“HAIL, O GREAT CHIEF!” SHE SAID.
“Chief Red Hand,” he supplied with a fierce scowl.
She bowed low, brown eyes alight with merriment.
“And what death awaits the poor white face who has fallen defenceless into his hand?”
“You better come quiet to my wigwam an’ see,” said Red Hand darkly.
She threw a glance to the bend in the drive behind which lay the house and with a low laugh followed him through the bushes. From one point the drawing-room window could be seen, and there the anxious Robert stood, pale with anxiety, stiff and upright in his newly-creased trousers (well turned up to show the new blue socks), his soulful eyes fixed steadfastly on the bend in the drive round which the beloved should come. Every now and then his nervous hand wandered up to touch the new tie and gleaming new collar, which was rather too high and too tight for comfort, but which the shopkeeper had informed his harassed customer was the “latest and most correct shape.”
Meanwhile the beloved had reached William’s “dug-out.” William had made this himself of branches cut down from the trees and spent many happy hours in it with one or other of his friends.
“Here is the wigwam, Pale-face,” he said in a sepulchral voice. “Stand here while I decide with Snake Face and the other chiefs what’s goin’ to be done to you. There’s Snake Face an’ the others,” he added in his natural voice, pointing to a small cluster of shrubs.
Approaching these, he stood and talked fiercely and unintelligibly for a few minutes, turning his scowling corked face and pointing his finger at her every now and then, as, apparently, he described his capture.
Then he approached her again.