ink the sooner I get you out o' Pymeut the
healthier it'll be for you."

The Boy was too flabbergasted to reply, but he was far from convinced.
The Colonel turned back to apologise to Yagorsha.

"No like this in your country?" inquired Muckluck of the crestfallen
champion.

"N-no--not exactly."

"When you like girl--what you do?"

"Tell her so," muttered the Boy mechanically.

"Well--Joe been tellin' Anna--all winter."

"And she hated him."

"No. She like Joe--best of any."

"What did she go on like that for, then?"

"Oh-h! She know Joe savvy."

The Boy felt painfully small at his own lack of _savoir_, but no less
angry.

"When you marry"--he turned to her incredulously--"will it be"--again
the shrieks--"like this?"

"I no marry Pymeut."

Glancing riverwards, he saw the dirty imp, who had been so wildly
entertained by the encounter on the ice, still huddled on his
drift-wood observatory, presenting as little surface to the cold as
possible, but grinning still with rapture at the spirited last act of
the winter-long drama. As the Boy, with an exclamation of "Well, I give
it up," walked slowly across the slope after the Colonel and Yagorsha,
Muckluck lingered at his side.

"In your country when girl marry--she no scream?"

"Well, no; not usually, I believe."

"She go quiet? Like--like she _want_--" Muckluck stood still with
astonishment and outraged modesty.

"They agree," he answered irritably. "They don't go on like wild
beasts."

Muckluck pondered deeply this matter of supreme importance.

"When you--get you squaw, you no _make_ her come?"

The Boy shook his head, and turned away to cut short these excursions
into comparative ethnology.

But Muckluck was athirst for the strange new knowledge.

"What you do?"

He declined to betray his plan of action.

"When you--all same Joe? Hey?"

Still no answer.

"When you _know_--girl like you best--you no drag her home?"

"No. Be quiet."

_"No?_ How you marry you self, then?"

The conversation would be still more embarrassing before the Colonel,
so he stopped, and said shortly: "In our country nobody beats a woman
because he likes her."

"How she know, then?"

"They _agree_, I tell you."

"Oh--an' girl--just come--when he call? Oh-h!" She dropped her jaw, and
stared. "No fight a _little?"_ she gasped. "No scream quite _small?"_

_"No_, I tell you." He ran on and joined the Colonel. Muckluck stood
several moments rooted in amazement