The lady turned to Stone Girl and spoke to her in the same language. When Stone Girl did not understand or reply, her voice changed and the girl found her speaking in the tongue of Never Laugh and the trader with gold lace.

“Do you understand me now?” she asked, and when the girl inclined her head, “You are English, then?”

“I am Indian,” Stone Girl answered.

“So?” the lady said gravely. “Of what nation are you?”

“I am Lenni Lenape and so is Otter Boy. We are of the Original People that are grandfathers to other nations.”

The lady’s black eyes snapped and now she spoke to her in Lenni Lenape, not as they spoke it at home but close enough so that Stone Girl could almost feel Espan waiting for her in the village along the Waldhoning.

“You are of the nation that we French call Loups,” the lady told her. “You are a long way from home. But before you were Lenni Lenape, you were English, not so?”

“My father, Feast Maker, washed all the English off me when I was little,” Stone Girl told her. “Now I am Indian.”

“Do you remember where you came from?”

“I come from Mahonink along the Waldhoning, the White Woman’s River.”

“I mean the English place you came from before that.”

The girl was silent. The lady went on.

“I want you to tell me all you remember,” she urged quietly, and it was hard for Stone Girl to keep back with the vision only a few moments before.

“I remember nothing,” she answered. “Sometimes in a dream I see.”

“What do you see, child?”

“I see a house of pink stone. A great house like this.”

The lady nodded gravely and spoke to Black Robe, who nodded, too.

“And what do you remember of your father and mother? I mean your English father and mother.”

“I remember nothing. Sometimes I see a lady like you but with yellow hair.”

“And your father?”

“He never comes in the dream.”

“Do you remember the English name?”

“Never Laugh told me. But she is in the ground and the name is in the ground with her. It is no part of me any more.”

“Did this person, Never Laugh, ever tell you about your father?”

“Only that he is in the white councils.”

“Did she ever say that you should go back to your white father and mother?”

“She told me. Yes. But that was before I have Espan, my husband. I am an Indian wife now. I have an Indian son. How could I go back to the white people?”

The lady said no more to her but the black eyes softened in a look that made the girl wonder. The lady and Black Robe sat talking a long time in the Plantscheman tongue. Stone Girl could tell little from their faces. Only from the face of the girl who had let them in did she catch an inkling. The girl stood listening in the hall out of sight of the lady and Black Robe, her face very sober. As they talked the face of the girl in the hall grew graver till almost it looked cruel. All of a sudden it brightened and she flashed a smile to Stone Girl, a good Indian smile like the sun coming out from under a dark cloud. Then she was gone. Sure enough, the lady and Black Robe were rising now. They shook hands again. Black Robe started to leave and when Stone Girl started after him, the lady stopped her.