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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10902 ***
+
+BIG AND LITTLE SISTERS
+
+A Story of an Indian Mission School
+
+By THEODORA R. JENNESS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It was a Saturday morning in December at the Indian Mission School.
+Two young Sioux girls were going up the stairs--Hannah Straight Tree and
+Cordelia Running Bird.  It was their Saturday for cleaning. The two
+girls drew a heavy breath in prospect of the difficult task that
+confronted them.  The great unplastered mission building was a chilly
+place throughout the winter, and the halls and stairway that morning
+were drafty from the blustering wind that swept the Dakota plains and
+came through the outer doors below, where restless children kept going
+to and fro continually.  The young hall-girls shivered on the upper
+landing, and stepped back in a sheltered niche in which the brooms were
+hanging.  They had thrown their aprons over their heads and shoulders,
+and were dreading to begin their work.
+
+"My floor and stairs always look nicer than your floor and stairs," said
+Hannah Straight Tree to Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Because you have the teachers' side, and that's always nicer, to begin
+with, than the girls' side," answered Cordelia Running Bird.  "You know
+the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing.  If they have
+to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do
+not make big tracks.  But all the children on my side walk whole-feet
+over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and
+muddy.  Ugh! big tracks they make!  But I have learned the motto, every
+word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work."
+Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls
+flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar
+monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:
+
+"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places,
+the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be
+said, 'Well done.'"
+
+"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "I do not like to think hard or work hard.  I am
+glad I have the teachers' side."
+
+"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place,
+like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of
+wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school.
+The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live.  I like to
+think hard," said Cordelia Running Bird.  "I heard the teacher tell the
+white mother that I had the best memory of any middle-sized girl, and
+she said it was as good as many white girls' memories of my age, and
+that is 'most fourteen.  So I am to speak the longest middle-sized piece
+in the Christmas entertainment."
+
+"Ee!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white
+memory!  If the teacher praised me, I should be ashamed to tell it!"
+
+"She will not praise you, for you are always very dumb in school.  You
+will not try to speak a lesson only with the class in concert," said
+Cordelia Running Bird.  "I shall try to finish very fast this morning.
+There are only two more Saturdays till Christmas, and to-day I want to
+feather-stitch the little new blue dress for Susie.  She will wear it
+every day when she is here Christmas.  Many white and Indian visitors
+will be here."
+
+"And you will feel so proud because the visitors and the school will
+look at Susie, and the middle-sized and little girls will always choose
+her in the games.  They would not choose my little sister if she
+played," said Hannah Straight Tree, with a sudden downcast look.
+
+"Dolly is so shy I do not know if she would go into the middle of the
+ring if they should choose her, and she would not know the way to choose
+back," answered Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Ee!  She would!  She would!" disputed Hannah Straight Tree.  "Dolly is
+as brave and smart as Susie--smarter, too, for she is shorter!  She
+could play the games if I would let her!"
+
+"But you will not," replied the other; "you must not scold about my
+little sister.  Susie knows the motions in the Jack Frost song so well
+the teachers says that she can motion with the children in the Christmas
+entertainment."
+
+"She does not motion right," said Hannah Straight Tree.  "She gets
+behind, and when they sing:
+
+  "'He nips little children on the nose,
+    He pinches little children on the toes,
+    He pulls little children by the ears,
+    And brings to their eyes the big, round tears,'
+
+she is only nipping her nose when the rest are pulling their ears."
+
+"But she is so little she looks cute, and the visitors and school will
+laugh at her and praise her," said Cordelia Running Bird, undismayed.
+"She will not wear the blue dress in the Jack Frost song.  She will wear
+a red dress from my mission box.  I asked the white mother if I could
+not buy the red cloth for an entertainment dress for Susie with the
+money that she paid because I tended baby one month till the nurse-girl
+came.  And she said if I wished I could put a nickel on the missionary
+plate twenty Sundays, which would be one dollar, and so buy the cloth.
+She said it would be teaching me to give, as well as to receive.  She
+keeps the nickel with the school pennies, and I take one every Sunday."
+
+"And you lift your hand so high and drop the nickel very too loud, so
+all the school can hear, when Amy Swimmer passes you the plate!" cried
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "Just like it says, 'Ee! I am putting on a
+nickel, and the rest can only give one penny!  And _I_ earned my money,
+and the pennies are money that their people sent them.'"
+
+"You are very jealous," was the calm reply.  "I shall hire a large girl
+to cut it fine and help make the red dress very fast.  The sewing
+teacher has not time for such dresses.  Ver-r-y pr-r-etty it will look!"
+Cordelia Running Bird smiled prospectively, displaying small white teeth
+and two round dimples.  "Christmas evening I shall curl Susie's hair
+with a slate pencil, and she will wear fine shoes, and black stockings
+with the red dress.  My father brought them with the blue dress, and I
+keep them in my cupboard."
+
+"You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns
+money, so he buys nice things for Susie," Hannah Straight Tree said,
+with growing envy. "Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not
+look pretty Christmas time!  Her dress will be a kind that looks black,
+and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress.  She
+will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored
+stockings. If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not
+mend it nice--only draw it up so puckery.  Very lots of grease spots
+will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her
+very fast."
+
+"My little sister is not torn and dirty any time," said Cordelia Running
+Bird, "for my mother came to mission school when she was young and
+learned the neat way."
+
+"My big sister only went to camp school just a little while," said
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "When my mother died she had to stay at home and
+work and keep my little sister.  Now again my father has got married,
+and Lucinda wants to come to school and bring my little sister.  Dolly
+was five birthdays last Thanksgiving dinner."
+
+"Susie was five birthdays while I was at home vacation. I would be so
+glad if she could stay at school next time she comes, but she was
+sliding on the ice, and she fell and broke herself right here."
+Cordelia touched her collarbone.  "She is mended, but my mother is
+afraid to leave her with the children now," she added.  "But next year
+she will leave her.  If your big and little sister come to school they
+will have nice mission things."
+
+"But they cannot for my father," Hannah Straight Tree said, with
+deepening gloom.  "He would let Lucinda, but he says Dolly is too short;
+she must be ten birthdays when she comes.  Lucinda loves Dolly, so she
+will not leave her, and my stepmother is cross-tempered.  Lucinda will
+be twenty-one birthdays--much too old to come to school--when Dolly is
+ten birthdays."
+
+"You can tell your father the teachers like the Indian children come to
+school when they are very short, so they can grow them more
+white-minded," said Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"I told him, but he says he does not want his children very
+white-minded.  He says I came to school so short that they have grown me
+too white-minded.  I tell him I am very Indian-minded, but he tells me I
+do not know white from Indian.  Lucinda is so sad she will not try. She
+looks so horrid--Dolly, too--I am much ashamed of them.  I shall not
+speak to them before the white visitors and the teachers--only down at
+camp."
+
+"Then you will be very wrong," said Cordelia Running Bird.  "I would not
+be ashamed to speak to my own people anywhere."
+
+"Ee!  You talk so good because your father wears a grand policeman's
+coat and trousers, and your mother's head is in a hood!" said Hannah
+Straight Tree, excitedly. "My father wears a very funny Indian clothes,
+and feathers in his hairs, and my big sister's head is in a shawl.  All
+the girls will say on Christmas, 'Susie looked just like a fairy in the
+Jack Frost song.  We shall give her very lots of candy from our
+Christmas bags.'  Dolly knows the Jack Frost motions; I taught her, and
+she did them with the children down at camp.  But I shall not tell the
+teacher, for Dolly has no pretty things to wear.  That is why I won't
+let her play the games.  If my father saw her in the Jack Frost songs
+and games, he would be glad she is so smart and just like he would let
+her come to school.  But you would be so sorry if my big and little
+sister came to school.  You think Susie is a skin-white girl and Dolly
+is a very copper-colored Indian."
+
+"You do not speak true," was the denial.  "I should not be sorry, and I
+do not think Susie is a skin-white girl. She is very copper-colored,
+too."
+
+"But you do not wish Dolly would be in the Jack Frost song and wear a
+red dress just like Susie's!" challenged Hannah Straight Tree,
+disconcerting her companion with the piercing gaze habitual to her race.
+
+Though not quite innocent of all the charges laid to her, Cordelia
+Running Bird was a truthful girl, and she would not disown a failing
+plainly set before her by another.  She evaded her companion's gaze in
+silence.
+
+"You are thinking hard!  You cannot say it!" was the fierce indictment
+from Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"But--I wish she could be in another motion song--and wear a--green
+dress," came the hesitating answer.
+
+"Ee!  You think they would not watch Susie all the time if Dolly
+motioned Jack Frost, too, and looked like Susie!  And you do not wish
+that Dolly had a blue dress--only ugly green--and looked like Susie in
+the games," said Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"But little white girls do not need to wear alike dresses," was Cordelia
+Running Bird's argument. "Because the little white visitor last summer
+looked just like a fairy in the pretty pink with white lace, did her
+sister have to wish another little white girl looked the very too same?"
+she asked.
+
+"There is a difference, but I cannot tell," answered Hannah Straight
+Tree, taking down her broom in puzzled moodiness.
+
+The two girls went about their work in a most unfortunate state of mind.
