ogether again. They are no dealers
in sophistries, these wide-mouthed wolf-dogs, with their wicked teeth,
and would fight against the stars in their courses.

When the women have beaten them off and learn I am not offended
concerning Goodfellow's drubbing, they are pleasant to me. A thin,
pock-marked squaw invites me into a shack or, more properly speaking,
into a baby-warren which fairly bristles with a flock of semi-wild
children, for, as yet, the squaws have not deliberately ceased from
having children.

What I said awhile ago about the Indian's house applies equally to his
children's wearing apparel. It shelters rather than ornaments. Their
clothes seem to have no visible supports, but are held to their small
fat bodies by some inexplicable attraction. One may see the same
phenomenon on the apostolic figures on stained glass windows.

A chocolate-coloured baby with blackberry eyes is propped against the
wall in a moss bag, and looks for all the world like a cocoon that
might any moment push off its sheath and take to wings.

An unsavoury mess of entrails is stewing in a black pot and filling the
house with an unpleasant odour. I try not to show my repugnance lest
my hostesses consider the white woman to be proud-stomached with no
proper appetite for lowly faring. I tell them as I take down the
blanket from the door--not untruthfully you understand, but as a small
matter of immediate expediency--how it is light one desires rather than
fresh air, and that it is hard to see aright when one has been walking
in the sunlight.

This Hudson's Bay blanket is, next to _uskik_, the kettle, the one
indispensable thing in an Indian household. It serves as a door, a
coat, a carpet, a bed, and for other things which it boots not to
mention. It is, therefore, well to be explanatory when one removes it
from its place, just as it is wise to apologize when one pokes an
Englishman's fire of coals.

Mrs. Lo tells me the old woman who is making moccasins is _Naka_, which
word, she explains for my better understanding, is the Cree for "My
Mother." Naka is a very old woman and "can no English say." Neither
can she be considered as typical of Whistler's mother.

There are amusing things to be done in this shack. For instance, you
may by signs and smiles make Naka, my mother, to understand how you
greatly desire to sew upon the moccasins she holds, and Naka may, in
the amiability of her disposition, accede to your importu