Jack Chanty. Footner Hulbert
barge. As for the boy's big sister, she kept her eyes veiled, and plied the scissors with slightly languorous motions of the hands. Even a merry song may work a deal of sentimental damage under certain conditions. And the sun shone, and the bright river moved down.
"Thank you," she said, when he had come to the end. "We never have music here."
Jack wondered where she had learned her pretty manners.
The hair-cutting was concluded. Andy sprang up looking like a little zebra with alternate dark and light stripes running around his head, and a narrow bang like a forelock in the middle of his forehead. Jack put away the banjo, and Andy, seeing that there was to be no more music, set off in chase of Colin. The two of them disappeared over the bank. Mary gathered up towels, soap, comb, and scissors preparatory to following them.
"Don't go yet," said Jack eagerly.
"I must," she said, but lingering. "There is much to be done before the steamboat comes."
"She's only expected," said Jack of the knowledge born of experience. "It'll be a week before she comes."
Mary displayed no great eagerness to be gone.
A bold idea had been making a covert shine in Jack's eyes during the last minute or two. It suddenly found expression. "Cut my hair," he blurted out.
She started and blushed. "Oh, I—I couldn't cut a man's hair," she stammered.
"What's the difference?" demanded Jack with a great parade of innocence. "Hair is just hair, isn't it?"
"I couldn't," she repeated naïvely. "It would confuse me so!"
The thought of her confusion was delicious to him. He was standing below her on the raft. "Look," he said, lowering his head. "It needs it. I'm a sight!"
Since in this position he could not see her face, she allowed her eyes to dwell for a moment on the tawny silken sheaves that he exhibited. Such bright hair was wonderful to her. It seemed to her as if the sun itself was netted in its folds.
"I—I couldn't," she repeated, but weakly.
He swung about and sat on the edge of the barge. "Make out I am your other little brother," he said insinuatingly. "I can't see you, so it's all right. Just one little snip to see how it goes!"
The temptation was too great to be resisted. She bent over, and the blades of the scissors met. In her agitation she cut a wider swath than she intended and a whole handful of hair fell to the deck.
"Oh!" she cried remorsefully.
"Now you'll have to do the whole thing," said Jack quickly. "You can't leave me looking like a half-clipped poodle."
With a guilty look over her shoulder she drew up the box and sat down behind him. Gibbie, the youngest of the Cranstons, was a solemn and interested spectator. Jack thrilled a little and smiled at the touch of her trembling fingers in his hair. At the same time he was not unaware of the decorative value of his luxuriant thatch, and it occurred to him he was running a considerable risk of disfigurement at her hands.
"Not so short as Andy's," he suggested anxiously.
"I will be careful," she said.
The scissors snipped busily, and the rich yellow-brown hair fell all around the deck. Mary eyed it covetously. One shining twist of it dropped in her lap. He could not see her. In a twinkling it was stuffed inside her belt.
Meanwhile Jack continued to smile with softened eyes. "Hair-cutting was never like this," he murmured. He was tantalized by the recollection of her voice, and he cast about in his mind for something to lead her to talk more freely. "You were not here when I came through two years ago," he said.
"I was away at school," she said.
"Where?"
"The mission at Caribou Lake."
"Did you like it there?"
He felt the shrug in her finger-tips. "It is the best there is," she said quietly.
"It's a shame!" said Jack. There was a good deal unspoken here. "A shame you should be obliged to associate with those savages," he implied, and she understood.
"Have you ever been outside?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Would you like to go?"
"Yes, with somebody I liked," she said in her simple way.
"With me?" he asked in the off-hand tone that may be taken any way the hearer pleases.
Her simplicity was not dullness. "No," she said quickly. "You would tell me funny lies about everything."
"But you would laugh, and you would like it," he said.
She had nothing to say to this.
"Outside they have regular shops for shaving and cutting hair," he went on. "Barber-shops they are called."
"I know," she said offended. "I read."
"I'll bet you didn't know there was a lady barber in Prince George."
"Nice kind of lady!" she said.
The obvious retort slipped thoughtlessly off his tongue. "I like that! What are you doing?"
Her eyes filled with tears, and the scissors faltered. "Well, I wouldn't do it for—I—I wouldn't do it all the time," she murmured deeply hurt.
He twisted his head at the imminent risk of impaling an eye on the scissors. The tears astonished him. Everything about her astonished him. In no respect did she coincide with his experience of "native" girls. He was vain enough for a good-looking young man of twenty-five, but he did not suspect that to a lonely and imaginative girl his coming down the river might have had all the effect of the advent of the yellow-haired prince in a fairy-tale. Jack was not imaginative.
He reached for her free hand. "Say, I'm sorry," he said clumsily. "It was only a joke! It's mighty decent of you to do it for me."
She snatched her hand away, but smiled at him briefly and dazzlingly. She was glad to be hurt if he would let that tone come into his mocking voice.
"I was just silly," she said shortly.
The hair-cutting went on.
"What do you read?" asked Jack curiously.
"We get newspapers and magazines three times a year by the steamboat," she said. "And I have a few books. I like 'Lalla Rookh' and 'Marmion' best."
Jack, who was not acquainted with either, preserved a discreet silence.
"Father has sent out for a set of Shakespeare for me," she went on. "I am looking forward to it."
"It's better on the stage," said Jack. "What fun to take you to the theatre!"
She made no comment on this. Presently the scissors gave a concluding snip.
"Lean over and look at yourself in the water," she commanded.
Obeying, he found to his secret relief that his looks had not suffered appreciably. "That's out of sight!" he said heartily, turning to her. "I say, I'm ever so much obliged to you."
An awkward silence fell between them. Jack's growing intention was clearly evident in his eye, but she did not look at him.
"I—I must pay you," he said at last, a little breathlessly.
She understood that very well, and sprang up, the scissors ringing on the hollow deck. They were both pale. She turned to run, but the box was in her way. Leaping from the raft to the barge, he caught her in his arms, and as she strained away he kissed her round firm cheek and her fragrant neck beneath the ear. He roughly pressed her averted head around, and crushed her soft lips under his own.
Then she got an arm free, and he received a short-arm box on the ear that made his head ring. She tore herself out of his arms, and