t she did not propose to be snatched from the bosom of
her tribe to be conveyed to some tree-top refuge, and there become a
monster's bride.

He would assert at times, and the idea was one he clung to with great
persistency, that the person with him was not even of the race, but had
been substituted in the cradle for a white child stolen by an Indian
woman with some great wrong to avenge. He would call her his Chippewa
Changeling, and at lunch would be most solicitous as to whether or not
the Wild Rose would have a little more of the chicken salad. Would the
Flying Pawn try the celery? Some of the jelly, he felt confident,
would please the palate of the Brown Dove. Might the white hunter help
her to a little more of this or that? Only once she rebelled. She was
laughing at something he had said, and he referred to her benignantly
as his Minnegiggle, which was, admittedly, an outrage.

A great fancy of these two it was to imagine themselves a couple apart
from the crowd, and unversed in city ways, and just from the country.
Not from the farm would they come, but from some town of moderate size,
for they prided themselves on not being altogether ignorant. Far from
it. Was there not a city hall in Blossomville, and a high-school, and
were there not social functions there? But, of course, it was a little
different in a great city, and it would be well not to mingle too
recklessly with the multitude.

They would even visit the circus when one of those "aggregations" made
the summer hideous, and he would buy her peanuts and observe all the
conventional rules laid down for rural deportment on such occasions.
The whimsicality, the childishness of it all, gave it a charm. They
appreciated anything together. Harlson said, one day:

"I believe that an old proverb should be changed. 'He laughs best who
laughs last,' is incorrect. It should be: 'He laughs best who laughs
with some one else.' And that is what will make us strong in life, my
love. Some trying times may come, but we shall be brave. We'll just
look at each other, and laugh, because we shall understand. We know.
We, somehow, comprehend together. Don't you see? Of course you do,
because, if you didn't understand, what I am saying would be nonsense."

She understood well enough. She understood his very heart-beats. It
had grown that way.

"I am getting very much like you, I think," she said, "and I want you
to understand, sir, that I do not regre