He drew a step back, and her eyes flashed at him again with the sparkle of the old fun in them.

"You say that I am pretty, and that I am almost a woman," she pouted.

"And yet--" She shrugged her shoulders at him in mock disdain. "Jan Th.o.r.eau, this is the third time in the last week that you have not played the game right! I won't play with you any more!"

In a flash he was at her side, her face between his two hands and, bending down, he kissed her upon the mouth.

"There," she said, as he released her. "Isn't that the way we have played it ever since I can remember? Whenever you catch me, you may have that!"

"I am afraid, Melisse," he said seriously. "You are growing so tall and so pretty that I am afraid."

"Afraid! My brother afraid to kiss me! And what will you do when I get to be a woman, Jan--which will be very soon, you say?"

"I don't know, Melisse."

She turned her back to him and flung out her hair; and Jan, who had done this same thing for her a hundred times before, divided the silken ma.s.s into three strands and plaited them into a braid.

"I don't believe that you care for me as much as you used to, Jan. I wish I were a woman, so that I might know if you are going to forget me entirely!"

Her shoulders trembled; and when he had finished his task, he found that she was laughing, and that her eyes were swimming with a new mischief which she was trying to hide from him. In that laugh there was something which was not like Melisse. Slight as the change was, he noticed it; but instead of displeasing him, it set a vague sensation of pleasure trilling like a new song within him.

When they reached the post, Melisse went to the cabin with her bakneesh, and Jan to the company's store. Tossing the vines upon the table, Melisse ran back to the door and watched him until he disappeared. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips half parted in excitement; and no sooner had he gone from view than she hurried to Iowaka's home across the clearing.

It was fully three quarters of an hour later when Jan saw Melisse, with Iowaka's red shawl over her head, walking slowly and with extreme precision of step back to the cabin.

"I wonder if she has the earache," he said to himself, watching her curiously. "That is Iowaka's shawl, and she has it all about her head."

"A clear half-inch of the rarest wool from London," added the cheery voice of Jean de Gravois, whose moccasins had made no sound behind him.

He always spoke in French to Jan. "There is but one person in the world who looks better in it than your Melisse, Jan Th.o.r.eau, and that is Iowaka, my wife. Blessed saints, man, but is she not growing more beautiful every day?"

"Yes," said Jan. "She will soon be a woman."

"A woman!" shouted Jean, who, not having his caribou whip, jumped up and down to emphasize his words. "She will soon be a woman, did you say, Jan Th.o.r.eau? And if she is not a woman at thirty, with two children--G.o.d send others like them!--when will she be, I ask you?"

"I meant Melisse," laughed Jan.

"And I meant Iowaka," said Jean. "Ah, there she is now, come out to see if her Jean de Gravois is on his way home with the sugar for which she sent him something like an hour ago; for you know she is chef de cuisine of this affair to-night. Ah, she sees me not, and she turns back heartily disappointed, I'll swear by all the saints in the calendar! Did you ever see a figure like that, Jan Th.o.r.eau? And did you ever see hair that shines so, like the top-feathers of a raven who's nibbling at himself in the hottest bit of sunshine he can find? Deliver us, but I'll go with the sugar this minute!"

The happy Jean hopped out, like a cricket over-burdened with life, calling loudly to his wife, who came to meet him.

A few minutes later Jan thrust his head in at their door, as he was pa.s.sing.

"I knew I should get a beating, or something worse, for forgetting that sugar," cried the little Frenchman, holding up his bared arms.

"Dough--dough--dough--I'm rolling dough--dough for the bread, dough for the cakes, dough for the pies--dough, Jan Th.o.r.eau, just common flour and water mixed and swabbed--I, Jean de Gravois, chief man at Post Lac Bain, am mixing dough! She is as beautiful as an angel and sweeter than sugar--my Iowaka, I mean; but there is more flesh in her earthly tabernacle than in mine, so I am compelled to mix this dough, mon ami.

Iowaka, my dear, tell Jan what you were telling me, about Melisse and--"

"Hush!" cried Iowaka in her sweet Cree. "That is for Jan to find out for himself."

"So--so it is," exclaimed the irrepressible Jean, plunging himself to the elbows in his pan of dough. "Then hurry to the cabin, Jan, and see what sort of a birthday gift Melisse has got for you."

CHAPTER XVI

BIRTHDAYS

The big room was empty when Jan came quietly through the open door. He stopped to listen, and caught a faint laugh from the other room, and then another; and to give warning of his presence, he coughed loudly and sc.r.a.ped a chair along the floor. A moment's silence followed. The farther door opened a little, and then it opened wide, and Melisse came out.

"Now what do you think of me, brother Jan?" She stood in the light of the window through which came the afternoon sun, her hair piled in glistening coils upon the crown of her head, as they had seen them in the pictures, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glowing questioningly at Jan.

"Do I look--as you thought--I would, Jan?" she persisted, a little doubtful at his silence. She turned, so that he saw the cl.u.s.ter of soft curls that fell upon her shoulder, with sprigs of bakneesh half smothered in them. "Do I?"

"You are prettier than I have ever seen you, Melisse," he replied softly.

There was a seriousness in his voice that made her come to him in her old impulsive, half-childish way. She lifted her hands and rested them on his shoulders, as she had always done when inviting him to toss her above his head.

"If I am prettier--and you like me this way--why don't you--"

She finished with a sweet, upturned pouting of her mouth, and, with a sudden, laughing cry, Jan caught her in his arms and kissed the lips she held up to him. It was but an instant, and he freed her, a hot blush burning in his brown cheeks.

"My dear brother!" she laughed at him, gathering up the bakneesh on the table. "I love to have you kiss me, and now I have to make you do it.

Father kisses me every morning when he goes to the store. I remember when you used to kiss me every time you came home, but now you forget to do it at all. Do brothers love their sisters less as they grow older?"

"Sometimes they love the SISTER less and the OTHER GIRL more, ma belle Melisse," came a quick voice from the door, and Jean de Gravois bounded in like a playful cat, sc.r.a.ping and bowing before Melisse until his head nearly touched the floor. "Lovely saints, Jan Th.o.r.eau, but she IS a woman, just as my Iowaka told me! And the cakes--the bread--the pies!

You must delay the supper my lady, for the good Lord deliver me if I haven't spilled all the dough on the floor! Swas-s-s-s-h--such a mess!

And my Iowaka did nothing but laugh and call me a clumsy dear!"

"You're terribly in love, Jean," cried Melisse, laughing until her eyes were wet; "just like some of the people in the books which Jan and I read."

"And I always shall be, my dear, so long as the daughter of a princess and the great-granddaughter of a chef de bataillon allows me to mix her dough!"

Melisse flung the red shawl over her head, still laughing.

"I will go and help her, Jean."

"Mon Dieu!" gasped Gravois, looking searchingly at Jan, when she had left. "Shall I give you my best wishes, Jan Th.o.r.eau? Does it signify?"

"Signify--what?"

The little Frenchman's eyes snapped.

"Why, when our pretty Cree maiden becomes engaged, she puts up her hair for the first time, that is all, my dear Jan. When I asked my blessed Iowaka to be my wife, she answered by running away from me, taunting me until I thought my heart had shriveled into a bit of salt blubber; but she came back to me before I had completely died, with her braids done up on the top of her head!"

He stopped suddenly, startled into silence by the strange look that had come into the other's face. For a full minute Jan stood as if the power of movement had gone from him. He was staring over the Frenchman's head, a ghastly pallor growing in his cheeks.

"No--it--means--nothing," he said finally, speaking as if the words were forced from him one by one.