Fur Company.--_Author_.




CHAPTER II

I RESCUE AND AM RESCUED

So the happy childhood days sped on, a swift stream past flowered
banks. Ben went off to sail the north sea in Captain Gillam's ship.
M. Picot, the French doctor, brought a governess from Paris for
Hortense, so that we saw little of our playmate, and Jack Battle
continued to live like a hunted rat at the docks.

My uncle and Rebecca's father, who were beginning to dabble in the fur
trade, had jointly hired a peripatetic dominie to give us youngsters
lessons in Bible history and the three R's. At noon hour I initiated
Rebecca into all the thrilling dangers of Indian warfare, and many a
time have we had wild escapes from imaginary savages by scaling a rope
ladder of my own making up to the high nursery window. By-and-bye,
when school was in and the dominie dozed, I would lower that timid
little whiffet of a Puritan maid out through the window to the
turnstile. Then I would ride her round till our heads whirled. If
Jack Battle came along, Rebecca would jump down primly and run in, for
Jack was unknown in the meeting-house, and the meeting-house was
Rebecca's measure of the whole world.

One day Jack lingered. He was carrying something tenderly in a red
cambric handkerchief.