provoked afresh. "It was wicked!--it was sinful!"--with an angry
stamp--"it was shameful of Jack Battle to marry an Indian girl----"

There I cut in.

"Was it?" I asked. "Young woman, let me tell you a bald truth! When a
white man marries an Indian, the union is as honourable as your own
would be. It is when the white man does _not_ marry the Indian that
there is shame; and the shame is to the white man, not the Indian----!"

Sure, one might let an innocent bundle of swans' down and baby cheeks
have its foibles without laying rough hands upon them!

The next,--little Rebecca cries out that I've insulted her, is in
floods of tears, and marches off on the young gentleman's arm.

Comes a clatter of slippered heels on the hall floor and in bustles my
Lady Kirke, bejewelled and befrilled and beflounced till I had thought
no mortal might bend in such massive casings of starch.

"La," she pants, "good lack!--Wellaway! My fine savage! Welladay!
What a pretty mischief have you been working? Proposals are amaking at
the foot of the stairs. O--lud! The preacher was akissing that little
Puritan maid as I came by! Good lack, what will Sir John say?"

And my lady laughs and laughs till I look to see the tears stain the
rouge of her cheeks.

"O-lud," she laughs, "I'm like to die! He tried to kiss the baggage!
And the little saint jumps back so quick that he hit her ear by