"What are Pagans, nurse?"

"People, Lady Mary, who do not believe in God, and the Lord Jesus Christ,
our blessed Saviour."

"Nurse, is there real rice growing in the Rice Lake? I heard my governess
say that rice grew only in warm countries. Now, your lake must be very
cold if your uncle walked across the ice."

"This rice, my lady, is not real rice. I heard a gentleman tell my father,
that it was, properly speaking, a species of oats, [Footnote: Zizania or
water oats.]--water oats he called it, but the common name for it is wild
rice. This wild rice grows in vast beds in the lake, in patches of many
acres. It will grow in water from eight to ten or twelve feet deep; the
grassy leaves float upon the water like long narrow green ribbons. In the
month of August, the stem that is to bear the flower and the grain rises
straight up, above the surface, and light delicate blossoms come out of a
pale straw colour and lilac. They are very pretty, and wave in the wind
with a rustling noise. In the month of October, when the rice is ripe, the
leaves turn yellow, and the rice-heads grow heavy and droop; then the
squaws--as the Indian women are called--go out in their birch-bark canoes,
holding in one hand a stick, in the other a short curved paddle, with a
sharp edge. With this, they bend down the rice across the stick, and strike
off the heads, which fall into the canoe, as they push it along through the
rice-beds. In this way they collect a great many bushels in the course of
the day. The wild rice is not the least like the rice which your ladyship
has eaten; it is thin and covered with a light chaffy husk. The colour of
the grain itself is a brownish green, or olive, smooth, shining, and
brittle. After separating the outward chaff, the squaws put by a large