"Is it really? How interesting--do tell us some more of your old
home, Mrs. McDonald; you so seldom speak of your life at the post,
and we fellows so often wish to hear of it all," said Logan eagerly.

"Why do you not ask me of it, then?"

"Well--er, I'm sure I don't know; I'm fully interested in the
Ind--in your people--your mother's people, I mean, but it always
seems so personal, I suppose; and--a--a--"

"Perhaps you are, like all other white people, afraid to mention my
nationality to me."

The captain winced and Mrs. Stuart laughed uneasily. Joe McDonald
was not far off, and he was listening, and chuckling, and saying to
himself, "That's you, Christie, lay 'em out; it won't hurt 'em to
know how they appear once in a while."

"Well, Captain Logan," she was saying, "what is it you would like to
hear--of my people, or my parents, or myself?"

"All, all, my dear," cried Mrs. Stuart clamorously. "I'll speak for
him--tell us of yourself and your mother--your father is delightful,
I am sure--but then he is only an ordinary Englishman, not half as
interesting as a foreigner, or--or, perhaps I should say, a native."

Christie laughed. "Yes," she said, "my father often teases my mother
now about how _very_ native she was when he married her; then, how
could she have been otherwise? She did not know a word of English,