Mr. and Mrs. Moore were by no means ordinary people. Mrs. Moore--born Minny or Hermione Adams--was a very small woman, exceedingly pretty, with light brown curly hair, dark blue eyes and a complexion like an apple blossom.
Mr. Moore was the son of a Seneca mother and Cherokee father, with not a drop of white blood in his veins. So he thought, at least, but I never could quite believe it, because he could and did work, and never so much as touched even a glass of wine. His parents had died when he was very young, and he had been brought up and educated by a missionary, a gentle, scholarly old Presbyterian minister, whose memory his adopted son held in loving reverence.
The story of our acquaintance with Richard Moore is too long to be told here. Four years before he had come with us from the Pawnee country. He had married Minny Adams with the full consent of her parents and the opposition of all her other friends. Contrary to all prophecies, and with that inartistic disregard of the probable which events often show, they had been very happy together.
Mr. Moore--otherwise Wyanota--was a civil engineer, and stood high in his profession.
"Look here, mamma," he said as he drove up. "Will you take in the wife and the small child for to-night? I must go away."
"Certainly," said I, overjoyed. "But where are you going, to be caught in a storm?"
"Oh, they have got into a fuss with the hands over on the railroad, and have sent for me. I might have known Robinson wouldn't manage when I left him?"
"Why not?"
"English!" said Wyn, most expressively. "No one can stand the airs he puts on."
Now, such airs as Mr. Moore possessed--and they were neither few nor far between--were not put on, but were perfectly natural to him.