"Why, yes; it's very splendid, Poll, but somehow it doesn't look
much like an Indian. I didn't know they wore satin trails a mile
long."
Polly's brow clouded.
"But princesses do, Alan, and I'm a princess, just as much as I'm
an Indian. It's such fun to wear this. Don't you suppose it will
do?"
"Yes, perhaps," said Alan, with an heroic disregard of the truth.
"It isn't just like the pictures; but you look first-rate in it,
honestly, Poll. Now let me fix your head."
Polly beamed under his praise, and dropped into a chair where she
sat passive until he had fastened on the lofty coronet of feathers
which would have formed an honorable decoration for the brow of a
Sioux brave. A little red chalk supplied the complexion, and a few
dashes of blue on the cheeks and forehead added what Alan was
pleased to term "a little style" to the whole. Then Polly sprang
up, caught her skirt in both hands, and dropped a sweeping
courtesy to her friend, saying merrily,--
"Prythee, how now, Captain Smith; is it well with thee?"
And the bold captain returned, in some embarrassment, as he
removed his wide-spreading hat,--
"Yes'm. Same to you, ma'am."
There was something at once so quaint and so ridiculous in the
pair, that they gazed at each other for a moment, and then,
sinking clown on the floor regardless of their finery, they burst
out laughing.
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