They were playing Indians again, were they? "The Last of the Mohicans"! Tom was Hawkeye, of course; but who was Uncas in her stead? She had always been Uncas. She knew a good many of his speeches by heart. Ah! she thrilled, recalling the tremendous moment when the Delawares discover the tortoise tattooed on the breast of the young hero. She recalled how "for a single instant Uncas enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene. Then motioning the crowd away with a high and haughty sweep of the arm, he advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude.
"'Men of the Lenni-Lenape,' he said, 'my race upholds the earth. Your feeble tribe stands on my shell. What fire that a Delaware can light would burn the child of my fathers?' he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin. 'The blood that came from such a stock would smother your flames!'"
Ah! and then the last speech, that she always spoke leaning against a tree, with her arms folded on her breast, and her gaze fixed haughtily on the awe-struck spectators: "Pale-face! I die before my heart is soft!" and so on. They all said she did that splendidly—better than any one else.
What was Clarice saying?
"And I said to him, I said: 'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh, yes, you do,' he said. 'No, I don't,' I said. 'I think you're real silly,' I said. And he said: 'Oh, don't say that,' he said. 'Well, I shall,' I said. 'You're just as silly as you can be!'" And so on and so on, till Sue could have fallen asleep for sheer weariness, save for those merry voices in her ear and the pain at her heart.
But when Clarice was gone, Sue unlocked her journal and wrote:
"I am very unhappy, and no one cares. I am alone in the world, and I feel that I have not long to live. My cheek is hollow, and my eyes gleam with an unnatural light; but I shall rest in the grave and no one will morn for me. I hear the voices of my former friends, but they think no more of the lonely outcast. I do hope that if I should live to be fifteen I shall have more sense than some people have; but she is all I have left in the world, and I will be faithful to death. They have taken my sister from me—" But when she had written these last words Sue blushed hotly, and drew her pen through them; for she was an honest child, and she knew they were not true.
Then she went downstairs. Her room was too lonely, and everything in it spoke too plainly of Mary. She could not stay there.
Mrs. Penrose looked up as she entered the sitting-room. "Oh! it is you, Sue," she said, with her little weary air; "I thought it was Lily."
"Would you like me to read to you, Mamma?" asked Sue, with a sudden impulse.