children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing.
Yet the very simplicity of the place had a charm.

Benjamin sat alone, apart from the rest. It was plain to be seen that he
was brooding over the painful event of the morning. Gretchen had grown
cheerful again, but the bitter expression on the young Indian's face
seemed to deepen in intensity. Mr. Mann saw it. To quiet his agitation, he
began his teaching by going to him and sitting down beside him on the rude
bench and opening to him the primer.

"You understand English?" said Mr. Mann.

"A little. I can talk Chinook."

In the Chinook vocabulary, which was originally the trade language of all
the tribes employed by the Hudson Bay Company in collecting furs, most of
the words resemble in sound the objects they represent. For example, a
wagon in Chinook is chick-chick, a clock is ding-ding, a crow is kaw-kaw,
a duck, quack-quack, a laugh, tee-hee; the heart is tum-tum, and a talk or
speech or sermon, wah-wah. The language was of English invention; it took
its name from the Chinook tribes, and became common in the Northwest.
Nearly all of the old English and American traders in the Northwest
learned to talk Chinook, and to teach Chinook was one of the purposes of
the school.

"Can you tell me what that is?" asked Mr. Mann, pointing to the letter A
in the primer.

"Fox-trap."