chain which bound her fast, and he knew it. He had had reason to know it more acutely than ever during these past weeks.
Outside the earth-and-timber shaft Dick dropped on his knees, and crawled painfully through an odorous darkness into a tiny room where he could not stand upright and across to a larger one where Andree rolled with a couple of Kogmollock babies among the deerskin robes, on the little platform which ran round the walls. The very dim light came through a piece of transparent yellow seal-bladder stretched across a gap in the roof, and the whole place was hot and extremely rank with oil and fish-smells. But Andree was laughing in merry peals of joy among the babies, while the little fat mother sat on the floor stitching neatly at a deer-skin tunic.
"Hallo, Andree," said Dick, and stood up as Andree tumbled the chuckling bundles aside and pushed her curls back.
"Dick," she cried. "It is that I will have a deer-skin suit, moi. Je ne peux to mush in a skirt, and I will not. I will have a parka and all else—comme ça. Like to Mrs. Ek-ki-do. And we will have the seal-skin boots, my Dick, and I will chew them pour vous when that they do get too hard."
"You will what?"
"Chew them." Andree pointed to Mrs. Ek-ki-do. "She does chew her husband's boots tous les jours—all round the sole to keep them soft. And my teeth are all so good as hers."
"I know. You bit me once. I will see about the clothes, Andree, because I have been thinking that we will need something of the kind. And I'll chew my own boots if it's necessary, thank you. But I fancy it won't be. It is time to come back to barracks, Andree."
"But kiss this bébè the once. She is so dear," said Andree, and lifted the black-eyed, broad-faced little bundle with her strong young grace.
Dick's eyes contracted. Among children Grange's Andree was at her very sweetest—until she tired of them.
