"I am very glad. Oh, if you only knew how I shudder at the sound of his name!"
"There now, let us forget about him," and reining his horse closer to hers, he leaned tenderly towards the girl. She said nothing, for she was very much confused. But the confusion was less embarrassment than a bewildered feeling of delight. Save for the dull thud, thud of the hoofs upon the sod, her companion might plainly have heard the riotous beating of the maiden's heart.
"And now, about that flower which I gave you this morning. What did you do with it?"
"Ah, Monsieur, where were your eyes? I have worn it in my hair all day. It is there now."
"Oh, I see. I am concerned with your head,—not with your heart. Is that it, ma petite bright eye? You know our white girls wear the flowers we give them under their throats—upon their bosom. This they do as a sign that the donor occupies a place in their heart."
He did not perceive in the dusky light that he was covering her with confusion. Upon no point was this maiden so sensitive, as the revelation that a habit or act of hers differed from that of the civilized girl. Her dear heart was almost bursting with shame, and this thought was running through her mind.
"What a savage I must seem in his eyes." Her own outspoken words seemed to burn through her body. "But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them there." And these lines of Tennyson [Footnote: I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is always in the search for a flaw, that I send passages from Tennyson floating through Annette's brain with good justification. She had received a very fair education at a convent in Red River. She could speak and write both French and English with tolerable accuracy; and she could with her tawny little fingers, produce a true sketch of a prairie tree-clump, upon a sheet of cartridge paper, or a piece of birch rind. I am constrained to make this explanation because the passage appeared in another book of mine and evoked censure from one or two dismal wiseacres.—E.C.] came running through her head:
"She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair."
These gave her some relief, for she thought, after all, that he might be only jesting. When the blood had gone from her forehead, she turned towards her lover, who had been looking at her since speaking, with a tender expression in his mischievous eyes.
"Do white girls never wear roses in their hair? I thought they did.
Can it be wrong for me to wear mine in the same place?"