+Hannah's discontent at Dolly's lack and Susie's plenty, and the prospect
+of Cordelia's triumphs through the petted little sister, grew upon her,
+and resulted in unlooked-for trials to Cordelia, who was much
+discomfited by the force of her companion's criticisms.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird was a bright, attractive girl, quite conscientious
+in discharging her industrial and school duties, and much interested in
+the Sunday-school; but in a private talk the very day before, the
+teachers had referred to her in some perplexity.
+
+"I wish Cordelia Running Bird were a little different," said the
+school-teacher.  "She leads her class, and is a credit to the school in
+most respects, but she is rather too ambitious to outdo others.  It
+creates jealousy."
+
+"I have observed that she is notional in the making of her dresses,"
+said the sewing teacher.  "She is apt to want the skirt a little wider
+and the hem a half-inch deeper than the regular uniform.  And she asks
+to have more buttonholes, which means more buttons, and an extra ruffle
+on the waist.  But she begs me so politely and appears so thankful, if I
+grant these trifling favors, that I find myself indulging her too
+frequently.  She does the extra work herself, cheerfully and neatly, if
+not speedily, but closely watched by others.  She has learned as if by
+intuition that variety is the spice of life, but she seems unconscious
+of the fact that she makes the other girls discontented.  But she is so
+pleasant and obedient, as a rule, that minor faults may be forgiven
+her," the white mother charitably concluded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+As something quite unusual at that season in the Dakotas, there had been
+a thaw the day before, and a great quantity of mud had been tracked in
+on the girls' side by the sewing classes coming from the schoolhouse,
+separate from the main mission building, to the upstairs room in which
+the sewing work was done.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree quickly swept her portion of the hall, for there
+was but little mud on the teachers' side, and was proceeding to her
+stairs before Cordelia Running Bird was half way along her floor.
+
+"You have not taken up your dirt!  You have swept it over on my side!"
+exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, who, with all her close attention to
+her own work, kept a sharp eye on the other's movements.
+
+"There is little, and it will not be much work to take it up with
+yours," was Hannah's reply.  "When we finished yesterday I lent our
+dustpan to the middle dormitory girls--they said theirs was too broken
+--and they lost it.  Now they say they can borrow the south dormitory
+dustpan, and they shall not hunt ours. You can always find things better
+than I can, so you must hunt it and take up my dirt," was Hannah
+Straight Tree's demand.
+
+"Tokee!  How strange you talk!" exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, in
+amazement.  "The dormitory girls must ask for a new dustpan if they
+break theirs.  It is not the rule to lend things, for it makes
+confusion; if you lent the dustpan you must find it and take up your
+dirt, for I have more to do than you.  It is Number 8, and you can tell
+it when you see it."
+
+"You are very cross as well as proud and vain--and you have learned the
+motto, every word.  If I had learned the motto I should try to be good,"
+said Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"The motto does not say a girl can tell us we must do a work that is not
+ours, and we must mind her.  I shall sweep your dirt back," was the warm
+reply.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird gave her broom a sudden push and sent the
+sweepings flying backward in a cloud.
+
+"Now look how mean you are! Again I have to sweep my floor!" cried
+Hannah Straight Tree, angrily.  "Proud--vain--cross--mean!"  She
+counted the four failings on her fingers.
+
+"Not the least bit do I care," replied Cordelia Running Bird, stung
+beyond endurance by Hannah's taunts.  "I was not cross at first, but now
+I am, because you call me four bad names.  I am now glad your little
+sister cannot play the games, or motion in one song, or even have an
+ugly green dress.  I am not sorry that your big and little sister cannot
+come to school, and very much I wish I had not learned the motto."
+
+Here the young Sioux girl, who was compelled to battle with hereditary
+pride and stubbornness in every effort to do right, forgot the white
+mother's admonition that the heart might be a dark place and a cold
+place needing to be cleansed of evil thoughts.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree did not hunt the dustpan, but with perseverance
+worthy of a better cause, she brushed the sweepings from her floor and
+stairs upon a ragged palm-leaf fan which she discovered in a corner,
+and, dropping them into the scrub-pail, took them out of doors. Cordelia
+brought a shoe-box from her cupboard in the playroom and applied it as
+an inconvenient dustpan. Meanwhile dustpan Number 8 remained in the
+darkest corner of the middle dormitory closet, where it had been pushed
+in the rush of clearing up the day before.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird's work of making clean her floor and stairs was
+even harder than she had expected. Never had there seemed so many
+errands to and fro by those who did the weekly cleaning in the three
+dormitories, numbering quite a force.  The thaw had ended in a freezing
+snow squall in the night, but a sufficient quantity of mud was clinging
+to the broad soles of the government shoes that tramped across
+Cordelia's wet floor to insure a startling trail of footprints.
+
+"I cannot keep them up, they come again so fast," she murmured to
+herself in grim despair, while wringing out her mop-rag to attack a line
+of tracks imprinted by the largest girl in school, in going to and from
+the laundry to dispose of laid-off sheets and pillow-cases.  "_Ver-ry
+hor-r-i-d_ pictures of the ugly issue shoes.  I will not wear them.  I
+am wearing kid store shoes my father buys for every day.  The dormitory
+girls are shovel-feeted, and I Wish they could not walk one step--only
+lie in bed!"
+
+She was overheard by Hannah Straight Tree, coming up the girls' stairs
+at that moment.  Hannah's own work had been done with little difficulty,
+and she had obtained permission to help the middle dormitory girls, for
+reasons all her own.
+
+The reckless speech was repeated to the dormitory girls by Hannah
+Straight Tree, much to their displeasure.
+
+"The dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, and she wishes they could not
+walk one step, only lie in bed!" exclaimed the largest girl, sitting
+down on a straw-tick to discuss the matter.  "Then we should be
+cripples, and, tokee! how many cripples there would be!"
+
+"If they came from both the other dormitories into this to lie down with
+the middle dormitory girls, there would be one cripple in each bed, and
+in one there would be two cripples," said a broom girl, who was quite
+expert at figures, having studied on the problem with the aid of
+broom-straws representing cripples.
+
+This portrayal of the startling situation, if Cordelia Running Bird's
+wish could be fulfilled, increased the shock of indignation in the
+dormitories.
+
+"Ee!" cried one, "we hate the ugly government shoes, of course, and wish
+that we could wear the nice shoes from our mission boxes every day.  But
+we cannot, only Sundays--and we have to change them after Sunday-school
+--and when we wear our best clothes for white visitors.  Cordelia Running
+Bird will not wear the government shoes because her father is an agency
+policeman, and can buy store shoes for every day."
+
+"I was always much ashamed of my big feet, and now I am more ashamed,"
+complained the largest girl.  "If the dormitory girls are shovel-feeted,
+every large girl in this school is shovel-feeted."
+
+"Cordelia was very cross about the dustpan, too, but we can pay her
+back," said Hannah Straight Tree, adding fresh fuel to the fire.
+
+"Now I shall not show her how to feather-stitch the little blue dress,"
+said the largest girl, who was quite famous at embroidery, and had
+partly promised to instruct Cordelia Running Bird in her work that day.
+
+"And I shall not help her make the little red dress, as she will be
+wanting me next week," resolved a south dormitory bed girl, Emma Two
+Bears, who was standing in the doorway.  Emma was the most experienced
+dressmaker of the large girls' class and was generous, as a rule, in
+helping younger girls. "I am sorry now that I cut and made the little
+blue waist, but I did not think she would so soon be wishing me a
+cripple."
+
+"And you need not praise the little blue and red dresses if she gets
+them done; but I am sure she cannot," gloried Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"Ee!  We will not.  We will call them ugly issue goods," said one of the
+girls.
+
+"Or watch her little sister in the Jack Frost song," said another.
+
+"We will shut our eyes!" exclaimed another.
+
+"And the middle-sized and short girls need not choose Susie in the
+games," came from another.
+
+"We will tell them not to.  They will choose Dolly," cried a fifth.
+
+"But Dolly looks so horrid, I am much ashamed of her," was Hannah
+Straight Tree's answer.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird heard the fierce discussion through the open door,
+near which she knelt at work, and the bitter tears ran down her face.
+
+When at length her work was done as well as she was able, and the last
+stair wiped, she went back upstairs on tiptoe to inspect her floor and
+see if it was dry.  She was met by Hannah Straight Tree on the upper
+landing, carrying a pail of scrub water, mixed with ashes, from the
+dormitory. Hannah set it on the top stair, and then glanced wickedly at
+Cordelia through half-closed eyes that meant mischief.
+
+"What if I should tip it over?" she said.
+
+"Ee! You must not.  It would freeze, and I should have to scald my hands
+with too hot water, thawing it!" exclaiming Cordelia Running Bird,
+rushing to prevent her.
+
+In her haste to keep the pail from being overturned Cordelia hit it with
+her foot, upsetting it herself.  The stairs were deluged with the
+contents, Hannah Straight Tree fell back with a laugh.  "Now see what
+you have done yourself!  I did not spill one drop.  You cannot say I
+did."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird burst into upbraiding exclamations in Dakota,
+which, because they wished them to learn to speak English, was a
+forbidden language in the school except on Sundays and on holidays.  By
+an odd mishap of memory, Cordelia was apt to break the rule in moments
+of excitement, and she knew the penalty too well.
+
+"Now you have talked Dakota, and you must report yourself," Hannah
+Straight Tree said triumphantly. "You wished the dormitory girls would
+have to lie in bed--now you must lie in bed yourself.  You cannot
+feather-stitch or speak to anyone."
