“He comes and he goes, like the sunshine and the rain; he is always welcome; and the Lenapé love him.”
“Can he speak your tongue well?”
“He speaks many tongues, and tries to make peace between the tribes; but he loves the Lenapé, and he teaches ‘the Prairie–bird’ to talk with the Great Spirit.”
“Does your sister speak to the Black Father in her own tongue?”
“Sometimes, and sometimes in the English; but often in a strange tongue, written on a great book. The Black Father reads it, and the Prairie–bird opens her ears, and looks on his face, and loves his words; and then she tells them all to me. But Wingenund is a child of the Lenapé—he cannot understand these things!”
“You will understand them,” said Lucy, kindly, “if you only have patience: you know,” she added, smiling, “your sister understands them, and she is a Lenapé too!”
“Yes,” said the boy; “but nobody is like Prairie–bird.”
“She must, indeed, be a remarkable person,” said Lucy, humouring her young companion’s fancy; “still, as you have the same father and mother, and the same blood, whatever she learns, you can learn too.”
“I have no father or mother,” said Wingenund, sadly, and he added, in a mysterious whisper, drawing near to Lucy, “Prairie–bird never had a father or mother.”