“Humming,” said Lin.
“Don’t you guess it’s just girls, though, that do that?”
“What, young fellow?”
“Why, all that prayer-saying an’ stuff.”
“I guess it must be.”
“She said to do it when the ice scared her, an’ of course a man had to do what she wanted him.”
“Sure.”
“Well, do you believe they’d ’a’ done it if she hadn’t been on that boat, an’ clung around an’ cried an’ everything, an’ made her friends feel bad?”
“I hardly expect they would,” replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly mindful of Billy, “except there wasn’t nothin’ else they could think of,” he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
