Scarcely tolerant was the eye she kept on these French habitants her kinsfolks. She was princess; they were merely inferior white stock from whom her mother had sprung.
In personal appointments she was exquisite compared with the French women of the cabin. Her rich and glowing cheeks, her small dark ears and throat and hands, had reached a state of polish through unusual care. Her raiment appeared to be culled from the best fashions of both races. She wore the soft Indian moccasin, stitched with feather-work, and the woolen French stocking. All beaver skins in New France nominally belonged to the government; but this half-breed girl wore a pliant slim gown, chestnut-colored and silky, of beaver skin, reaching nearly to her ankles. It was girdled around the waist and collared around the top by bands of white wampum glittering like scales. A small light blanket of wool dyed a very dull red was twisted around her and hung over one arm.
A bud of a woman though still a child, full of the gentle dignity of the Hurons, who of all the great tribes along the St. Lawrence had lent themselves most kindly to Christian teaching, and undulled by her French peasant blood, Massawippa was comforting to eyes wearied by oily dark faces.
Dollier de Casson, gentleman and soldier before he became priest, always treated her with the deference she was inclined to exact as due her station.
Most Canadian half-breeds were the children of French fathers who had turned coureurs de bois and of Indian women briefly espoused by them. But the Huron chief had wedded Massawippa’s mother by priest and Latin service. The inmates of Pierre’s house regarded this girl as a misfortune that held them in awe. Her patent of nobility was dirt to them, yet by virtue of it she trod on air above their heads; and she was always so strangely clean and strangely handsome, this high young dame of the woods.
Pierre’s new wife, the corners of her mouth settling, regarded Massawippa with disfavor. The families in that côte knew well at whose door Jean Ba’ti’s widow laid the defection of her son.
One of Pierre’s little boys, creeping sidewise towards Massawippa, leaned against the door and looked up, courting her smile. He was very dirty, his cheeks new sodden with pork-fat being the most acceptable points of his surface. She did not encourage his advances, but met his look sedately.
“Thou know’st not what I know, Massawippa,” said he. “Thou know’st not who’s married.”
She remained silent, pride magnifying the natural indifference of her time of life to such news.