+
+The unclean water froze upon the stairs, and Cordelia Running Bird's
+work of thawing it with hot water was a long and painful process.  When
+it was accomplished, though but poorly, she went upstairs a second time,
+passing through the front hall to the white mother's room to report that
+she had spoken in Dakota.
+
+"Again, Cordelia?  How can you forget so often?" said the young white
+mother in a seriously inquiring tone.
+
+The little Indian girl's excitement had now given place to
+discouragement.  She was silent for some time, then she murmured an
+original defense.
+
+"The cross thoughts come in Indian, and I speak them out that way.
+Che-cha (hateful) means much more in Indian than in English.  Dakota
+is my own language, and it tells me how to scold just right."
+
+"No, dear, just wrong," was the reply.  Then looking at the draggled
+little figure with head drooped moodily and smarting hands locked
+tightly at the sides, the white mother added, "You have had a cold, hard
+time this morning in the hall, I know.  Have you been cross about your
+work?"  The gentle voice invited confidence, but it did not melt
+Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Yes, ma'am.  I was very cross at Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory
+girls.  I called the dormitory girls a name, and then a pail of very
+dirty water was tipped over on my stairs, so again I had to clean them,
+and I screamed at Hannah Straight Tree in Dakota."
+
+"Did Hannah tip it over?"
+
+"No, ma'am, I tipped it over."
+
+With all her sense of injury, Cordelia Running Bird would not tell tales
+to divide the blame.
+
+The white mother saw that there was more than she knew of connected with
+the trouble in the hall, but seeing that the race mood was upon
+Cordelia, she forbore all further questions.
+
+"It has often been explained that if the older pupils spoke Dakota very
+much the little ones would speak it, too, and not learn English as they
+should," she said. "I'm sorry that the cross thoughts caused you to
+forget, Cordelia Running Bird."
+
+"I am very cross now," said Cordelia, fearing her confession might be
+misconstrued as a repentance.  "I have enemies that I am hating very
+hard.  I shall be thinking Indian thoughts about them while I lie in
+bed."
+
+"I hope the cross thoughts will leave you if you lie in bed, where you
+can be alone, and try to drive them out. I will send your dinner to the
+dormitory," said the white mother.
+
+"I cannot eat one bite for many days.  I wish to starve," Cordelia
+Running Bird said, as she turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The girls had finished working in the dormitories and had gone below.
+Cordelia Running Bird was relieved that she would not have to meet them
+and endure such looks as they might give, though not allowed to speak to
+her.
+
+Going to her corner in the south dormitory, she put on her nightgown and
+crept into bed.  She hid her head beneath the blankets to shut out the
+sounds below, in which she was to have no part for several hours.
+
+But though Cordelia Running Bird was in solitude, her sharp ears caught
+the noise of romping children in the playroom, and the frequent dropping
+of the sliding-doors upon the narrow individual cupboards, indicating an
+excessive rummaging of shelves.  Cordelia knew full well the prying
+habits of the Indian children.
+
+"I am glad I have the red dress in my trunk, but they will meddle with
+my other things and look at Susie's blue dress, and then roll it up in
+such bad wrinkles," she said to herself.  "Just like they will drop a
+skein of feather-stitching silk and tramp it with their feet till it is
+very dirty.  Then some girl will pick it up to sew her doll clothes, and
+there will not be enough for Susie's dress."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird held her breath as these thoughts came to her.
+
+"But I do not know if I can feather-stitch it now, for there is no one
+to teach me, that I know of.  Just like Hannah Straight Tree and the
+dormitory girls will tell the whole school to hate me, and they will.
+If I cannot get a large girl to help make the red dress, and I try to do
+it all alone, it will fit so bad, and I cannot get it done in time.
+What if I should tell my mother to have Susie stay at camp, and not once
+come inside the yard Christmas time?  Then she would not need the
+dresses, and they could not call them issue goods, and not choose Susie
+in the games, and shut their eyes at her."
+
+Cordelia lay very still, but the thought of Susie's missing the
+festivities by staying in the big building in the mission pasture, where
+the Indian visitors camped in winter, was put from her in short order.
+
+"Susie shall not stay in camp.  I shall find a way to get the dresses
+done, and she shall motion Jack Frost and see the Christmas tree.  I
+shall tell them I am tired of playing silly games, and Susie shall not
+play, either, so they cannot leave her out.  And I shall tell the school
+they must not watch Susie motion, for they are such horrid Indians they
+would scare her very bad.  When Hannah Straight Tree's big and little
+sister come into the playroom I shall walk close up to them and pull my
+dress away, and look at it so sharp, and say, so Hannah hears me, 'Those
+wild Indians have so many grease spots I am much afraid of catching
+them.'"
+
+While plotting these misdeeds Cordelia Running Bird fell asleep.  A
+young girl from the teachers' table brought her dinner on a tray and set
+it by the bed without awaking her.  She did not wake up until near the
+middle of the afternoon.  She found that the white mother had stolen
+into the dormitory with a small book which she had placed upon the
+pillow.  There was a narrow white ribbon, frayed and yellow, wound
+around the book and tied on one side in a bow.  The rooms below now were
+quiet, for the wind had lulled and the entire school was out of doors.
+
+Looking from the window near her bed, Cordelia saw the broad, white
+plains illumined with brilliant sunshine and the girls exercising on the
+glittering crust of snow occasioned by the thaw.  The little girls were
+sliding down hill on boards and broken shovels, cast-off dripping-pans
+and ash-pans--everything, indeed, that could be seized on for coasting.
+A group of large and middle-sized girls were walking over the mission
+pasture, stretching for a mile on every side.  Another band of girls was
+packed into a long, wide bob-sled on the point of starting with the
+white mother to the little log post office down the river.
+
+"Very lots of fun, and I am being punished here in bed!" Cordelia said
+to herself, mournfully.  "Now the bob-sled starts, and very loud the
+sleigh-bells ring.  The white mother drives, and she must hold the lines
+so tight, for very fast the horses want to go.  We go to the post office
+by the al-pha-bet on Saturday, and this day it is the P's and R's--there
+are no Q's--so it is my turn.  Very fast I meant to feather-stitch, so I
+could spare the time to go. Ee! There is Hannah Straight Tree in my
+place.  She made me talk Dakota and get punished.  Now she gets my
+sleigh-ride!"  And Cordelia Running Bird threw herself back upon the
+pillow, giving vent to wild, resentful tears.
+
+When the tears had spent themselves the Indian girl raised her head and
+saw the little book on the other pillow.
+
+"Tokee!  The white mother put it here.  She always keeps it, and it
+means that I can look at it now."
+
+Cordelia unwound the ribbon, opening the little book.
+
+"Annie's Bible, and I never thought of her to-day! Just like I am
+forgetting her so fast.  Here is Helen's letter.  I shall read that
+first."
+
+[Illustration: She read the little note slowly.]
+
+She took a little white note from a dainty envelope and read it slowly,
+but with understanding that spoke of previous acquaintance with the
+words:
+
+  "_Dear Annie_: Will you let this little Bible be your
+  friend and guide, as I have tried to have it for my friend
+  and guide since I have been a King's Daughter?  I have
+  marked some verses I have learned and have recited in
+  the meeting of our circle, and I wish that you might care
+  to learn them and recite them in your meeting at the
+  school.
+
+  "The King's Daughters in the Far East love to think
+  about the Indian girls away out West, who are also
+  members of our circle.  Isn't it a sweet thought, Annie,
+  that although so widely separated, we are all the children
+  of one family in Christ, and are cared for by the same
+  heavenly Father?
+
+       "Yours with loving interest,
+          "HELEN MERRIAM, Hartford, Conn.
+          "Aged 16."
+
+"It came in Annie's mission box, and Helen was her unknown white
+friend," said Cordelia Running Bird, as she put the letter back into the
+envelope.  "I shall next read Annie's letter."  And she took another
+little missive from the Bible, written with a pencil on the tablet paper
+of the school, in wavering penmanship that showed the weakness of the
+writer's hand.  Cordelia read:
+
+  "_Dear Cordelia_: Annie Running Bird will leave this
+  Bible to Cordelia Running Bird, my sister, for I cannot
+  carry it to heaven, and in heaven I shall not need to read
+  the words that Jesus spoke on earth, for I shall hear him
+  speak up there.  But Cordelia will not just yet be bearing
+  Jesus speak up there, and she will need to read this Bible
+  and must mind just what it tells her.  Dear Cordelia,
+  you can have this Bible for your own when you are
+  fourteen birthdays, so you will be old enough to take
+  good care of it and read it very lots. But if you want
+  to borrow it before it is your own, the white mother will
+  please lend it to you, so you always give it back, and do
+  not lose the letters and the pieces of my hairs that will
+  be in it. I did not learn all of Helen's verses for the
+  King's Daughters' meeting, for I got too sick to study,
+  and my memory feels so queer. I have put a cross behind
+  the ones I learned, and, dear Cordelia, wilt you try to
+  learn them, too, and all the rest that Helen marked?
+  The one I tried to think of most is St. Matthew, chapter 5:44.
+
+  "Good-by, dear sister, for I cannot live much longer,
+  I am so pained with the hard coughing all the time. These
+  words I write so you will not forget me. I wish to see
+  my father and my mother and my little sister very much.
