her female friends that her offspring is to be a son;
and they all know that he is to be fleet and enduring in
the chase, and that he will have the eyes of a hunter
chief. But if a shy pigeon circle up from the croft, and
cross her path, she sighs and returns not back to relate
the omen; and it is only in undertones that her nearest
friend learns a week afterwards that the promised addition
to the household is to be a girl. The appearance of other
birds and beasts, under similar circumstances, are likewise
tokens; and though boys would be born, and girls too, if
all the hawks and pigeons, and foxes and wild geese, and
every other presaging bird and beast of the plains had
fallen to the gun of huntsman and "sport," they cling to
the belief; and the superstition will only die with the
civilization that begat it. Many of the customs of their
red mothers they still reverently perpetuate; but they
are for all this deeply overlaid with Canadianism. Of
all the women on the face of the earth, they are the
greatest gossips.

Not in their whole nature is there any impulse so strong
as the love to talk. Therefore, when the morning's meal
is ended, the pretty mother laces the boots around her
shapely little ankles, puts her blanket about her, and
sallies out to one of her friend's houses for the morning's
gossip. In speaking of her dress, I neglected to state
that although the Metis woman had for gown the costliest
fabric ever woven in Cashmere, she would not be content,
on the hottest summer day, in walking twenty paces to
her neighbour's door, unless she had this blanket upon