“Who are the Free-folk?” he blurted out incautiously.
She shot one baleful glance at him. Waldo remembered that he had to do with an Asiatic. He recalled the three permitted questions.
“What is your name?” he inquired.
“Amina,” she told him.
“That is a name from the ‘Arabian Nights,’” he hazarded.
“From the foolish tales of the believers,” she sneered. “The Free-folk know nothing of such follies.” The unvarying shutness of her speaking lips, the drawly burr between the syllables, struck him all the more as her lips curled but did not open.
“You utter your words in a strange way,” he said.
“Your language is not mine,” she replied.
“How is it that you learned my language at the mission school and are not a Christian?”
“They teach all at the mission school,” she said, “and the maidens of the Free-folk are like the other maidens they teach, though the Free-folk when grown are not as town-dwellers are. Therefore they taught me as any townbred girl, not knowing me for what I am.”