+  But if I cannot, you must give my love to them, and all
+  my other friends, and tell them they must meet me in
+  the better world. And you must, too.
+
+  "So again I say good-by, dear sister,
+            "ANNIE RUNNING BIRD,
+            "Aged 16."
+
+  "P. S.--Write good-by to Helen and my love."
+
+"She lies at the agency.  She sleeps with those that are happy," mused
+Cordelia, looking at the lock of hair with reverent eyes.  "It was very
+cold one year ago this winter, when she had the whooping-cough so hard
+it made her lungs so sick she could not live.
+
+"My mother had the fever very long and hard at home and could not come
+to watch her; my father came, but could not stay long, for my mother was
+so sick.  But the teachers took good care of Annie, and the large girls
+helped them.  I could only sit by her in daytime, for the teachers said
+I was too young to stay up nights.  The dormitory girls were very kind
+to Annie, and they used to sit up nights, when they had worked all day
+and were so tired, to watch her.
+
+"Emma Two Bears has a sweet song, and one night when she was watching
+Annie, and there was a blizzard, and the wind cried very loud, like many
+dogs all round the house, Annie was afraid; so she asked would Emma sing
+'The Sweet By and By,' and Emma sang it louder than the wind, but very
+sweet.  Annie said it made her feel so happy that again she would not be
+afraid.
+
+"And once more when Annie could not eat one bite of anything and was so
+very faint, Hannah Straight Tree thought that she could drink some
+rosebud porridge, so she ran away without permission, and waded through
+the deep snow to the rosebushes up the river, to pick off some buds to
+make the porridge.  She froze her shortest right side toe, and a wild
+steer watched her very fierce, but Hannah Straight Tree did not care,
+for she was all the time thinking Annie was so faint.  And Annie drank a
+little porridge and told Hannah she was very glad indeed. And they did
+not punish Hannah, for the rosebuds were for Annie.
+
+"When the Indian preacher told at Annie's funeral how she was so good
+and learned so many Bible verses for the King's Daughters' meetings,
+there was much crying in the schoolhouse, for the girls all felt so bad.
+And before I got into the wagon with my father, when we carried Annie to
+the agency, Hannah Straight Tree whispered that she did not want to
+sleep with anyone but me, and if they put another girl in bed with her
+she would be sure to turn her back and never say one word to her.
+
+"Now the dormitory girls and Hannah Straight Tree are my enemies.  The
+verse that Annie tried to think of most is all about enemies.  I cannot
+read it just now. I shall read some other verses first."
+
+Many of the verses her sister had marked were familiar to Cordelia, for,
+as Annie had requested, she had been allowed to take the little Bible
+when in thoughtful mood, perhaps when kept within doors on a stormy
+Sunday afternoon.  She had read them often, asking explanation of the
+hard words from the teachers, and had learned a number of the simplest
+ones in preparation for her own admission to the King's Daughters
+Circle, which would be before long, she had hoped.
+
+"Here is one about the tongue, that has the straight marks Helen made,
+and Annie's cross behind it.  This I have not learned to say."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird read aloud slowly: "'_Even so the tongue is a
+little member, and boast-eth great things. Behold how great a matter a
+little fire kind-leth_.'
+
+"That means to brag with the tongue and make folks very cross.  Hannah
+Straight Tree bragged because her floor and stairs are always nicer than
+my floor and stairs," Cordelia said.  "But just like I have bragged
+some, too," she added.  "My tongue has talked so much because my father
+is an agency policeman and my little sister has nice things.  And I
+bragged about my white memory and my store shoes.  But I was only
+talking to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and Hannah Straight Tree
+went and told it."
+
+She turned the leaves and found another text: "'_A soft answer turneth
+away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger_.'  I did not speak soft
+when I told Hannah Straight Tree she was very dumb in school, and I was
+glad Dolly could not motion in a single song, or even have an ugly green
+dress, and I was not sorry that her big and little sister could not come
+to school.  And Dolly and Lucinda have not said mean things to me, so
+why should I be cross at them? But Hannah would not find the dustpan
+and take up her dirt, and that was very mean.  Now here is one that I
+have learned.  I can say it without looking at the book."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird shut her eyes and carefully re-peated: "'_Pride
+goeth before de-struction, and a haught-y spirit before a fall_.'
+Haughty means to feel stuck-up. The pail fell downstairs and made me
+talk Dakota, so I had to come to bed, because I was stuck-up and made
+Hannah Straight Tree cross.  Just like they all would not be hating me
+if I had not been haught-y.  But the dormitory girls were very mean to
+walk whole-feet on my wet floor. If they had walked heel or tiptoe I
+should not have scolded to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and called
+them shovel-feeted, and wished they had to lie in bed. But I did not
+wish them to be cripples--only have a good long rest till I was through
+scrubbing.  But Hannah was mean to go and tell.  I can find no verse
+that will excuse her and the dormitory girls."
+
+Here Cordelia Running Bird fell to pitying herself anew.
+
+"I shall now read Annie's best verse, but it will be very hard to mind
+those words that Jesus spoke."
+
+
+
+
+Cordelia Running Bird wound the ribbon round the little Bible, tying it
+with care, and laid the book close by her on the bed; then she ate her
+dinner with a hearty relish. She had hardly finished when the door from
+the front hall was opened, and the young white mother, rosy from her
+sleigh-ride, looked into the dormitory.  She saw the little Bible lying
+near Cordelia, glanced inquiringly at the dark-faced girl, and then
+smiled and nodded, to receive a cheerful smile in answer.
+
+"Jump up quickly, dear, and dress," she said.  "Some little girls are
+going up the river to the store, and one of the girls is Cordelia
+Running Bird."
+
+Cordelia started out of bed in joyful haste.
+
+"Are you ready to give back the Bible?" asked the white mother, coming
+to the bed.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Cordelia Running Bird, handing her the little
+book.  "Thank you very much.  It made me think of Annie, so I read it,
+and it told me I must love my enemies, so just like I shall do it now."
+
+"I am very glad the cross thoughts have left you," was the answer.  "Now
+put on your plaid dress and be ready in ten minutes."
+
+Cordelia flew to get the plaid dress from the closet, and was ready and
+downstairs in a twinkling.  The little girls selected for the drive were
+in the playroom putting on their hoods and coats in great delight.
+Cordelia hurriedly put on her own, and, opening her cupboard, she
+unlocked a doll trunk, taking out a tiny purse for coins, whose portly
+sides bespoke some wealth within.  She looked an instant at the blue
+dress and the silk for feather-stitching, finding to her great relief
+that they had not been touched.  She locked them in the doll trunk, put
+the little key into the purse, and whisked away.
+
+"The store is much nicer than the post office," was her joyous
+reflection, as she slipped the purse into her pocket on her way
+outdoors.  "Very long have I been saving this last part of all the money
+that I earned tending baby; now I have a chance to spend it with my own
+eyes."
+
+Down the steep hill went the bob-sled to the great Missouri River, where
+it took the straight, smooth road on the snow-laden ice.  The sewing
+teacher drove the horses, giving them free rein.  The school-teacher sat
+beside her on the seat, and Cordelia and the girls were snuggled down in
+hay upon the bottom of the sled, with comforters for lap-robes.
+
+The little log store was but two miles distant, and the party were not
+long in reaching it.  It stood upon a steep bluff on the opposite shore.
+The white man who kept it dealt to some extent in Indian curiosities, of
+which the two teachers were in quest to send as Christmas gifts to
+Eastern friends.
+
+"We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian dolls," said the
+school-teacher to the trader when they had made known their errand.
+
+[Illustration: "We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian
+dolls," said the teacher.]
+
+"I've got some first-class moccasins, both porcupined and beaded, but no
+Indian dolls," replied the trader. "Indian dolls are growing mighty
+scarce, now the young squaws get so much put into their minds to do.
+Only the old-timers understand the trick of making dolls."
+
+"I am disappointed that you have none, for I wished to send one to my
+little niece.  But I must wait and try to get one elsewhere."
+
+While the two teachers were examining the moccasins, Cordelia Running
+Bird and the children were absorbed in looking at the china dolls and
+other articles displayed upon the shelves and hanging from a wire
+stretched above the counter.
+
+"I was telling Hannah Straight Tree I should buy a big doll for Susie,
+and a red silk handkerchief for my father, and a blue silk handkerchief
+for my mother, and should hang them on the Christmas tree," said
+Cordelia, partly to herself and partly to the little girls.
+
+"Kee!  I would not hang them," said a prudent little maid of ten years.
+"Hannah Straight Tree told the other girls, and they are very yelous--
+that is not the word, but I forget it--for they say they cannot hang
+their people anything.  They say you think the name 'Running Bird' is
+very stylish, and you wish to hear it called so often at the Christmas
+tree."
+
+"Of course I shall not hang them," said Cordelia, firmly.  "And I shall
+not buy a doll for Susie, for my father always buys her one.  I was
+going to brag about her having two," she added candidly.  "And I shall
+not buy the silk handkerchiefs.  They have the issue cotton ones and
+some other ones that my father bought;" and she withdrew her eyes from
+the display of cheap and gaudy handkerchiefs of so-called silk material
+suspended from the wire.  "I shall buy a cake pan with a steeple for my
+mother, and a hairbrush for my father, for his hairs stick up so
+straight and stiff.  And I shall give the presents very still at camp,
+so the school will not be jealous."
