“No t'ink more of him—no say more of scalp—” interrupted Hist, soothingly—“You pale-face, I red-skin; we bring up different fashion. Deerslayer and Chingachgook great friend, and no the same colour, Hist and—what your name, pretty pale-face?”
“I am called Hetty, though when they spell the name in the bible, they always spell it Esther.”
“What that make?—no good, no harm. No need to spell name at all—Moravian try to make Wah-ta-Wah spell, but no won't let him. No good for Delaware girl to know too much—know more than warrior some time; that great shame. My name Wah-ta-Wah that say Hist in your tongue; you call him, Hist—I call him, Hetty.”
These preliminaries settled to their mutual satisfaction, the two girls began to discourse of their several hopes and projects. Hetty made her new friend more fully acquainted with her intentions in behalf of her father, and, to one in the least addicted to prying into the affairs, Hist would have betrayed her own feelings and expectations in connection with the young warrior of her own tribe. Enough was revealed on both sides, however, to let each party get a tolerable insight into the views of the other, though enough still remained in mental reservation, to give rise to the following questions and answers, with which the interview in effect closed. As the quickest witted, Hist was the first with her interrogatories. Folding an arm about the waist of Hetty, she bent her head so as to look up playfully into the face of the other, and, laughing, as if her meaning were to be extracted from her looks, she spoke more plainly.
“Hetty got broder, as well as fader?—” she said—“Why no talk of broder, as well as fader?”
“I have no brother, Hist. I had one once, they say, but he is dead many a year, and lies buried in the lake, by the side of my mother.”
“No got broder—got a young warrior—Love him, almost as much as fader, eh? Very handsome, and brave-looking; fit to be chief, if he good as he seem to be.”
“It's wicked to love any man as well as I love my father, and so I strive not to do it, Hist,” returned the conscientious Hetty, who knew not how to conceal an emotion, by an approach to an untruth as venial as an evasion, though powerfully tempted by female shame to err, “though I sometimes think wickedness will get the better of me, if Hurry comes so often to the lake. I must tell you the truth, dear Hist, because you ask me, but I should fall down and die in the woods, if he knew it!”
“Why he no ask you, himself?—Brave looking—why not bold speaking? Young warrior ought to ask young girl, no make young girl speak first. Mingo girls too shame for that.”
This was said indignantly, and with the generous warmth a young female of spirit would be apt to feel, at what she deemed an invasion of her sex's most valued privilege. It had little influence on the simple-minded, but also just-minded Hetty, who, though inherently feminine in all her impulses, was much more alive to the workings of her own heart, than to any of the usages with which convention has protected the sensitiveness of her sex.