“Thank you! Dick, it is a bad habit I know, and mother and Gimp are always hammering me about it. I suppose I got into a habit as a child, and it has stuck to me. But I’ll try and get rid of it! indeed I will.”
There were tears of mortified vanity in her eyes, which recognising, Dick held out a red hand and gave his comfort in a homeopathic dose:
“Shake!”
Then Esse grew coy and said:
“Not till you tell me what the Indians call me.”
Dick looked for a moment embarrassed, and then his laugh rang out.
“Ha! ha! ha! Well, Little Missy, I’ll tell you — they call you Pahoo-mounon-he-ka.”
“And what does that mean?” As she spoke Esse tried to keep down her flaming indignation. The very fact of her not knowing what the word or phrase meant intensified her feeling. Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Dick answered:
“It means, ‘Nose-ghost’; so you see that even the Shoshonies, that haven’t had a nose-rag among them since Adam, noticed that you don’t use yours correctly.”
“I presume that you mean a pocket-handkerchief by — by that — that vulgar phrase,” said Esse tartly.
“That’s so. But look here, Little Missy, since we’re on the trail, and we mean to run down the game this time — and since you kick — oh, yes, you do! Don’t I see it in every corner of your face! A man don’t learn woodcraft without gettin’ to notice little things like that! Let us wash up clean right here. Why do you always carry the nose-rag — excuse me little Missy, the pocket-handkerchief — rolled up in a ball when you’re not making a tent of it over your nose?”
“I don’t do anything of the kind!” said Esse indignantly, and again the tears of mortified vanity rose in her eyes.
Dick laughed in a way that seemed more insulting and aggressive than ever as he slapped his thigh in the way that aggravated Esse more than anything else.
“Wall, bust me if that doesn’t take the cake! Here is you denyin’ that; an’ all the time you’re a-holdin’ your nose-rag screwed up just the same as ever!”
Esse looked at her hand, and, seeing the handkerchief just as he had said, flung it on the ground as though it had been something noxious. Then, turning her back, she ran out of the glade, and went home.
An hour later she went back to the glade to get the handkerchief, but she could not find it; it had gone. From this little fact she felt that Miss Gimp could have woven a romance; and somehow it did not seem to her that it would have been quite ridiculous on the part of Miss Gimp.
Two days afterwards, Dick, in the midst of a conversation, suddenly stopped and handed her the handkerchief, neatly washed out and folded:
“This belongs to you, Little Missy. You dropped it in the wood the other night when you ran away.”
Esse took it with a simple ‘thank you,’ but when she got home, she put it in the locked drawer where she kept her valuables of all sorts.
The constant habit of trying to conquer her old trick when Dick was present seemed in some way to make a subtle kind of barrier between them. But it was in truth only a subtle barrier, and one that thought could overleap at will. The very existence of such a restraint raised the rough man in the girl’s eyes to a more important position, and blinded her to a thousand little roughnesses and coarsenesses which would have hourly offended her more cultured susceptibilities. This very lack of refinement on Dick’s part caused Esse many unhappy moments, for he seemed to fail to see that she was trying her best to rid herself of the ridiculous habit, and would often notice failures to which a more delicately minded person would have been wilfully blind. Thus, Esse soon grew to abandon the habit of covering her mouth and nose, but she still instinctively and unconsciously clung to the habit of rolling her handkerchief, and keeping it hidden in the hollow of her hand. But habits, be they never so trivial or ridiculous, have a hideous vitality of their own, and Esse soon found to her cost, that this unutterably trivial habit, which both the Indians and the trapper had noticed, had a tenacity denied to worthier things. She was often wounded to the quick when Dick, in his boisterous way would notice her resumption of her failing; but all the time this little trial was forming her character and developing that consciousness of effort which marks the border line between girl and woman. Once she was goaded into a retort — but such a retort as she had never dreamed of — when Dick had slapped his thigh, and with a Titanic peal of laughter remarked:
“Wall, Little Missy, the Ghost is kep’ to home in the shanty today, but she’s sent the wean on the trail!”
She answered, with a certain soft appealing in her voice:
“You needn’t be too hard on me, Dick. I am doing my best; but I can’t be quite perfect all at once.”
She had never in all her life been so sweetly womanly as at the moment, and even whilst she spoke she could not but feel that some change had taken place in her own nature. Dick seemed to realise this too, for off came his cap in a moment in apology, and he said with, for him, gravity:
“Your pardon, Little Missy. Why, I wouldn’t pain you for all the world!”
Esse smiled, and held out her hand, which was by this time nearly as brown as his own, and said, in exact imitation of his style, “Shake!” And so that breeze passed on its way and left the air clearer behind it.
In these days Miss Gimp was nursing a gentle melancholy, which was daily fostered on game, honey, and raw meat, which took their usual course on their allotted circle from Dick’s larder to Miss Gimp’s window-sill, thence, via her wardrobe, to the place of burial, and so back to the larder again. Heap Hungry was more than ever assiduous in his attentions to the parrot, and was maturing schemes of his own. Esse had now taken up her sketching, and having exhausted all the picturesque possibilities of the plateau, had begun to go further afoot in search of material to suit her fancy. Tired of the endless expanse, she now sought inclosed dells amidst the woods. She used to go about alone now, for her health had been completely restored by the bracing air, and the chemical qualities of the water, as the doctors had foretold. She sometimes took the dog with her, but not always; for the freedom of the mountain had somewhat demoralised it, and it took to hunting in miniature on its own account, instead of devoting itself solely to the wishes of its mistress. At first Miss Gimp used to accompany her, but Esse got so unutterably tired of her perpetual chattering, that by-and-by she began to make excuses to leave her at home. When she found that these, being naturally limited, began to be exhausted, she kept her away by making her own sketching tours to distant places. Miss Gimp knew when she was beaten in this respect, and after a time made no effort to accompany her. Esse had by this time, under Dick’s guidance, learned to shoot with a heavy revolver, which he insisted that she should always carry with her when out of sight of the house.
“Tain’t, Little Missy, that I’m afeard of any special harm; because if I’m put to it I can’t point out any as is likely to come. But in the forest everythin’ or anythin’ may be harmful, and you can’t be wrong anyhow in bein’ heeled proper! Some day or other you’ll find that very derringer of yourn the best friend you ever set eyes on. But even if ye don’t, wall! then the exercise of carryin’ it won’t do your muscles no harm!”
Mrs. Elstree did not at first like the idea of Esse carrying firearms, but when she saw that she soon acquired a certain dexterity in their use she solaced herself with the thought that at any rate they meant protection.
One day Esse, straying further than usual down the steep side of the mountain, came to a spot which excited all her artistic admiration. The hot sun beat into a dell so well watered that even in the great heat the grass was as green as emerald, and there was about everything a semi-tropical luxuriance. There was a fallen tree, which