“You—promised—Mrs. Huzzard—you’d—take—care—of—me,” she said, slowly and emphatically, “and a pretty way you’re doing it. Suppose I depended on you getting me in to shore for my dinner, how many hours do you think I’d have to go without eating? Just about 89 sixteen. Give me that paddle, and don’t upset the canoe when you move.”
These commands Mr. Lyster obeyed with alacrity.
“What a clever little girl you are!” he said, admiringly, as she sent the canoe skimming straight as a swallow for the shore. “Now, Overton would appreciate your skill at this sort of work”—and then he laughed a little—“much more than he would your modeling in clay.”
A dark flush crept over her face, and her lips straightened.
“Why shouldn’t he look down on that sort of pottering around?” she demanded. “He isn’t the sort of man who has time to waste on trifles.”
“Why that emphasis on the he?” asked her tormentor. “Do you mean to insinuate that I do waste time on trifles? Well, well! is that the way I get snubbed, because I grow enthusiastic over your artistic modeling and your most charming voice, Miss ’Tana?”
She flashed one sulky, suspicious look at him, and paddled on in silence.
“What a stormy shadow lurks somewhere back of your eyes,” he continued, lazily. “One moment you are all sugar and cream to a fellow, and the next you are an incipient tornado. I think you might distribute your frowns a little among the people you know, and not give them all to me. Now, there’s Overton—”
“Don’t you talk about him,” she commanded, sharply. “You do a lot of making fun about folks, but don’t you go on making fun of him, if that’s what you’re trying to do. If it’s me—pooh!” and she looked at him, saucily. “I don’t care much what you think about me; but Dan—”
“Oh! Dan, then, happens to-day to be one of the saints in your calendar, and plain mortals like myself must 90 not take his name in vain—is that it? What a change from this time yesterday!—for I don’t think you sent him to the hills in a very angelic mood. And you!—well, I found you with a clay Indian crumbled to pieces in your destroying hands; so I don’t imagine Dan’s talk to you left a very peaceful impression.”