“I give him little medicine, yer know,” she said, with a leer and a drawl, nodding her funny old head with an air of confidence in her listener’s understanding and belief.
Miss Black was afraid of her, and always felt sure that Mrs. Andrew would not be too good to omit mixing poison with her medicine, if she considered it desirable the sick person should not recover.
Launa listened to the old grandmother’s stories with rapt attention, until Andrew, the witch’s husband, came to say he had lighted a fire by the lake, and that Abram had launched his canoe to take Launa in it after tea.
Andrew and Launa caught some trout, which they cooked at the wood fire, and Launa made tea. She presented Mrs. Andrew with a large parcel of it to that lady’s joy, though she merely grunted her thanks, and then offered Launa a cup out of her own tea-pot. But as the Indians seldom or never empty the tea-pot (they consider it a waste to throw away the old leaves, and keep on adding a few new ones, which they let boil to get their full flavour), Launa knew better than to drink it. It was, in truth, a deadly concoction.
Abram pushed his canoe into the water, and taking a paddle in one hand started with a little run and then jumped into the end of the canoe, which shot out into the middle of the lake. It was a wonderful jump, and Launa never tired of seeing it.
“There is no one who can do that as Abram does,” she said with admiration. “He is splendid, isn’t he, Andrew? Abram, Abram!” called Launa. “Take me up to the end of the lake!”
He brought the canoe in again, and she took her paddle and knelt in the bow. They went off together, her firm figure, with its graceful arm movement, erect, muscular, and supple. Oh! the joy of those days! The joy of living and of doing! The rapid, firm strokes, and the movement!
Launa paid her visit to the opera house in New York, whither her father took her with Miss Black for a winter, and then her dreams were realised. She heard the “Nibelungenlied,” “The Meistersinger,” “Tannhauser,” besides selections from “Parsifal”; she also attended numerous concerts. Music took the place of her out-of-door life, and she became so absorbed in it that she only occasionally missed and regretted her former wanderings. It was as if she had experienced its wonderful power for the first time, and drank from a cup of intoxicating sweetness.