Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/323

Rh “Mr. Carey, why do you never come to see me, now?”

Carey flushed like any girl. Her tone and look made him feel very uncomfortable. He remembered, self-reproachfully, that he must have seemed very neglectful, and he stammered something about having been busy.

“Not very busy,” said Tannis, with her terrible directness. “It is not that. It is because you are going to Prince Albert to see a white woman!”

Even in his embarrassment Carey noted that this was the first time he had ever heard Tannis use the expression, “a white woman,” or any other that would indicate her sense of a difference between herself and the dominant race. He understood, at the same moment, that this girl was not to be trifled with — that she would have the truth out of him, first or last. But he felt indescribably foolish.

“I suppose so,” he answered lamely.

“And what about me?” asked Tannis.

When you come to think of it, this was an embarrassing question, especially for Carey, who had believed that Tannis understood the game, and played it for its own sake, as he did.

“I don’t understand you, Tannis,” he said hurriedly.

“You have made me love you,” said Tannis.

The words sound flat enough on paper. They did