t he pushed on as
fast as he could travel, so it's not likely they'll be here for two or
three days yet. I'll get ready for them, hows'ever, and when the
reptiles do come they'll meet with a warm reception, I warrant them;
meanwhile, do you go and get dinner ready. We won't let such varmints
interfere with our New Year's feast."

While Robin's wife went to her larder, his children were in the kitchen
tending the Indian with earnest solicitude, and Larry was preparing a
little soup for him.

"Do you like rabbit soup?" asked Nelly, kneeling beside the pallet of
pine branches on which Wapaw lay.

The Indian smiled, and said something in his native tongue.

"Sure he don't onderstan' ye," exclaimed Larry, as he bustled in an
energetic way amongst his pots and pans.

"Let me try him with Cree," said Roy, kneeling beside his sister, "I
know a little--a _very_ little Cree."

Roy tried his "very little Cree," but without success.

"It's o' no use," he said, "father must talk to him, for _he_ knows
every language on earth, I believe."

Roy's idea of the number of languages "on earth" was very limited.

"Och! don't bother him, see, here is a lingo that every wan
onderstan's," cried Larry, carrying a can of hot soup towards Wapaw.

"Oh, let me! _do_ let me!" cried Nelly, jumping up and seizing the can.

"Be all manes," said Larry, resigning it.

The child once more knelt by the side of the Indian and held the can to
him, while he conveyed the soup to his lips with a trembling, unsteady
hand. The eyes of the poor man glittered as he gazed eagerly at the
food, which he ate with the avidity of a half-famished wolf.

His nurses looked on with great satisfaction, and when Wapaw glanced up
from time to time in their faces, he was advised to continue his meal
with nods and smiles of goodwill.

Great preparations were made for the dinner of that New Year's Day.
Those who "dwell at home at ease" have no idea of the peculiar feelings
with which the world's wanderers hail the season of Christmas and New
Year. Surrounded as they usually are by strange scenes, and ignorant as
they are of what friends at home are doing or thinking, they lay hold of
this season as being one point at least in the circle of the year in
which they can unite with the home circle, and, at the _same time_,
commemorate with them the birth of the blessed Saviour of mankind, and
think with them of absent friends. Much, therefore, as the "happy"
seaso