“Anyway, you ain’t like Captain Leek,” she decided. “He’s the worst old baby! Why, he just said all sorts of things about dances. Guess he must be a heavy swell where he comes from, and where all the fandangoes are got up in gilt-edged style. I’d like to spoil the gilt for him a little. I will, too, if he preaches any more of his la-de-da society rules to me. I’ll show him I’m a different boy from Mrs. Huzzard.”
“Now, what would you do?” asked Lyster. “He wouldn’t trust himself in a boat with you, so you can’t drown him.”
“Don’t want to. Huh! I wouldn’t want to be lynched for him. All I’d like to hit hard would be his good opinion of himself. I could, too, if Dan wouldn’t object.”
“If you can, you’re a wonder,” remarked Dan. “And I’ll give you license to do what I confess I can’t. But I think you might take us into your confidence.”
This she would not do, and escaped all their questions, by taking refuge in Mrs. Huzzard’s best room, and much of her afternoon was spent there under that lady’s 96 surveillance, fashioning a party gown with which to astonish the natives. For Mrs. Huzzard would not consent to her appearing in the savageness of an Indian dress, when the occasion was one of importance—namely, the first dance in the settlement held in the house of a respectable woman.
And as ’Tana stitched, and gathered, and fashioned the dress, according to Mrs. Huzzard’s orders, she fashioned at the same time a little plan of her own in which the personality of Captain Leek was to figure.
If Mrs. Huzzard fancied that her silent smiles were in anticipation of the dancing festivities, she was much mistaken.