"Oh! you bet, there's no danger of much else. I'll be good to her,
help me Heaven," replied Charlie McDonald, brightly.
"Yes, of course you will," answered the old man, "but don't you
forget, there's a good big bit of her mother in her, and," closing
his left eye significantly, "you don't understand these Indians as
I do."
"But I'm just as fond of them, Mr. Robinson," Charlie said
assertively, "and I get on with them too, now, don't I?"
"Yes, pretty well for a town boy; but when you have lived forty
years among these people, as I have done; when you have had your
wife as long as I have had mine--for there's no getting over it,
Christine's disposition is as native as her mother's, every bit--and
perhaps when you've owned for eighteen years a daughter as dutiful,
as loving, as fearless, and, alas! as obstinate as that little piece
you are stealing away from me to-day--I tell you, youngster, you'll
know more than you know now. It is kindness for kindness, bullet for
bullet, blood for blood. Remember, what you are, she will be," and
the old Hudson Bay trader scrutinized Charlie McDonald's face like
a detective.
It was a happy, fair face, good to look at, with a certain ripple of
dimples somewhere about the mouth, and eyes that laughed out the
very sunniness of their owner's soul.
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