“My father taught me rubbit,” returned Waboose, with a simple look, “and he was always right.”
I felt that it would be useless to press my correction, and therefore changed the subject by asking if her father had never tried to teach her English. Immediately she answered, with a somewhat bashful air—
“Yes, a leetil.”
“Why, you can speak English, Waboose,” I exclaimed, stopping and looking down at her with increasing interest.
“No—note mush, but me un’erstan’ good—deal,” she returned, with a hearty laugh at my expression.
I found on trial, however, that the girl’s knowledge of English was so slight that we could not readily converse in it. We therefore fell back on the Indian tongue.
“I wish I had known your father, Waboose,” I said earnestly. “He must have been a very good man.”
She looked at me gratefully.
“Yes,” she returned, “he was very good.”
As she said this Waboose cast on me a look which I could not understand; it was so intense, as if she were trying to read my thoughts, and at the same time seemed mingled with doubt. Then, with some hesitation, she said—