+
+Having thus subdued her vanity, Cordelia Running Bird shyly bought the
+articles she had selected from the trader's boy, who helped his father
+in the store.  She also bought four hair ribbons and a little bag of
+candy, having left two silver quarters.  She was considering how to
+spend them when her eyes alighted on some little brown shoes and a pair
+of stockings matching them, beneath a small glass show-case.
+
+"Ver-r-y st-y-lish little shoes and stockings!" she exclaimed,
+forgetting in her rapture to be shy before the trader's boy.
+
+The small girls crowded upon tiptoe at the show-case, peering through
+the glass sides to inspect the little wonders.
+
+"Just the color of an Indian," observed a little maid of seven, holding
+up her slim hand to compare it with the red-brown shoes and stockings.
+"But they made them for a little white girl.  They are like the ones the
+little white visitor with the pink dress wore last summer."
+
+"They are just as pretty for a little Indian girl," replied Cordelia.
+"They would be just right for Susie," with a longing eye.
+
+"But Susie does not need them," said the prudent little girl.  "She has
+a black shoes and stockings in your cupboard that are very nice."
+
+"But she could have two pairs.  These would be so pretty with the red
+dress in the Jack Frost song.  She could wear the black ones with the
+blue dress," said Cordelia, seized anew with her besetting sin and
+growing helpless in its grasp.
+
+She asked the number of the shoes, finding it the same that Susie wore.
+Then she asked the price.  She could buy the shoes and stockings for a
+dollar and a half.
+
+"One dollar more than I have got," she said in feverish regret.  She was
+intently silent for a little, then she turned, and, running quickly to
+the school-teacher, drew her to one side, where they could talk unheard.
+
+"The Indian doll my grandmother made for me is very nice and new, for I
+have kept it in my trunk so much. I will give it to you if you please to
+give me one dollar--that is what they gave my grandmother for her dolls
+when she would sell them at the agency," Cordelia said, in eager
+undertone.
+
+"Why, child, you surely cannot wish to sell your Indian doll that has a
+beaded buckskin dress just like the one your grandmother wore when she
+was your age?" said the school-teacher in surprise.  "No, thank you,
+dear. You wish to give me pleasure, but I cannot accept it, for I know
+you love the little Indian grandmother better than you could the
+prettiest white doll in the Christmas box," she added, gratefully.
+
+"It is very Indian-minded, and I do not now care for it," replied the
+girl, with a clouded face.  "I wish to buy the little brown shoes and
+stockings in the glass box," pointing to the show-case.  "I have only
+fifty cents."
+
+"Why, of course, Cordelia, if you really wish to sell it," was the
+response.  "The shoes and stockings are for Susie, I suppose, but are
+not the black ones nice enough?"
+
+Cordelia had displayed the little black shoes and stockings to the
+teachers with a deal of pride.
+
+"But the brown ones are much prettier for the Jack Frost song," she
+argued, pressingly.
+
+"Very well," replied the teacher, opening her purse and handing her the
+dollar, with a sorry look.  "Perhaps, however, we would better see the
+little things before you buy them."
+
+The brown shoes and stockings were examined by the teachers and were
+thought quite satisfactory for the price. Cordelia bought them
+breathlessly and hid them in her coat pocket to insure their safety.
+
+But the home-going in the early moonlight evening was less joyous than
+had been the journey to the store. To the young Sioux girl the
+sleigh-bells seemed to jingle harshly, and the gumbo hills, whose tops
+were bare of snow, seemed frowning blackly from across the river.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird passed some peppermints to the children, which
+awoke a burst of gratitude.
+
+"We little girls shall always choose Susie in the games," said one.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed another, "Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory girls
+have told us not to, but we shall."
+
+"Ee! Talk lower so the teacher will not hear you,"  said Cordelia, with
+a sudden flutter of the breath.  "You must choose Dolly half the time--
+if Susie plays."
+
+"She is too bad-looking," said a third.  "Susie has two pairs of pretty
+shoes, and two nice dresses, and we like her better."
+
+"But you must not talk that way before the larger girls," Cordelia
+cautioned in an undertone.  "Doily has a new hair ribbon like the red
+one I have bought for Susie--both are in my lap.  And I have bought a
+pink one for Lucinda.  I wish to do them good--Hannah Straight Tree,
+too.  You must tell the larger girls you like Dolly just as well as
+Susie.  If they wear alike ribbons on their braids it will be nice."
+
+"A new ribbon cannot dress Dolly up," remarked the prudent little girl.
+"The points of her hairs will look like Susie's points, and that is
+all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Sunday morning there was wonder in the school to see Cordelia Running
+Bird in the heavy government shoes that had been lying in her cupboard
+since the distribution of the clothing early in the fall.  And when it
+was observed that she had dressed for Sunday-school and had not changed
+the shoes the wonder grew to pure amazement.
+
+"Ee!  What ails the vainest girl in South Dakota? She will now be
+wearing issue shoes to Sunday-school!" exclaimed a dormitory girl, among
+a group of large and middle-sized pupils gathered in the music room,
+adjoining the playroom, in Sunday-school attire.
+
+Cordelia sat in a corner with her eyes upon her Sunday-school lesson.
+Her feet were planted side by side as if with studied care.
+
+"Just like she is very scared because the large and middle-sized girls
+do not speak to her since yesterday. She is not sorry, only scared,"
+said Hannah Straight Tree.  "See, she sticks her feet out very far, so
+we will see the shoes and think she is not vain; but we will not believe
+her.  She has found the dustpan, too, because she is so scared of me.
+She bragged so much she made me cross, so I told her she must find it
+and take up my dirt, yesterday.  She minded me this morning."
+
+"She will be more scared before we speak to her," remarked the bread
+girl.  "Ver-r-y ugly issue shoes! She ought to wear a dragging dress to
+hide them."
+
+There was a burst of laughter, while the keen, black eyes of the entire
+group were fixed upon Cordelia Running Bird's feet.  She did not draw
+them back nor lift her eyes, but suddenly her dusky face grew scarlet,
+and there was a nervous trembling of her lips that moved persistently in
+an attempted study of the lesson.  She had heard the words, as the girls
+intended she should. They were speaking in Dakota without fear of being
+understood by the white mother, who was in the playroom passing pennies
+for the missionary plate.
+
+The white mother heard the laugh and stepped into the space between the
+sliding doors, which were ajar. She saw the girls' resentment at a
+glance, and that it was directed at Cordelia Running Bird.  She was
+troubled, but could not combat the feeling that had spread throughout
+the school, to mar the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, which these
+Indian girls were wont to keep in reverent spirit.
+
+"She has bought another pair of shoes for Susie--stockings, too--not
+black ones, like the little schoolgirls have to wear for best, but very
+stylish brown ones," Hannah Straight Tree said.  "She put them in her
+trunk last night.  I crept upstairs and watched her, for the children
+said she had them in her pocket.  The large and middle-sized girls must
+not see them till the entertainment, but the little girls keep saying
+they are like the ones the little white visitor that wore the dress that
+was pink dim-i-ty, had on.  Ver-ry white-minded shoes!  She wants to
+hire me to like her, if she does not wish to have Dolly in the Jack
+Frost song with Susie, so she bought new hair ribbons at the store for
+Dolly and Lucinda.  She told the little girls because she knew they
+would tell me. But Dolly and Lucinda shall not wear them.  Very cotton
+silk, of course."
+
+The ringing of the bell for Sunday-school relieved Cordelia Running Bird
+of the torment she was undergoing. Conversation was suspended, and the
+girls put on their hoods and marched in a procession to the
+school-house, guided by the teachers.
+
+Cordelia had a trying hour in Sunday-school.  The middle-sized girls,
+her companions in the white mother's class, indulged in frequent
+whispering at her expense and kept deep silence when she tried to lead
+the class, as she was wont, in reading reference verses and in concert
+recitation of the memory verses and the Golden Text. Thus it happened
+that she read a reference verse alone, in faltering accents, with the
+eyes of all the class upon her:
+
+"'_Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed
+to give than to receive_.'"
+
+"She gives a nickel every Sunday, so she minds the verse and gets the
+red dress very cheap," Hannah Straight Tree whispered from the seat
+behind.
+
+The white mother heard the whisper, but the words were in Dakota, so she
+failed to understand.  She saw Cordelia Running Bird shrink and color
+and her face grow very grave.  Seeing this the class ceased whispering,
+but the white mother's faithful teachings went unheeded, and she saw the
+lesson was a failure.  In fact, the whole room was in sad disorder from
+the opening to the close of Sunday-school, and all three teachers were
+perplexed and disappointed by the strange behavior of their usually
+attentive pupils.
+
+"How unfortunate that the race mood has attacked the school when
+Christmas is approaching, and we wish the girls to do their best and be
+their happiest," said the white mother, lingering; for a minute in the
+schoolroom after the dismissal.  "Cordelia seems about the only one,
+except the little girls, who isn't out of sorts to-day, yet she is the
+one they are all against.  The older girls all seem displeased at her."
+
+"The large girls worried me with loud and constant whispering and
+inattention to the lesson," was the school-teacher's sorrowful report.
+"There were so many, with the superintendent's class combined with mine,
+I found it quite impossible to keep good order, as you probably
+observed."
