She gave a smothered sound and put her head down suddenly into the crook of her arm, and I felt that she was weeping. I looked down at the sunny hair straying in beautiful disarray over the rough sleeve of my flannel shirt, and I experienced a pang of self-reproach. I had wounded her pride. I had offended grievously. Repentantly I attempted to lift the burrowing chin.
“I was only teasing, silly,” I was beginning.
Wanza’s head came up with an abrupt jerk, and—she bit me—a nasty, sharp little nip on my ingratiating finger.
CHAPTER V
THE LEAD
I SEEMED to have cut myself off quite effectually from communication with either Haidee or Wanza. The days went by, colorless and unlovely. And June came at last, bringing new wonderful wild flowers, and added tassels to the tamaracks, and browner stalks to the elder bushes.
One unusually hot afternoon I sat in my canoe, idly drifting on the shadowy river, marvelling at the clear cut reflections, and casting an eye about for a certain elusive break in the screen of willow shoots and rushes. If I once paddled my craft successfully through this meagre opening, I knew I should find a narrow waterway that would convey me to the shore of Hidden Lake.
What I should do when I reached that shore was a matter of conjecture. But after paddling along close to the high grass and floundering about in the tules for an hour, I gave over my search, rested on my paddle, and fell into deep thought. And my thoughts were not pleasant ones. Like the man in the story, I realized that at a certain hour of a certain day I had been a fool.
A slight sound disturbed my reverie. I looked ahead. A canoe came slipping along in the shade of the willows. As I stared and stared, a voice hailed me, a voice compelling and shrill. Wanza sat, paddle in hand, the thick fair hair pleached low on her brows and bound with a crimson handkerchief, her young eyes disdainful, her lips sulky. When she met my eyes she frowned.
I swept my canoe close to hers. “Did you call me?” I asked, with marked respect.
She frowned still more deeply.