It was the longest six miles Ralph ever travelled, nor had he any eye for the beauties by the way. To be obliged to exert himself so strenuously before breakfast caused him to feel as if the walls of his stomach had collapsed, and put him in a grinding temper.
At the end of two hours the suspicion of a welcome tang on the air caused Ralph to throw up his head and sniff. "Bacon, by Gad!" he cried aloud.
They turned the spur of a knoll and saw lying before them an exquisite little stretch of water, gleaming like an opal under the pale sky. Along its margin reached a narrow meadow of rich green, where a little fire burned, sending a column of thin smoke straight aloft, and beside the fire was Nahnya. She turned a quick face at the sound of their footsteps.
At sight of her Ralph forgot his hungry ill-temper. The girl was transformed. The deplorable hat, the awkward trade clothes, the ill-fitting shoes were discarded. She was wearing a blue flannel shirt open at the throat, and with the sleeves turned up revealing a pair of poetic forearms; a buckskin skirt, and moccasins of white doeskin, silk embroidered. Thus garbed she was as suitable to her background of woods and water as one of the wild swans up the lake. Ralph, gazing at her, felt triumphantly justified. "I knew she looked like this!" he thought.
Her beauty was still self-contained. She shook hands as a matter of ceremony, without giving Ralph her eyes.
"What's the matter now?" he wondered with a sinking heart.
The three of them breakfasted in the grass. The food was good, but Ralph's spirits were flat. He had supposed that, relieved of the presence of Joe Mixer and the others, she would unbend with him. Apparently she had no such intention. Then there was the boy. The horrid suspicion became fixed in Ralph's mind that the boy was going with them. Alas! for his dreams! The girl and the boy talked together in their own liquid tongue, and from the latter's sidelong, beady glances Ralph had no difficulty in guessing that he was the subject of it. The fact did not help to put him at his ease.
The boy's undeniable good looks offended Ralph. Wholly savage he was, but clear-skinned, lithe as a cat, and beautifully made. Ralph could not but wonder, biting his lips a little, what they were to each other. Whatever the relation, she was clearly the leading spirit; she ordered and the boy obeyed, albeit sometimes sullenly. Under her imperious ways with the boy Ralph thought he perceived a certain affectionate air that lighted a pretty little fire in him. His pride was up in arms then, that an Indian lad was able to make him jealous.
After breakfast she sent the boy to cut spruce branches, and Ralph had a moment alone with her. He lost no time in coming to the point.
"What's the matter?" he demanded to know.