“Yes, Mary, I’ve come back, ’cause I can’t go forward. It’s o’ no use tryin’; I’d just have knocked up on the way, which would have been awkward for Dick, you know, as well as for me. Besides, I couldn’t fight just now to save my life.”
“Well, you is right. You stop here an’ git strong an’ well. Me tell you stories ’bout Dick, or other mans if you likes. We’ll have no fightin’ to do. If there is, me take care of you. Me can doos a littil in that way.”
March opened his eyes very wide at this, and stared at the pretty little vision in leather, but there was no smile or sly wrinkle on her countenance. She was looking quite gravely and sedately into the iron pot, which she happened to be stirring at that moment.
“Mary,” he said, sitting down beside her, “Dick tells me you can read.”
“Yis, me can read littil. But me only got one book.” She sighed slightly as she said this.
“Would you like to have another book?”
“Oh yis, very very much. Have you got one?”
“Ay, one; the only one I have in the world, Mary; an’ you’re the only person in the world I’d give it to. But I’ll give it to you, ’cause you’ve no chance of gettin’ one like it here. It’s a Bible—the one my mother gave me when I left home.”
March pulled the little volume out of the breast of his coat as he spoke, and handed it to the girl, who received it eagerly, and looked at it with mingled feelings of awe and curiosity for some time before she ventured to open it.
“The Bibil. Dick have oftin speak to me ’bout it, an’ try to ’member some of it. But he no can ’member much. He tell me it speak about the great good Spirit. Injins call him Manitow.”