The Emigrant Trail | Page 8

swarthy faces, jingle of spur and mule bell
mingling with salutations in sonorous Spanish.
As the day grew warmer, the doctor complained of the heat and went
back to the wagon. David and the young girl rode on together through
the green thickness of the wood. They had talked a little while the
doctor was there, and now, left to themselves, they suddenly began to
talk a good deal. In fact, Miss Gillespie revealed herself as a somewhat
garrulous and quite friendly person. David felt his awed admiration
settling into a much more comfortable feeling, still wholly admiring but
relieved of the cramping consciousness that he had entertained an angel
unawares. She was so natural and girlish that he began to cherish hopes
of addressing her as "Miss Susan," even let vaulting ambition carry him
to the point where he could think of some day calling himself her
friend.
She was communicative, and he was still too dazzled by her to realize
that she was not above asking questions. In the course of a half hour
she knew all about him, and he, without the courage to be thus
flatteringly curious, knew the main points of her own history. Her
father had been a practicing physician in Rochester for the past fifteen
years. Before that he had lived in New York, where she had been born
twenty years ago. Her mother had been a Canadian, a French woman
from the Province of Quebec, whom her father had met there one
summer when he had gone to fish in Lake St. John. Her mother had
been very beautiful--David nodded at that, he had already decided
it--and had always spoken English with an accent. She, the daughter,
when she was little, spoke French before she did English; in fact, did
not Mr. Crystal notice there was still something a little queer about her
r's?
Mr. Crystal had noticed it, noticed it to the extent of thinking it very
pretty. The young lady dismissed the compliment as one who does not
hear, and went on with her narrative:
"After my mother's death my father left New York. He couldn't bear to
live there any more. He'd been so happy. So he moved away, though he
had a fine practice."

The listener gave forth a murmur of sympathetic understanding.
Devotion to a beautiful woman was matter of immediate appeal to him.
His respect for the doctor rose in proportion, especially when the
devotion was weighed in the balance against a fine practice. Looking at
the girl's profile with prim black curls against the cheek, he saw the
French-Canadian mother, and said not gallantly, but rather timidly:
"And you're like your mother, I suppose? You're dark like a French
woman."
She answered this with a brusque denial. Extracting compliments from
the talk of a shy young Westerner was evidently not her strong point.
"Oh, no! not at all. My mother was pale and tall, with very large black
eyes. I am short and dark and my eyes are only just big enough to see
out of. She was delicate and I am very strong. My father says I've never
been sick since I got my first teeth."
She looked at him and laughed, and he realized it was the first time he
had seen her do it. It brightened her face delightfully, making the eyes
she had spoken of so disparagingly narrow into dancing slits. When she
laughed men who had not lost the nicety of their standards by a sojourn
on the frontier would have called her a pretty girl.
"My mother was of the French noblesse," she said, a dark eye upon him
to see how he would take this dignified piece of information. "She was
a descendant of the Baron de Poutrincourt, who founded Port Royal."
David was as impressed as anyone could have desired. He did not know
what the French noblesse was, but by its sound he judged it to be some
high and honorable estate. He was equally ignorant of the identity of
the Baron de Poutrincourt, but the name alone was impressive,
especially as Miss Gillespie pronounced it.
"That's fine, isn't it?" he said, as being the only comment he could think
of which at once showed admiration and concealed ignorance.
The young woman seemed to find it adequate and went on with her

family history. Five years ago in Washington her father had seen his
old friend, Marcus Whitman, and since then had been restless with the
longing to move West. His health demanded the change. His labors as a
physician had exhausted him. His daughter spoke feelingly of the
impossibility of restraining his charitable zeal. He attended the poor for
nothing. He rose at any hour and went forth in any weather in response
to the call of