Jasper handed the pipe to Barbara, who, with an effort to be demure, took it.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Jasper, who was whirling the stick, making a fiery ring in the air.
Barbara had put the pipe between her lips, precisely in the middle of her mouth.
‘No, that will not do,’ said the young man; ‘put the pipe in the side of your mouth. Where it is now I cannot light it without burning the tip of your nose.’
Barbara put her little finger into the bowl to assure herself that it was full. Eve was on her knees at her sister’s feet, her elbows on her lap, looking up amused and delighted. Barbara kept her neck and back erect, and her chin high in the air. A smile was on her face, but no tremor in her lip. Eve burst into a fit of laughter. ‘Oh, Bab, you look so unspeakably droll!’ But Barbara did not laugh and let go the pipe. Her hands were down on the bench, one on each side of her. She might have been sitting in a dentist’s chair to have a tooth drawn. She was a little afraid of the consequences; nevertheless, she had undertaken to smoke, and smoke she would—one whiff, no more.
‘Ready?’ asked Jasper.
She could not answer, because her lips grasped the pipe with all the muscular force of which they were capable. She replied by gravely and slowly bowing her head.
‘This is our calumet of peace, is it not, Miss Jordan? A lasting peace never to be broken—never?’
She replied again only by a serious bow, head and pipe going down and coming up again.
‘Ready?’ Jasper brought the red-hot coal in contact with the tobacco in the bowl. The glow kindled Barbara’s face. She drew a long, a conscientiously long, breath. Then her brows went up in query.