Mrs. Bob: A Novel — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE OLD STORY REVERSED, 13 know my ground. You will excuse this question, I hope???’ She looks at him fixedly, as though in doubt with regard to his sanity, and then laughs again. ‘Why, he actually takes me for an Indian maiden —a second Hiawatha, a Pocohontas! Poor man, you evidently are out of your beaten track—you need a guardian. ’? ‘Suppose you assume the role, seeing you have begun so well,’’ says the unabashed Bob. ‘“Thank you, I was after game—and I found it.” ‘“Perhaps of a different variety from what you expected,’’ he remarks, rather dryly, which evokes another burst of merriment. Poor Bob feels rather humiliated—his castles in Spain have tumbled ingloriously down. Instead of rescuing some maiden in distress, he has himself been saved from peril by the accuracy of this remarkable girl’s aim. Such a light-hearted pilgrim never remains long cast down, and he begins to appreciate the whole affair as a great joke on himself, so that by the time his strange companion laughs again at some ridicu- lous remark he makes, he is ready to join in her merriment. ‘‘Perhaps you are an angel sent, not only to deliver me from the claws of a tiger-cat, but to lead me out of the wilderness, for I humbly confess I’m lost,’’ he says. ‘Vou don’t belong in these parts, I see.”’ ‘‘Tl’m from that great and wicked city, New York.”’ ‘‘Poor man—then you are indeed far out of your ECORNIElOOOKS.E© iin