As for her red-headed Scotch
grandfather, he had bequeathed her a somewhat whiter skin and
ruddier bloom than is usually found in the breeds.
Old Auguste was mightily proud of Tannis. He sent her to school
for four years in Prince Albert, bound that his girl should have
the best. A High School course and considerable mingling in the
social life of the town--for old Auguste was a man to be
conciliated by astute politicians, since he controlled some two
or three hundred half-breed votes--sent Tannis home to the Flats
with a very thin, but very deceptive, veneer of culture and
civilization overlying the primitive passions and ideas of her
nature.
Carey saw only the beauty and the veneer. He made the mistake of
thinking that Tannis was what she seemed to be--a fairly
well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly
flirtation was just what it was with white womankind--the
pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake--a
very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing,
something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of
social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of
flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the sense of
Platonics.
Carey found the Flats quite tolerable after the homecoming of
Tannis. He soon fell into the habit of dropping into the Dumont
house to spend the evening, talking with Tannis in the
parlor--which apartment was amazingly well done for a place like
the Flats--Tannis had not studied Prince Albert parlors four
years for nothing--or playing violin and piano duets with her.
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