Stunned with his importunate babble, and anxious only for rest and quiet, poor Shaw-nee-aw-kee eagerly assented, and the chief took his departure.
So nearly had his disorder been aggravated to delirium, that the young man forgot entirely, for a time, the interview and the proposal which had been made him. But it was recalled to his memory some months after, when Four-Legs made his appearance, bringing with him a squaw of mature age, and a very Hecate for ugliness. She carried on her shoulders an immense pack of furs, which, approaching with her awkward criss-cross gait, she threw at his feet, thus marking, by an Indian custom, her sense of the relation that existed between them.
The conversation with her father now flashed across his mind, and he began to be sensible that he had got into a position that it would require some skill to extricate himself from.
He bade one of the young clerks take up the pack and carry it into the magazine where the furs were stored, then he coolly went on talking with the chief about indifferent matters.
Miss Four-Legs sat awhile with a sulky, discontented air, at length she broke out,
“Humph! he seems to take no more notice of me than if I was nobody!”
He again turned to the clerk—“Give her a calico shirt and half a dozen bread tickets.”
This did not dissipate the gloom on her countenance. Finding that he must commence the subject, the father says,
“Well, I have brought you my daughter, according to our agreement. How do you like her?”
"Ah! yes, she is a very nice young woman, and would make a first-rate wife, I have no doubt. But do you know a very strange thing has happened since you were here? Our father, Governor Cass,[J] has sent for me to come to Detroit; that he may send me among the Wyandots and other nations to learn their customs and manners. Now, if I go, as I shall be obliged to do, I shall be absent two or three years—perhaps four. What then? Why, the people will say, Shaw-nee-aw-kee has married Four-Legs' daughter, and then has hated her and run away from her, and so everybody will laugh at her, and she will be ashamed. It will be better to take some good, valuable presents, blankets, guns, &c., and to marry her to one of her own people, who will always stay by her and take care of her."