Thus encouraged, the child, with visions of coasting in her pretty little head, combined wisdom with Daddy's, who also had his visions, while he wrote as follows:
Dere Orrecta.
"Mi hart has allers ben yourn, it is old now, but it ain't dride up nun. will yu marry me now iv got tu be a poor old man. if yu wil i wil cum fur yu on the fust bote. iv got a leetle muny lade up fur a wet day. i hev allers ben stidy, and never drunk anything in my hull life. if yu wil hev me let me no as quick as lightnin figerative speekin.
your old flame,
philip Roarer
Chimney Rock. Minnesota territory."
"'Tween you an' me I reckon that ere is tu the pint, anyhow," said Daddy, proudly folding the letter, upon which he had spent two hours of hard mental labor. "I wonder what keeps the honey away so long; it must be monstrous cold in the parlor. Tom Tinknor wont thank me fur lettin the Honey git cold; bless her heart. That ere sled will git fixed to-morrow, you may depend on't, Fanny, fur I shall feel fust rate;" and Daddy capered out of the room as jolly as a half grown boy, with a plum pudding in anticipation. But, we will do him the justice to say, that there was a depth and earnestness of feeling in this life-long devotion, to which the ebullitions of youth can bear no comparison.
How to break the matter to Little Wolf was Daddy's next anxiety. He stood in mortal dread of the ridicule of his young mistress, but still felt that he ought to confide in her. After taking several fidgety turns before the parlor door, he finally resolved to make the denouement, and boldly face the consequences.
But the condition in which he found Little Wolf changed the course which he had marked out. She had lain down upon the sofa where fearfully pale and cold and still, she rested, utterly prostrated by the events of the day. Daddy had never seen such a ghastly look upon her face before, and the vague fear that life had fled horrified him, as he stood gazing at her in mute astonishment.
At a movement of the slight little figure Daddy was reassured, and he bent over her in tender solicitude, "O Honey, O Pet, be you sick? you look awful pale?"