"Yes, dear," answered Chloe, "you shall come to live with me always."
Followed then a long silence which was broken at last by the Indian girl.
"You don' say lak' de pries'," she asked, "you not marry, you bad?"
"No! No! No! You poor child!" cried Chloe, "of course you are not bad! You are going to live with me. You will learn many things."
"An' som' tam', we fin' my man?" she asked eagerly.
Chloe's voice sounded suddenly harsh. "Yes, indeed, we will find him!" she cried. "We will find him and bring him back—" she stopped suddenly. "We will speak of that later. And now that my clothes are dry you can help me put them on, and if you have any grub left in your pack let's eat. I'm starving."
While Chloe finished dressing, the Louchoux girl boiled a pot of tea and fried some bacon, and an hour later the two girls were fast asleep in each other's arms, beneath the warm folds of the big Hudson Bay blankets.
The following morning they had proceeded but a short distance upon the back-trail when they were met by a searching party from the school. The return was made without incident, and Chloe, who had taken a great fancy to the Louchoux girl, immediately established her as a member of her own household.
During the days which followed, the girl plunged with an intense eagerness into the task of learning the ways of the white women. Nothing was too trivial or unimportant to escape her attention. She learned to copy with almost pathetic exactness each of Chloe's little acts and mannerisms, even to the arranging of her hair. With the other two inmates of the cottage the girl became hardly less a favourite than with Chloe herself.
Her progress in learning to speak English, her skill with the needle and the rapidity with which she learned to make her own clothing delighted Harriet Penny. While Big Lena never tired of instructing her in the mysteries of the culinary department. In return the girl looked upon the three women with an adoration that bordered upon idolatry. She would sit by the hour listening to Chloe's accounts of the wondrous cities of the white men and of the doings of the white men's women.