,” she detained him a moment at the door. “Wait here until I give you the sign. Enter not,” she raised her hand in mock seriousness, “enter not, paleface, until you are summoned to the council!”
She went off, presumably for the key, while he waited before the door of “Grandfather’s Room.” Many minutes slipped by but he was not conscious of them; his mind was elsewhere. Suddenly the door opened from within and an Indian maiden stood before him.
“Welcome, paleface,” she said.
The paleface took one step within the big room, and looked about him with the keenest curiosity. He was gazing on an Indian village. There were wigwams, birch cabins, totem poles, and a score of Indian figures carved rudely out of wood. The latter were posed about in characteristic attitudes: making arrows, grinding corn on rounded stones, pounding at skins. There were squaws carrying babies and, far off among the rushes, a set of warriors in full regalia were sweeping forward in a war canoe. In the centre of the room the sachems squatted about a council fire.
She took him from group to group, showed him the beads, the belts, wampum; the hides, the arrows and the primitive knives and weapons, the pottery and a-hundred-and-one other things. About the wall were scores of documents, framed evidently in more modern times and protected by glass. These were descriptions in Great-grandfather Wells’ hand—he had the spirit of an antiquary—descriptions of this and that native occupation, but, more important, many transcripts at first hand of the sayings of the famous Seneca orator, “Red Jacket.”