+
+The superintendent was not present.  He had started for the distant
+railroad station two days previously to get the Christmas boxes.
+
+"I have never had the slightest trouble with both classes, heretofore,
+but to-day they seemed to throw off all restraint, and I was simply in
+despair," added the young teacher with a strained expression in her
+voice. "They whispered in Dakota, and their meaning was a mystery, but I
+heard Cordelia Running Bird's name and Hannah Straight Tree's very
+often, also Susie, Dolly and Lucinda."
+
+"There was some trouble in the hall yesterday, which made Cordelia
+Running Bird moody for a time, but she recovered her good-nature in the
+afternoon and seems to be behaving nicely now, although much hurt by the
+treatment which she is receiving from the girls," the white mother said.
+
+"The children were excited also," said the teacher, who had taught the
+infant class.  "They whispered much in English, and I gathered from
+their talk that the unusual wardrobe which Cordelia is preparing for her
+little sister to appear in during her Christmas visit, has to do with
+the disturbance.  I was forced to hear about the red dress and the brown
+shoes and stockings, and the blue dress and the black shoes and
+stockings, till I knew not what to do.  It seems that Hannah is vexed
+about the little things, and the other girls are sympathizing with her,
+and they seem to have some grievance of their own, besides."
+
+"That explains it," said the white mother.  "Perhaps it was unwise to
+let Cordelia have the red cashmere for the little dress, but she is
+paying for it by contributing a portion of her hard-earned money to the
+missionary fund. Her patience with the baby, who was very fretful, was
+quite wonderful.  She cheerfully devoted all her playtime for a month to
+baby, while I gave attention to the little children, and I thought it
+but a just reward to let her have the little dress, especially as it was
+in her mission box.  Her father had not brought the blue dress then, But
+dear me! She has added brown shoes and stockings, which I didn't in the
+least expect."
+
+The children in their bedtime talk had told the white mother of Cordelia
+Running Bird's purchase at the store, and later in the evening the
+second teacher had informed her of the barter of the Indian doll.
+
+"The brown shoes and stockings must be laid to my account.  Whatever can
+be done?" exclaimed the school-teacher, in dismay.
+
+"Nothing," said the white mother, firmly.  "I wish Cordelia was less
+extravagant, and we will be careful to restrain her after this.  But
+Indian girls must learn as well as white girls to respect the right of
+property.  The girls have been allowed much freedom in the spending of
+what money they could call their own, but it has mostly gone for hair
+ribbons and candy, and there has been no trouble before.  I hope the
+feeling will subside, however, in a day or two.  So many Christmas
+pleasures are in prospect that the girls will surely have no room for
+strife and envy in their hearts."
+
+Here the teachers hastened to the mission building to discharge the
+duties that devolved upon them after Sunday-school.
+
+Just before sun\et Monday afternoon a flock of girls were gathered at
+the stile in front, watching with intensity a solitary little figure
+moving slowly on a far side of the pasture, near the barbed wire fence.
+
+"Again there walks Cordelia Running Bird very far away," said Hannah
+Straight Tree.  "She has walked alone two afternoons.  She must be
+thinking very hard."
+
+"She is going on the mourner's walk," observed the girl who kept the
+playroom.  "When an Indian walks alone, so far and very slow, that means
+they are too sad. She cannot be happy, for the large girls--only me--and
+the middle-sized girls do not talk to her.  Then, too, of course, she
+thinks of Annie.  It was just one year ago this Monday that they took
+her to the agency.  The large girls did not wash, because there was a
+funeral."
+
+"And Cordelia Running Bird was so proud because the girls all cried,"
+said Hannah.  "Now I wish we had not cried."
+
+"Kee!  You must not be so mean as that," exclaimed the largest girl, in
+shocked surprise.  "Of course we cried for Annie.  She was very kind to
+everyone--not cross like us."
+
+"She was a very little cross, sometimes, because she was an Indian.  She
+tried much harder than Cordelia Running Bird."
+
+"I am glad I sang 'The Sweet By and By' when she was so afraid," said
+Emma Two Bears.
+
+The girls were silent for a little, stirred by memories of the
+schoolmate who had passed into the life beyond.
+
+Meantime the solitary girl in the snowy pasture continued her walk.
+
+"I can wish I had not told Cordelia Running Bird that I would not sleep
+with anyone but her," said Hannah. "I am glad she is not in the middle
+dormitory now."
+
+"They put her in our dormitory so that she can go and tell the teachers
+if a little girl is sick, or cries," remarked the prudent little girl,
+who had arrived upon the scene with several other children.  "The
+teachers say she wakes up easy, and is braver in the dark than any other
+girl."
+
+"Ee!  Cordelia Running Bird is a dress pattern for the other girls--I
+mean a pattern!" Hannah cried.  "Cordelia is the bravest, and she has a
+white memory, so she has the longest piece.  Cordelia is polite.  She
+keeps her clothes so clean and does not tear them, so the missionary
+ladies send her prettier things, for the teachers write she is so nice.
+The visitors always talk about Cordelia Running Bird very lots.  They do
+not think the girls are listening, but they are."
+
+"They should not listen.  That is stealing talk, the white mother says,"
+replied the prudent little girl.  "We like Cordelia Running Bird, for
+she does not scold us little girls and tell us we are in the way, as you
+do," was the bold defense.  "We shall choose Susie in the games."
+
+"If the little girls choose Susie, the large and middle-sized girls can
+pull their hairs when they are combing them," was the appalling threat
+from Hannah Straight Tree.  "If they tell the teachers we can say their
+hairs were snarly and we could not help it."
+
+"Ee!  We shall not pull the little girls' hairs and tell a lie," said
+Emma Two Bears, rallying her honest principles.  "We can treat Cordelia
+Running Bird cross because she called us shovel-feeted, and is very
+vain, so we should punish her, but we will not be wicked."
+
+"I did not say we shall--I said we can," retracted Hannah, in confusion.
+
+"The girls were very mean to walk whole-feet where she was scrubbing,"
+said the playroom girl, who knew from sad experience what Cordelia's
+trials must have been.  "It makes me very cross because the little girls
+will not stay out or, sit still on the benches when I scrub the
+playroom, and they do not make big tracks, if they do walk whole-feet."
+
+"You can speak to her, because she could not call you shovel-feeted, for
+the white mother lets you always wear the mission shoes," said Hannah
+Straight Tree, growing bold again.
+
+"Because I have an onion--no, a bunion--on my foot. The issue shoes
+would make it worse.  Just like there is no girl in school that does not
+hate to have the horrid whole-feet tracks on her wet floor."
+
+"I hate them--some," confessed a middle dormitory girl.
+
+"I, too," admitted a south dormitory girl.  "I threw a few drops of
+scrub water on a girl that walked whole-feet."
+
+"I told a girl her tracks were so big, just like she had on snowshoes,"
+said a north dormitory girl, relentingly.
+
+"Of course, I made the very biggest kind of tracks on Cordelia Running
+Bird's wet floor," said the largest girl; "but if we walk tiptoe all the
+other girls will laugh and say, 'See how she nips along.  She tries to
+walk so nice, just like the teachers.'  And if we are walking on our
+heels they say, 'Very awkward; hear her tramp just like a steer.'  But
+it is not kind to walk whole-feet."
+
+The race mood was upon the wane, and Hannah Straight Tree was fast
+losing influence.
+
+"I would not have cared so much about the blue dress and the black shoes
+and stockings, but she bought the red dress and the brown shoes and
+stockings, when her little sister does not need them," Hannah argued in
+an injured tone.
+
+"She did not buy them with your money," said the playroom girl.  "You
+would not have taken care of a cross baby four weeks, and missed a plum
+picnic, and not played a leap, to earn pretty things for Dolly.  You are
+much too lazy."
+
+"Now I shall not stay another minute!" springing from the stile in deep
+chagrin.  "You all can like Cordelia Running Bird if you want to, but I
+shall not like her."
+
+Hannah Straight Tree ran into the house, and those remaining turned
+again to watch Cordelia.  She had reached a sloping bluff, down which
+the fence extended to the flats beside the river.  She stood a moment on
+the edge, then wrapped her clothes about her and sat down on the crust.
+Presently she disappeared.
+
+"She has slid down hill," observed the playroom girl. "She must be going
+to the river."
+
+"She should not.  It will soon be dark, and she is all alone," said Emma
+Two Bears, in a tone betraying some anxiety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Cordelia Running Bid held her clothes about her with one hand, steering
+with her feet, and reached the flats in safety.  She arose and stood
+still and looked toward the river to a space of open water on the near
+side of a sandbar, half way over.
+
+She took a few steps forward rather slowly, then her pace quickened more
+and more, till she was running breathlessly, as if in fear of losing her
+resolve to carry out some plan she was intent upon.
+
+In rushing through a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and
+almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her
+hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat
+and dropped it on the ground.  She picked it up and hung it by the
+draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong
+course there came a corresponding halt of purpose. So she turned aside
+and walked a few yards down the hollow, where she found a log on which
+to seat herself.
+
+Presently she murmured in the passive monotone of a despairing Indian
+girl: "Just like I have to stop and think before I do it.  If I drown
+the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings and the red dress and
+the brown shoes and stockings, I can write to Hannah Straight Tree, for
+she will not let me speak to her: 'Now you see I truly am not vain, for
+I have put the Christmas clothes for Susie in my workbag, and a stone,
+so it would sink, and I have drowned them in the airhole in the middle
+of the river.'
