"An' the book my mother gave me!" she exclaimed, her tone rising from despair to anger. "They're ruined—Silas Strong!"
"N-nonsense," said her brother, calmly.
"Nonsense!" she exclaimed, tauntingly. "Silas Strong, do you know what has been done to 'em?"
"G-greased," he answered, mildly. "D-do 'em good."
She ran into the cook-tent and returned with the sacred album. There was an odd menace in her figure as she displayed the book. She spread it open.
"Look at my grandfather!" she demanded.
The bear's-oil had added emphasis to a subtle, inherent suggestion of smothered profanity in the image of her ancestor. It had, as it were, given clearness to an expression of great physical discomfort.
"L-limber him up," said the Emperor, quite soberly.
Master and Gordon were now approaching. The former took off his hat and bowed to the indignant Sinth and blandly remarked, "Boneka, madam."
The men had begun to laugh. Sinth changed color. She looked down. A smile began to light her thin face. She turned away, repeated the magic word in a low voice, and added, "I forgive." She walked hurriedly through the cook-tent to her own quarters, and sat down and wept as if, in truth, the oil had entered her soul. It was, in a way, pathetic—her devotion to the tawdry plush and this poor shadow of her ancestor—and the historian has a respect for it more profound, possibly, than his words may indicate. She would have given her album for her friend, and it may be questioned if any man hath greater love than this.