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“I’ve never asked you yet what you thought of her, Joe.” A brief pause, then Joe spoke. “I’m glad she loves you.”

“Why?”

“Because that girl has but two possibilities regarding humanity–love or hate.”

“Humph! Does she love or hate you?“

“Ask her.”

“You talk bosh. If she hated you, you’d get out. If she loved you I’d make you get out.”

Joe McDonald whistled a little, then laughed.

“Now that we are on the subject, I might as well ask–honestly, old man, wouldn’t you and Christie prefer keeping house alone to having me always around?”

“Nonsense, sheer nonsense. Why, thunder, man, Christie’s no end fond of you, and as for me–you surely don’t want assurances from me?”

“No, but I often think a young couple–“

“Young couple be blowed! After a while when they want you and your old surveying chains, and spindle-legged tripod telescope kickshaws, farther west, I venture to say the little woman will cry her eyes out–won’t you, Christie?” This last in a higher tone, as through clouds of tobacco smoke he caught sight of his wife passing the doorway.

She entered. “Oh, no, I would not cry; I never do cry, but I would be heart-sore to lose you Joe, and apart from that”–a little wickedly–“you may come in handy for an exchange some day, as Charlie does always say when he hoards up duplicate relics.”

“Are Charlie and I duplicates?”

“Well–not exactly”–her head a little to one side, and eyeing them both merrily, while she slipped softly on to the arm of her husband’s chair–“but, in the event of Charlie’s failing me”–everyone laughed then. The “some day” that she spoke of was nearer than they thought. It came about in this wise.

There was a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor’s, and the world and his wife were there. The nobs were in great feather that night, particularly the women, who flaunted about in new gowns and much splendor. Christie McDonald had a new gown also, but wore it with the utmost unconcern, and if she heard any of the flattering remarks made about her she at least appeared to disregard them.

“I never dreamed you could wear blue so splendidly,” said Captain Logan, as they sat out a dance together.

“Indeed she can, though,” interposed Mrs. Stuart, halting in one of her gracious sweeps down the room with her husband’s private secretary.

“Don’t shout so, captain. I can hear every sentence you uttah–of course Mrs. McDonald can wear blue–she has a morning gown of cadet blue that she is a picture in.”

“You are both very kind,” said Christie. “I like blue; it is the color of all the Hudson’s Bay posts, and the factor’s residence is always decorated in blue.”

“Is it really? How interesting–do tell us some more of your old home, Mrs. McDonald; you so seldom speak of your life at the post, and we fellows so often wish to hear of it all,” said Logan eagerly.

“Why do you not ask me of it, then?”

“Well–er, I’m sure I don’t know; I’m fully interested in the Ind–in your people–your mother’s people, I mean, but it always seems so personal, I suppose; and–a–a–“

“Perhaps you are, like all other white people, afraid to mention my nationality to me.”

The captain winced and Mrs. Stuart laughed uneasily. Joe McDonald was not far off, and he was listening, and chuckling, and saying to himself, “That’s you, Christie, lay ’em out; it won’t hurt ’em to know how they appear once in a while.”

“Well, Captain Logan,” she was saying, “what is it you would like to hear–of my people, or my parents, or myself?”

“All, all, my dear,” cried Mrs. Stuart clamorously. “I’ll speak for him–tell us of yourself and your mother–your father is delightful, I am sure–but then he is only an ordinary Englishman, not half as interesting as a foreigner, or–or, perhaps I should say, a native.”

Christie laughed. “Yes,” she said, “my father often teases my mother now about how very native she was when he married her; then, how could she have been otherwise? She did not know a word of English, and there was not another English-speaking person besides my father and his two companions within sixty miles.”