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Mingled spice was in the furtive glance which Toandoah's little pal, his maiden of the chowchow name, threw across the narrow train-aisle at the delicate young profile opposite, outlined against a crusted window. "And she still has that funny little near-sighted stand in one of her dark eyes, too Una! Although they're pretty eyes I'll admit that!" mused the critic further.
And she recognized it, by the feeling of her stiff, cold cheeks, as she clapped her hands to them did Toandoah's little chum for the glow which had electrified her own when she fought her way out of a swamped Pullman, saving her friend, driving it into the teeth of the flood, and of the World, too, that neither her father's honor, nor his invention nor anything he ever turned out was a Quaker gun; letting fly with it faintly at a rescuing youth, too, when she bade him "take Una first."
The mountain-ash trees cuddled their little pale berry-babies in awe. "All R-ready! Shoot!" Toandoah's battle-cry it was. A roar as of a small brass cannon, the first gun of the new conquest, responded, as the hand of a Camp Fire Girl of America pressed the button, triumphantly throwing the switch in the nozzle, or tailpart, of the mounted rocket, a hundred feet away.
'Tisn't quite so easy to forget," she murmured, bitterly. Her less fragile fists were mounted one upon another under her chin as if to hold her head up. For the first time in her life she felt as if she were being asked to drink a cup of humiliation she, Toandoah's little pal and she made wry faces over even a sip. "Humph!
In that moment that moment there leaped up in the breast of Toandoah's child the fire, the red fire, which alone can carry anything higher, be it rocket or girl's heart. They had called her father's invention a joke, a Quaker gun, Una and her mother. Never should they say that of his daughter's pluck: that it was a dummy which would hit no mark, or only to save itself! "Una!"
Nobody could tell where they were, indeed, figuratively, of course, except except that the experiment was a failure, so far as any proof to the World was concerned! Except that Toandoah's hopes were dashed, if not broken! The first record from Space was stolen, or lost. No! She did not think the nickum had taken it, that mysterious Jack at a Pinch!
Well! the sky was in Pem's eyes, of a truth, now, enough blue to make a Blue Peter, the flag of embarking, the flag of adventure; no rudeness of "nickum", earthbound, boastful, could ever humiliate her again, with Toandoah's emblem in her heart.
"T-take her first Una!" flickered Pem, a spicy flicker still, as she felt a strong grasp on her shoulder and looked up into the face of a broad-shouldered youth in a gray sweater; the engine might explode, but, to the last, they should not say of Toandoah's daughter that her courage was a Quaker gun. "Jove! but you're game," flashed the youth. "Well, keep up hang on I'll be back in a minute!"
"Oh! I don't want to look at him," she cried cravenly. "How will he ever climb back up here again?" "Tr-rust him " began Toandoah's daughter, then suddenly clutched her throat, her widening eyes as round, as bright, as staringly blue as the mountain lupine already opening upon the world's surprises, in sunny spots, among the hills.
She seemed to have that whole zero void in her heart now, its light, stifling gases in her distended throat Toandoah's little pal as she looked distractedly down the gorge.
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