The
attitude was too full of tender recollections not to be grateful, and the
half-alarmed being of the forest was suffered to retain it during most of
the dialogue that followed. But while she was thus obedient in person, by
the vacancy or rather wonder of an eye that was so eloquent to express all
the emotions and knowledge of which she was the mistress, Narra-mattah
plainly manifested that little more than the endearment of her mother's
words and manner was intelligible. Ruth saw the meaning of her hesitation;
and, smothering the pang it caused, she endeavored to adapt her language
to the habits of one so artless.
"Even the gray heads of thy people were once young," she resumed; "and
they remember the lodges of their fathers. Does my daughter ever think of
the time when she played among the children of the Pale-faces?"
The attentive being at the knee of Ruth listened greedily. Her knowledge
of the language of her childhood had been sufficiently implanted before
her captivity, and it had been too often exercised by intercourse with the
whites, and more particularly with Whittal Ring, to leave her in any doubt
of the meaning of what she now heard.
Pages:
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623