+
+"But again that would be bragging," was her puzzled afterthought.  "Just
+like Jesus is not helping me one bit, for very fast I went and bought
+the brown shoes and stockings after I had prayed to stop being vain.
+And the teachers looked so sorry, and I was ashamed to tell the white
+mother.  Everything I say and do is vain and bragging, and I cannot
+think hard enough to help it.  My tongue bragged about Dolly and
+Lucinda's hair ribbons to the little girls, and my feet bragged about
+the issue shoes, I stuck them out so far.  And when the girls made fun
+of me I did not pull the shoes back, for I wanted them to think I was
+not scared, but sorry.  I was truly trying to try hard, but I was trying
+the wrong way. Now my pencil will be bragging if it tells Hannah
+Straight Tree I have drowned the things."
+
+Cordelia sat in troubled thought while the pink and golden colors of the
+sunset faded from the sky above the bluffs and the wind sighed through
+the hollow.
+
+"The white mother says it is not right to even waste a pin, and many
+nice things that have cost much money would be wasted if I drowned them.
+I shall look at them and think again what I can do."
+
+She drew the contents from the bag and spread them on her lap.  First
+she gave attention to the little blue dress she had helped to make at
+the expense of many play hours.
+
+[Illustration:  She drew the contents from her bag and spread them on
+her lap.]
+
+"Emma Two Bears made the waist so nice and said she would not take one
+thing for pay, but I made her take a shell necklace that was very
+pretty; but I did not care for it myself, it was so Indian-minded.  Emma
+is so generous.  I wish I could be generous.  If I should give the blue
+dress to Dolly, and the black shoes and stockings, just like I should be
+some generous.  What if I should truly do it?" with a sudden interest in
+her tone.  "She would look as pretty as the little schoolgirls then, and
+she could motion Jack Frost, and Hannah and the others could not say
+Susie did not need the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings.  I
+am 'most sure Jessie Turning Heart will help me make the red dress, if I
+bring the playroom wood for her, till we change work next month.  She
+hates to bring wood, for her foot gets cold, and then the sore bunch
+pinches her much worse.  She is very fast and stylish making dresses,
+and she feather-stitches; and she says she is not cross at me.  She said
+one time she liked to sew so much, just like she would be getting up and
+sewing in her sleep.  So I shall ask her to trade work.
+
+"But Hannah Straight Tree says she hates light blue, for it makes a
+copper-colored Indian look much blacker; and she hates one tuck, and
+there would have to be one, for the blue dress is too long for Dolly.
+And it smuts some, too, and is not soft and fine.  Hannah would not want
+it.  She would say Susie looked much nicer in the red dress, and Dolly
+should not motion Jack Frost in the blue one."
+
+Cordelia put the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings back into
+the bag, and spread the red cashmere across her lap and smoothed it
+lovingly.
+
+"It feels so soft I like to rub it.  Just the color of the one rose on
+the white mother's window bush." She held it up, luxuriating in its warm
+red glow.  "Ver-ry sw-e-et and pretty--and the brown shoes and
+stockings, too. I shall put them on the clean snow and look at them."
+
+She spread the things on the hard white crust and viewed them with
+increasing admiration.  Suddenly she caught them up and hid them in her
+apron, for the sight of them was far too tempting; then she locked her
+hands together in her lap and sat so still a wood-mouse dared to leave
+his hole beneath the log and frisk about her feet.
+
+"The baby was so cross I could not play one bit the whole four weeks,"
+she said at length, in supplicating tones.  "Just like I earned the
+dress so hard.  I thought I did not care much for the Indian doll, but
+my grandmother cannot make another, for she now has par-a-lay-sis in her
+hands--the doctor says it is.  And I sold the Indian doll to get the
+brown shoes and stockings.  Dolly has a round face, and her eyes are
+pretty.  Susie has a thin face, and she is a very little cross-eyed, so
+she needs a prettier dress to look as nice as Dolly.
+
+"But Lucinda cannot come to school if Dolly cannot, and she feels so
+sad.  If Dolly's father saw her looking very pretty in a red dress and a
+brown shoes and stockings, just like he would feel so happier he would
+let her come to school.  Then Lucinda would be glad, and she would learn
+the neat way, and they would grow Dolly more white-minded.  The verse I
+read yesterday was a King's Daughters' verse.  Helen marked it--Annie,
+too.
+
+"What if Annie should be looking down from up there,"--pointing to a
+newly glimmering star--"and speaking just like this: 'Dear Cordelia,
+these words I tell you--" It is more blessed to give than to receive."
+I would give the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings to the
+little girl named Dolly Straight Tree.'"
+
+Cordelia looked another minute at the star.
+
+"Of course Annie cannot speak those words up there, but she would like
+to have me do it, and my father and my mother would not care, for I
+should tell them just like Annie thought I ought to; and they always let
+me do a thing I want to, anyhow.
+
+"If an Indian likes another Indian very much he will give him a big
+present.  My father told an Indian man one time, 'I am your friend, so I
+shall give you a pony.' And he did.  And the Indian man told my father,
+'I am your friend, so I shall give you a steer.'  And a white man
+laughed and said it was a good trade.  But the Indians did not laugh.
+They said my father and the other Indian were very generous.
+
+"Now I have found the right way, and it makes me very happier, and I
+shall not change my thoughts." in firm relief.  "I shall do this kind:
+Till Dolly and Lucinda come I shall not say one word to any girl, or
+even tell the white mother.  Then Susie's best things I shall give to
+Hannah Straight Tree in a way that will surprise her. Tokee! there rings
+the half-hour bell till supper, and I am down here, and it is
+moonlight."
+
+Cordelia hastily replaced the best things in the bag and scampered home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird carried out her plan of asking Jessie Turning
+Heart, the playroom girl, to help her make the red dress, and the latter
+willingly agreed to "trade work," and escape bringing in the wood to the
+torture of her lame foot.
+
+Cordelia found that she had undertaken no light task, for there were
+violent snowstorms in the next two weeks, and an enormous quantity of
+wood was swallowed by the great stove in the playroom, which must needs
+be kept red-hot from long before dawn until bedtime, to dispel the
+freezing atmosphere within.
+
+Owing to the influence of the playroom girl, the large and middle-sized
+girls in general ceased to be intensely hostile to Cordelia, but they
+did not break the seal of silence, so she could not ask help from among
+them. The small girls showed their friendship for Cordelia now and then
+by marching in a line behind her from the wood-yard laden with what fuel
+they could bring, or even going down the path the older girls had broken
+to the flats for willow fagots, which they tied upon their backs and
+brought to her for kindling.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree tried Cordelia's resolution to do good to her by
+stealthy persecutions that escaped the notice of the teachers, who
+remarked to one another in relief that Hannah and the other girls
+appeared in better humor toward Cordelia, and the fatter had regained
+her cheerful spirits.
+
+Hannah took her station in the little outside hall one blustering
+afternoon, watching through the side window till Cordelia climbed the
+porch steps loaded to her chin with wood; then Hannah braced her back
+against the outside door.  Cordelia spared one hand with difficulty,
+tugging at the door with wind-tossed garments, all in vain.  She dropped
+her wood to use both hands.  The door would sometimes stick when lightly
+closed, and thinking this to be the case, she threw her weight against
+it in a forcible attempt to burst it open.  Hannah jumped away and
+darted through the inside door in silent glee.
+
+Cordelia fell full length into the hall and struck her head against the
+inner threshold. She lay in a dazed condition for a little, then aroused
+herself, to catch a glimpse of Hannah peering through the window of the
+inside door. She vanished instantly, but the expression of her face had
+told Cordelia where the mischief lay.
+
+"She will not let me like her," thought Cordelia, struggling to her feet
+with aching head, and blinking back the tears. "Just like I shall have
+to hate her just a little while I do her good."
+
+She turned, and saw to her surprise that Emma Two Bears, who had come
+behind her to the porch, was gathering up her wood. Emma often helped to
+fill the wood-box in the music room, as an especial friend of hers
+attended to that work, and Cordelia feared her wood was being boldly
+captured for that purpose.  She was about to cry out sharply, but
+restrained herself and fell back silently, while Emma passed into the
+house.  Cordelia followed her, and saw with sinking heart that Emma took
+a straight track through the playroom for the music room; but on the
+threshold of the room she whirled about, and, walking to the playroom
+wood-box, dropped the wood in.
+
+"Thank you very much!" exclaimed Cordelia, in sign language on her
+fingers.  Etiquette forbade her to employ her tongue in the expression
+of her gratitude, seeing that the girls had placed a ban on it.  A
+curious contortion of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet was used among the
+Indian girls when pride forbade the use of speech.
+
+"You need not thank me.  I am only punishing Hannah Straight Tree," Emma
+answered, likewise with her fingers.
+
+This exchange of compliments was read without scruple by the many pairs
+of eyes, including Hannah's, that were watching the affair.
+
+"Emma Two Bears talks deaf-and-dumb to her.  Now we can plan
+crack-the-whip with her, for that is not a speaking game," observed a
+middle-sized girl, who had been a comrade of Cordelia's heretofore.
