to understand it.

"Go and put the horse up, and then come back. I'll wait right here for
you."

He did as he was told, and in ten minutes was by her side again. After a
long pause, she began, with quivering lips:

"George, I'm sorry--so sorry. 'Twas all my fault! But I didn't know
"--and she choked down a sob--"I didn't think.

"I want you to tell me how your sisters act and--an' what they wear and
do. I'll try to act like them. Then I'd be good, shouldn't I?

"They play the pianner, don't they?" He was forced to confess that one
of them did.

"An' they talk like you?"

"Yes."

"An' they're good always? Oh, George, I'm jest too sorry for anythin',
an' now--now I'm too glad!" and she burst into tears. He kissed and
consoled her as in duty bound. He understood this mood as little as he
had understood her challenge to love. He was not in sympathy with her;
she had no ideal of conduct, no notion of dignity. Some suspicion
of this estrangement must have dawned upon the girl, or else she was
irritated by his acquiescence in her various phases of self-humiliation.
All at once she dashed the tears from her eyes, and winding herself out
of his arms, exclaimed:

"See here, George Bancroft! I'll jest learn all they know--pianner and
all. I ken, and I will. I'll begin right now. You'll see!" And her blue
eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up in
defiant vanity and self-assertion.

He watched her with indifferent curiosity; the abrupt changes of mood
repelled him. His depreciatory thoughts of her, his resolution not to
be led away again by her beauty influencing him, he noticed the keen
hardness of the look, and felt, perhaps out of a spirit of antagonism,
that he disliked it.

After a few quieting phrases, which, though they sprang rather from
the head than the heart, seemed to achieve their aim, he changed the
subject, by pointing across the creek and asking:

"Whose corn is that?"

"Father's, I guess!"

"I thought that was the Indian territory?"

"It is!"

"Is one allowed to sow corn there and to fence off the ground? Don't the
Indians object?"

"'Tain't healthy for Indians about here," she answered carelessly, "I
hain't ever seen one. I guess it's allowed; anyhow, the corn's there an'
father'll have it cut right soon."

It seemed to Bancroft that they had not a thought in common. Wrong done
by her own folk did not even interest her. At once he moved towards
the house, and