As she could speak no English, yet they must needs find a medium of exchange for their valuable views, she tried to teach him to speak Cherokee. He was a bird, her little bird, she told him by signs, and his name was _Tsiskwa_. This she repeated again and again in the velvet-soft fluting of her voice. But no! he revolted. His name was Archie Royston, he declaimed proudly. He soon became the monarch of this poor hearth, and he deported himself in royal fashion.
"Oo tan't talk," he said patronizingly to her one day, after listening in futile seriousness to her unintelligible jargon. Forthwith he essayed to teach her to speak English, and, humoring his every freak, she sought to profit. She would fix intent eyes upon him and turn her head askew to listen heedfully while she lisped after his lisping exposition of "Archie Royston." He grew heady with his sense of erudition. He would fairly roll on the puncheon floor in the vainglory of his delight when she identified chair and fire and bed and door by their accurate English names. Sometimes, in a surge of emotion, hardly gratitude or a sense of comfort, neither trust nor hope, but the sheer joy of love, the child would come at her in a tumultuous rush, cast himself in her arms, and cover her face with kisses--the face that had at first so terrified him, that was so typical of cruelty and craft and repellent pride. Then as they nestled together they would repeat in concert--poor woman! perhaps she thought it a mystic invocation charged with some potent power of prayer or magic--"Ding-dong-bell!" and the comparative biographies of little Johnny Green and little Johnny Stout, and the vicissitudes of the poor pussycat submitted to their diverse ministrations. He was wont to sing for her also, albeit tunelessly, and as he sat blond and roseate and gay, warbling after his fashion on the hearth, her clouded old eyes were relumed with a radiance that came from within and was independent of the prosaic light of day. His favorite ditty was an old nursery rhyme in which the name "Pretty Polly Hopkins" occurs with flattering iteration, and he began to apply it to her, for he had come to think her very beautiful--such is the gracious power of love! And while the snow was flying, and the sleet and hail tinkled on the batten shutter, and the draughts bleated and whined in the crevices, he made the rafters ring: