"Here is food for thee, White Chief," she said, placing it on a mat she had spread on the ground; "sit and eat."
"It is welcome," he answered, "yet first harken to me. I have not words of thy tongue, little Princess, to pay thee for thy great gift, and though my words were as plentiful as the grains of sand by the waters, they were still too few to offer thee."
"Gifts made to chiefs," she answered with a dignity copied from her father's, "can never pay for princely benefits."
Smith could not help smiling at the grandiloquence of the child's language, for in spite of her height, he realized that her years were but few.
"Yet," she continued, seating herself, "it pleaseth me to receive thy thanks."
Now she put aside her grown-up air and her curious glances were those of the child she was. She fingered gently the sleeve of his doublet stained by the morass in which he had been captured and torn by the briars of the forests through which he had been led.
"'Tis good English cloth," he remarked, "to have withstood such storm, and I bless the sheep on whose backs it grew."
"What beasts are those?" she queried, and Smith endeavored to explain the various uses and the looks of Southdown flocks.
"Did thy squaws make thy coat for thee when thou hadst slain that—that new beast?"
"I have no squaw, little Princess."