The Fur Bringers | Page 9

bring in a chaperon for
you!" he cried.
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Colina. "Anything but that! What do you want me
to do?"
"Merely to live like other girls," said Gaviller; "to observe the
proprieties."
"That's why I couldn't get along at school," muttered Colina gloomily.
"You might as well send me back."
"You're simply headstrong!" said her father severely. "You won't try to
be different."

"Dad," said Colina suddenly, "what did you come north for in the first
place, thirty years ago?"
The question caught him a little off his guard. "A natural love of
adventure, I suppose," he said carelessly.
"Perfectly natural!" said Colina. "Was your father pleased?"
Gaviller began to see her drift. "No!" he said testily.
"And when you went back for her," Colina persisted, "didn't my mother
run away north with you, against the wishes of her parents?"
"Your mother was a saint!" cried Gaviller indignantly.
"Certainly," said Colina coolly, "but not the psalm-singing kind. What
do you expect of the child of such a couple?"
"Not another word!" cried Gaviller, banging the table--last refuge of
outraged fathers.
Colina was unimpressed. "Now you're simply raising a dust to conceal
the issue," she said relentlessly.
Gaviller chewed his mustache in offended silence.
Colina did not spare him. "Do you think you can make your child and
hers into a prim miss, to sit at home and work embroidery?" she
demanded. "Upon my word, if I were a boy I believe you'd suggest
putting me in a bank!"
John Gaviller helped himself to another egg with great dignity and
removed the top. "Don't be absurd, Colina," he said with a weary air.
It was a transparent assumption. Colina saw that she had reduced him
utterly. She smiled winningly. "Dad, if you'd only let me be myself!
We could be such pals if you wouldn't try to play the heavy father!"
"Is it being yourself to act like a harum-scarum tomboy?" inquired

Gaviller sarcastically.
Colina laughed. "Yes!" she said boldly. "If that's what you want to call
it? There's something in me," she went on seriously. "I don't know what
it is--some wild strain; something that drives me headlong; makes me
see red when I am balked! Maybe it is just too much physical energy.
"Well, if you let me work it off it does no harm. If I can ride all day, or
paddle or swim, or go hunting with Michel or one of the others; and be
interested in what I'm doing, and come home tired and sleep without
dreaming--why everything is all right. But if you insist on cooping me
up!--well, I'm likely to turn out something worse than harum-scarum,
that's all!"
Gaviller flung up his arms.
"Really, you'll have to go back to your aunt," he said grimly. "The
responsibility of looking after you is too great!"
Colina laughed out of sheer vexation. "The silly ideas fathers have!"
she cried. "Nobody can look after me, not you, not my aunt, nobody but
myself! Why won't you understand that! I don't know exactly what
dangers you fancy are threatening me. If it is from men, be at ease! I
can put the fear of God into them! It is the sweet and gentle girl you
would like to have that is in danger there!"
"I'm afraid you'll have to go back," said Gaviller.
Colina drew her beautiful straight brows together. "You make me think
you simply want to get me off your hands," she said sullenly.
Gaviller shook his head. "You know I love to have you with me," he
said simply.
"Then consider me a fixture!" said Colina serenely. "This is my
country!" she went on enthusiastically. "It suits me. I like its uglinesses
and its hardships, too! I hated it in the city. Do you know what they
called me?--the wild Highlander!

"Up here everybody understands my wildness, and thinks none the
worse of me. It was different in the city--you've always lived in the
north, you old innocent--you don't know! Men, for instance, in society
they have a curious logic. They seem to think if a girl is natural she
must be bad! Sometimes they acted on that assumption--"
"What did I tell you!" cried her father. "Men are the same everywhere!"
"Well," said Colina, smiling to herself, "they didn't get very far. And no
man ever tried it twice. Up here--how different. I don't have to think of
such things."
"I have to think of settling you in life," said Gaviller gloomily. "There
is no one for you up here."
"I'm not bothering my head about that," said Colina. She went on with a
kind of splendid insolence: "Every man wants me. I'll choose one when
I'm ready. I can't see anything in men except as comrades. The decent
ones are timid with women, and