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"Theese are picture for Melisse!" he whispered tensely. "We teach her we show her we mak her know about ceevilize people!" Cummins replaced the books, one at a time, and each he held tenderly for a moment, wiping and blowing away the dust gathered upon it. At the last one of all, which was more ragged and worn than the others, he gazed for a long time.
He went out into the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which the helpless Melisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa with a new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her: "Melisse ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize lak HER!" And he would point to the lonely grave under the guardian spruce. At last Maballa went into an ecstasy of understanding.
His shining hair rumpled thickly about his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and Cummins, in turn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful kickings and wrigglings of the growing problem. "Ees she not ceevilize?" demanded Jan ecstatically, bending his black head over her. "Ah, ze sweet Melisse!"
"To-morrow we will make her one of those things with wheels like the baby-wagons they have in the South," he said. "She must not go in the papoose-slings!" "An' I will teach her ze museek," whispered Jan, his eyes glowing. "That ees ceevilize!" Suddenly an eager light came into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a corner of the room.
They two John Cummins and Jan Thoreau would make her like the woman who slept under the sentinel spruce. "She ees ceevilize," said Jan with finality, "an' we mus' keep her ceevilize!" Cummins counted back gravely upon his fingers. The little Melisse was four months and eighteen days old!
"Melisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to the table. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose not if twen' t'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!" And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out into the snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins.
He lost no time in revealing his fears, after Maballa had been sent to the factor's wife. With graphic gesture he told of what had happened. Cummins hobbled to the door to look upon the wallows in the snow, and hobbled back to the table when Jan ran there in excited imitation of the way in which he had found the little Melisse in Maballa's sling. "She ees ceevilize!" finished Jan hotly.
"Sacre bleu you keel keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa. Jan left the rest of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes.
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