"
We burst through the screen of popples definitely into the clear. A
two-storied house of squared logs crested a knoll in the middle
distance. Ten acres of grass marsh, perhaps twenty of ploughed land,
and then the ash-white-green of popples. We dodged the grass marsh and
gained the house. Dick was at once among friends.
The mother had no English, so smiled expansively, her bony arms folded
across her stomach. Her oldest daughter, a frail-looking girl in the
twenties, but with a sad and spiritual beauty of the Madonna in her big
eyes and straight black hair, gave us a shy good-day. Three boys, just
alike in their slender, stolid Indian good looks, except that they
differed in size, nodded with the awkwardness of the male. Two babies
stared solemnly. A little girl with a beautiful, oval face, large
mischievous gray eyes behind long black lashes, a mischievously quirked
mouth to match the eyes, and black hair banged straight, both front and
behind, in almost mediaeval fashion, twirked a pair of brown bare legs
all about us. Another light-haired, curly little girl, surmounted by an
old yachting-cap, spread apart sturdy shoes in an attitude at once
critical and expectant.
Dick rose to the occasion by sorting out from some concealed recess of
his garments a huge paper parcel of candy.
With infinite tact, he presented this bag to Madame rather than the
children. Madame instituted judicious distribution and appropriate
reservation for the future.
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