"We must eat," said Nahnya energetically. "I have tea and bread and meat across the river. We must track for half a mile before I can cross. You have only a short line on your boat. I will track, and you push out with a pole."
Nahnya went ahead with the end of the line, while Kitty, according to instructions, walked abreast of the dugout, and kept it off shore, and steered it around obstructions with her pole. Kitty had never worked harder. Nahnya thought she was sparing her, but Kitty had to struggle desperately over the stones and the tree trunks and around the edge of cut-banks in order to keep up. The dugout acted like a thing inspired by personal malice against them. Kitty insisted that it went out of its way to find stones to stick on, and if she fell so much as a yard behind, it instantly drove its nose into the bank. Whenever it was necessary Nahnya waded unconcernedly into the icy water, and Kitty, not to be outdone, followed suit, shivering.
When they finally arrived opposite the spot whence Nahnya had first set out to Kitty's aid, Kitty distinguished a wide, flat rock and a little stream that emptied beside it. Nahnya told off the white girl to make a fire while she went for the supplies. Kitty enviously watched her assured handling of the canoe. Heading upstream enough to equalize the pull of the current, Nahnya crossed the river as straight as a ruled line, and in twenty minutes was back with everything they needed.
Hanging their stockings and moccasins to dry, they extended their pink and white and pink and brown toes side by side to the fire, and ate their supper. Meanwhile they were progressing in friendship by long leaps. With a girl and, moreover, a girl so gentle as Kitty, Nahnya did not feel obliged to wall up her breast, and the natural warmth of her nature had way. Lengthy girl confidences were exchanged.
"I never talk to a white girl like this," Nahnya said shyly. "Though I have live among white people, and watch the girls, and think about them much."
"What did you think about white girls?" Kitty asked with her charming smile.
"Always I am thinking how are they different from me," said Nahnya.
"Different?" echoed Kitty. "You are not really different from me."
"I am half white," said Nahnya. "Inside I feel the same as white people. But white people treat me different from them."
"I don't understand," said Kitty.