“There now! You’ve spoilt it! why did you speak?”
“Well, I wanted to know,” this in a grieved tone.
“Wanted to know what?”
“Did they tell you that at school?”
“Tell me what?”
“That old Nokomis is silly?”
“Of course not! They didn’t know old Nokomis. But in school you learn not to believe all the silly stories that we are told by the Indians.”
The boy spoke with the careless freedom of pompous youth.
They moved on through the woods over the delicate tracery of shadowy foliage, and climbed down the steep sides of the hilly ridge that rose above a quiet cove on the other side where they had made what they called a kitchen. Winona led the way in her eagerness to reach the shore. She had been silent for some time, absorbed in thought.
“I tell you, Judah, I will not go to the convent school. I hate nuns.”