She was looking into the
tiny stream beneath. He made no sound as he approached. Generations
of moccasin-shod ancestors had made his own movements swift and
silent. Notwithstanding this, she turned, and, with a bright
girlish smile, she said:
"I knew you were coming, Chief."
"Why? How?" he asked, accepting his new title from her with a
graceful indifference almost beyond his four and twenty years.
"I can hardly say just how--but--" she ended with only a smile. For
a full minute he caught and held her glance. She seemed unable to
look away, but her grave, blue English eyes were neither shy nor
confident. They just seemed to answer his--then,
"Miss Bestman, will you be my wife?" he asked gently. She was
neither surprised nor dismayed, only stood silent, as if she had
forgotten the art of speech. "You knew I should ask this some day,"
he continued, rather rapidly. "This is the day."
"I did not really know--I don't know how I feel--" she began,
faltering.
"I did not know how I felt, either, until an hour ago," he
explained. "When my father and my mother told me they had arranged
my marriage with--"
"With whom?" she almost demanded.
"A girl of my own people," he said, grudgingly.
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