"I don't know," hesitated the young man.
"Well, you lost the chance of having father convert you, baptize you,
and take you into full church fellowship."
"I never thought--" he began.
"You never thought. Aren't you a Christian?"
"I suppose so."
"He supposes so! Have you no convictions--no profession?"
"But, Nellie, I never thought that you--"
"Never thought that I--what? Do you think that I could ever be anything
to a man who did not believe in justification by faith, or in the
covenant of church fellowship? Do you think father would let me?"
In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her side. But seeing
her little feet shining through the dark water, like outcroppings of
delicately veined quartz, he stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however,
leaped to one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her hand
on his shoulder to steady herself. "You haven't got a towel--or," she
said dubiously, looking at her small handkerchief, "anything to dry them
on?"
But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his own handkerchief.
"If you take a bath after our fashion," he said gravely, "you must learn
to dry yourself after our fashion."
Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a few steps to the
sunny opening, and bade her bury her feet in the dried mosses and baked
withered grasses that were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered
a cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched her
sensitive skin.
"It is healing, too," continued Low; "a moccasin filled with it after a
day on the trail makes you all right again."
But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something else.
"Is that the way the squaws bathe and dry themselves?"
"I don't know; you forget I was a boy when I left them."
"And you're sure you never knew any?"
"None."
The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in moving her feet
up and down for several minutes among the grasses in the hollow; then,
after a pause, said, "You are quite certain I am the first woman that
ever touched this spring?"
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