They had, indeed, been opened already to some extent, but not so impressively as now when they longed for a good talk.
“Come here,” said Nootka—of course in Eskimo—as she dragged rather than led her new friend into the boudoir; “I want you to tell me all about your saving my brother’s life.”
“I don’t understand a word you say,” replied Adolay—of course in Dogrib Indian—with a look of great perplexity in her wide-open eyes.
“Oh! I’m stupid and sorry. I forgot. You don’t speak our language.”
“What funny sounds! It seems like nonsense,” remarked Adolay—more to herself than to her friend.
“So curious!” soliloquised Nootka; “what one might expect from a seal if it tried to speak. Say that over again. I like to hear it.”
The perplexity on the face of the Indian maid deepened, and she shook her head, while the look of fun in that of the Eskimo maiden increased, and she smiled knowingly.
Here at last they had hit on common ground—tapped a universal spring of human communication. Adolay at once beamed an answering smile, and displayed all her brilliant teeth in doing so. This drew a soft laugh of pleasure from Nootka and an intelligent nod.
Nods and smiles, however, pleasant in their way though they be, form a very imperfect means of intercourse between souls which wish to unite, and the perplexed expression was beginning again to steal over both their youthful countenances, when something in the nature of a happy thought seemed to strike the Indian girl, for a gleam as of sunlight flashed from her eyes and teeth, as she suddenly beat with her little fist three times on her own bosom, exclaiming, “Adolay! Adolay! Adolay!” with much emphasis. Then, poking her finger against her friend’s breast, she added—“You? you?”
Here again was “a touch of nature” which made these two damsels “kin.” Although the “You? you?” was not intelligible to the Eskimo, the gaze of inquiry was a familiar tongue. With a smile of delight she nodded, struck her own bosom with her fist, and said, “Nootka! Nootka!” Then, tapping her friend, she said—“Addi-lay?” The Indian, nodding assent, tapped her in return and exclaimed, “No–oot-ko?”