She hesitated a
moment, as if struggling to repress something very like resentment,
before she answered with all her native spirit--
"I know not what right any one has to question me about oaths and
promises, which can only concern her who has made them, if, indeed,
any of the sort you mention have ever been made at all. I shall hold
no further discourse with one who thinks so much of himself, and takes
advice merely of his own feelings."
"Now, old trapper, do you hear that!" said the unsophisticated bee-
hunter, turning abruptly to his aged friend. "The meanest insect that
skims the heavens, when it has got its load, flies straight and
honestly to its nest or hive, according to its kind; but the ways of a
woman's mind are as knotty as a gnarled oak, and more crooked than the
windings of the Mississippi!"
"Nay, nay, child," said the trapper, good-naturedly interfering in
behalf of the offending Paul, "you are to consider that youth is
hasty, and not overgiven to thought. But then a promise is a promise,
and not to be thrown aside and forgotten, like the hoofs and horns of
a buffaloe.
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