"
"Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she has neither
husband nor brother to feed her?"
"Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty! Ought the young to wive
with the old - the pale-face with the red-skin - the Christian with
the heathen? It's ag'in reason and natur', and so you'll see, if
you think of it a moment."
"I've always heard mother say," returned Hetty, averting her face
more from a feminine instinct than from any consciousness of wrong,
"that people should never marry until they loved each other better
than brothers and sisters, and I suppose that is what you mean.
Sumach is old, and you are young!"
"Ay and she's red, and I'm white. Beside, Hetty, suppose you was
a wife, now, having married some young man of your own years, and
state, and colour -Hurry Harry, for instance -" Deerslayer selected
this example simply from the circumstance that he was the only
young man known to both - "and that he had fallen on a war path,
would you wish to take to your bosom, for a husband, the man that
slew him?"
"Oh! no, no, no -" returned the girl shuddering - "That would be
wicked as well as heartless! No Christian girl could, or would do
that! I never shall be the wife of Hurry, I know, but were he my
husband no man should ever be it, again, after his death!"
"I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to understand
sarcumstances.
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