“Well there is a difference in colour. Ta spruce is red flesh, and ta birch white, did you ever know them mix?”
“Often,” said the doctor, who began to understand this allegorical talk of the North-West trader, and feel uncomfortable, and therefore didn’t like to say no. “Well, then, the spruce must stay with the pirch, or the pirch live with the spruce,” continued Peter. “The peech wood between the two are dangerous to both, for it’s only fit for cuckoos.”
Peter looked chuffy and sulky. There was no minister at the remote post he had belonged to in the nor-west. The governor there read a sermon of a Sunday sometimes, but he oftener wrote letters. The marriages, when contracted, were generally limited to the period of service of the employés, and sometimes a wife was bought, or at others, entrapped like a beaver. It was a civil or uncivil contract, as the case might be. Wooing was a thing he didn’t understand; for what right had a woman to an opinion of her own? Jessie felt for her father, the doctor, and herself, and retired crying. The doctor said:
“Peter, you know me, I am an honest man; give me your confidence, and then I will ask the Chief for the hand of his daughter.”
“Tat is like herself,” said Peter. “And she never doubted her; and there is her hand, which is her word. Tam the coffee! let us have a glass of whiskey.”
And he poured out three, and we severally drank to each other’s health, and peace was once more restored.
Thinks I to myself, now is the time to settle this affair; for the doctor, Peter, and Jessie are all like children; it’s right to show ’em how to act.
“Doctor,” sais I, “just see if the cart with the moose has arrived; we must be a moving soon, for the wind is fair.”
As soon as he went on this errand, “Peter,” sais I, “the doctor wants to marry your daughter, and she, I think, is not unwilling, though, between you and me, you know better than she does what is good for her. Now the doctor don’t know as much of the world as you do. He has never seen Scotland, nor the north-west, nor travelled as you have, and observed so much.”
“She never said a truer word in her life,” said Peter. “She has seen the Shetlands and the Rocky Mountains—the two finest places in the world, and crossed the sea and the Red River; pesides Canada and Nova Scotia, and seen French, and pairs, and Indians, and wolves, and plue noses, and puffaloes, and Yankees, and prairie dogs, and Highland chiefs, and Indian chiefs, and other great shentlemen, pesides peavers with their tails on. She has seen the pest part of the world, Mr Slick.” And he lighted his pipe in his enthusiasm, when enumerating what he had seen, and looked as if he felt good all over.