+
+"She will not have time to crack the whip," said Hannah.  "She is going
+to the south dormitory, where she sits her whole playtime helping sew
+the red dress for Susie, so she can look nicer than the other little
+home sisters and the little schoolgirls."
+
+"You are very jealous-minded, and you try hard to spite Cordelia Running
+Bird," said the recent comrade.
+
+"You can talk that way because you have no little sister," grumbled
+Hannah.
+
+Cordelia passed upstairs with quick steps.
+
+"Just like the large and middle-sized girls--only Hannah Straight Tree--
+will again be speaking to me pretty soon," she said to Jessie Turning
+Heart, who sat beside a sunny window in the south dormitory sewing
+briskly on the little red waist.
+
+"They cannot speak to you till Christmas day, because they all said they
+would not," Jessie answered.  "Then if you ap-ol-ogize and say you do
+not wish them to be cripples any more, and that you will stop talking
+vain, they will again speak to you, and they will walk heel or tiptoe on
+your floor."
+
+"I shall write an ap-ol-ogy in Dakota on three papers Christmas morning,
+and pin them on a side of the three dormitories, but you must not tell,
+because I do not wish to brag what I shall do," Cordelia said, in
+strictest confidence.
+
+"I think it would be better if you had but one shoes and stockings and
+best dress for Susie.  But you cannot help it now," the playroom girl
+replied.  "Two best dresses and two shoes and stockings look too many,
+when the other little home sisters have not one best thing."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird was quite strongly tempted to confide still
+further in the friendly playroom girl, who had sustained her through the
+trying tempest of events, but she resisted and began to hem the little
+skirt in silence.
+
+"Ee! how short you have it!" Jessie noticed suddenly. "You must think
+Susie is to grow the other way before she wears it."
+
+Cordelia's only answer was a noncommittal smile which Jessie failed to
+understand.  This thought, however, suddenly impressed Cordelia:
+
+"Now it is too short for Susie, and the hem is not one bit too wide, so
+I could not let it down.  What if Hannah Straight Tree is so cross she
+will not let Dolly wear it? And there is no other little home sister
+just the size of Dolly that could wear it, and is coming Christmas. Just
+like Hannah will not take it and will keep on hating me forever and
+ever, so I cannot do her good."
+
+Whether this foreboding was fulfilled, or otherwise, will be explained
+in Hannah's letter to the King's Daughter in the Far East, who had sent
+the little Bible and the loving message to the King's Daughter in the
+Far West:
+
+  "_Dear Helen Merriam_: Now I shall write you a letter,
+    for Cordelia Running Bird cannot, for she says it,
+  would be bragging.  It is all about Christmas, and our
+  big and little sisters.  Cordelia's big sister is now in
+  heaven, and Cordelia wrote good-by to you from Annie.
+  My big sister is now in the First Reader, but she cannot
+  help it, for my mother died, and so Lucinda had to stay
+  at home and keep Dolly, and that is my little sister.
+
+  "And it was about Susie--that is Cordelia's little sister--
+  that I got so mean and jealous, for she had a nice
+  Christmas things--two kinds--and Dolly would not have
+  one kind, and she would look so horrid.  So I called
+  Cordelia Running Bird proud, vain, cross, mean.  And
+  I talked about her so the girls got cross at her.  And
+  I made her push a pail of scrub water downstairs, so she
+  talked Dakota and had to lie in bed and could not
+  feather-stitch the blue dress, for it smutted so the silk
+  would be too dirty.  But she feather-stitched the red dress,
+  and she sold her Indian doll, and it was her grandmother's
+  when she was Cordelia's age, so she bought the brown shoes
+  and stockings.
+
+  "And Cordelia read the King's Daughters' verses,
+  'Love your enemies,' and 'It is more blessed to give than
+  to receive,' so she put the red dress and the brown shoes
+  and stockings and two hair ribbons in a box, and Jessie
+  Turning Heart tied a blue scarf round my eyes so tight
+  I could not see, and led me to the chicken house.  And
+  I put my hand on the box, and Jessie pulled off the scarf,
+  and I uncovered the box and found the things.  And
+  Cordelia Running Bird had pinned a piece of paper on the
+  red dress, and these words were written on it: 'Dear
+  Hannah Straight Tree, I am your friend, so I shall give
+  you these best Christmas things for Dolly.  And will
+  you please take the hair ribbons, for they are not very
+  cotton silk?'
+
+  "And I was very 'shamed, and said I would not take
+  them, I had been so mean.  But Cordelia Running Bird
+  said I must, for she had made the red dress too short for
+  Susie, so if I did not it would be wasted. So I told her
+  I would take it if she would excuse my meanness, but I
+  should not take the brown shoes and stockings--only just
+  the black ones.  But she begged so hard just like I had to.
+  And Cordelia and I scrubbed Dolly very hard in a tub,
+  for Lucinda has not learned the neat way, and she did
+  not cry, only laughed.  And the white mother found some
+  very little underclothes for her, and we curled her hair
+  with a slate pencil, and she wore the best things and
+  looked so pretty.  And the brown shoes were a little bit
+  too large, but they did not show.
+
+  "And Dolly motioned Jack Frost very cunning, and
+  they looked at Dolly more than Susie, but Cordelia
+  Running Bird did not care.  And my father was so happier
+  he laughed and laughed when Dolly nipped her nose and
+  pinched her toes just right, and when the song stopped he
+  slapped his knees and cried very loud, he was so glad
+  about Dolly.
+
+  "And after the Christmas tree my father told the
+  teachers (and Emma Two Bears was interpreter): 'Your
+  school is a good place, for it makes the Indian children
+  very smart, and you treat the Indian visitors very kind,
+  so I shall let Dolly stay, and then Lucinda will stay, too.'
+  Very fast Lucinda stopped being sad, for she thought
+  before my father would not let Dolly stay till she was ten
+  birthdays, and Lucinda loves her so she would not stay
+  without her.
+
+  "And the doll they hung me on the Christmas tree was
+  bigger than Cordelia Running Bird's, and its hairs and
+  clothes were prettier, so I told Cordelia, 'I am your
+  friend, and I shall give you my doll.'  And she did not
+  want to take it, but I made her.  So she said, 'I am your
+  friend, and I shall give you my doll, but it is not so nice
+  as yours.'
+
+  "And Cordelia Running Bird and I now walk together
+  all the time, and again I shall never be mean to her.  And
+  they did not choose Susie quite so much as Dolly in the
+    games, but Cordelia says that makes her glad. And it
+  was because she read the King's Daughters' verses.
+
+  "Now I shall put an end to this too long letter. Many
+  days have I been writing it, and the girls, said just like
+  I was writing a book. And Cordelia sends her love.
+
+     "From your unknown American Indian friend,
+          "HANNAH STRAIGHT THEE."
+
+  "P. S.--Cordelia Running Bird nearly drowned both
+  kinds of Christmas clothes, and then she thought to give
+  the best kind to Dolly.  And Susie did not care because
+  she had to wear the blue dress, and it smutted so her
+  hands and face got dirty, and the black shoes and stockings.
+  She was just as happier.  And the teacher saved Cordelia's
+  Indian doll and gave it back to her, because she knew
+  she loved it very hard.  And Cordelia was so glad
+  she hugged it very tight.
+
+  "Again P. S.--Cordelia wrote, 'Peace on earth, good-will
+  toward men.  I do not wish the dormitory girls were
+  cripples, and I will stop talking vain and will always
+  wear the issue shoes every day.  And will they please
+  excuse me?'  And they did.  And now they walk heel or
+  tiptoe on Cordelia's wet floor.  Lucinda will now learn
+  the neat way, and they will grow Dolly more white-minded,
+  for she came to school so short.  And again I say it was
+  the King's Daughters' verses.  And I do not like to think
+  hard, but I shall try to learn them, too.  And we did
+  not shut our eyes at Susie when she motioned Jack Frost,
+  as we meant to just for spite.  And the girls all said
+  Cordelia was so generous, she said she nearly got vain
+  again.  So I shall stop this time."
+
+[Illustration:  Helen read the letter to her King's Daughters circle.]
+
+Helen read the letter to her King's Daughters Circle, and a young
+member, thinking of the little Sioux maiden at the far Northwestern
+Mission who had tried to overcome her faults and love her enemies,
+repeated softly:
+
+  "'For thou hast a little strength, and thou hast kept
+  my word and hast not denied my name.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Big and Little Sisters, by Theodora R. Jenness
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10902 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10902 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10902)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Big and Little Sisters, by Theodora R. Jenness
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Big and Little Sisters
+
+Author: Theodora R. Jenness
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10902]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG AND LITTLE SISTERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Prepared by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+BIG AND LITTLE SISTERS
+
+A Story of an Indian Mission School
+
+By THEODORA R. JENNESS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It was a Saturday morning in December at the Indian Mission School.
+Two young Sioux girls were going up the stairs--Hannah Straight Tree and
+Cordelia Running Bird.  It was their Saturday for cleaning. The two
+girls drew a heavy breath in prospect of the difficult task that
+confronted them.  The great unplastered mission building was a chilly
+place throughout the winter, and the halls and stairway that morning
+were drafty from the blustering wind that swept the Dakota plains and
+came through the outer doors below, where restless children kept going
+to and fro continually.  The young hall-girls shivered on the upper
+landing, and stepped back in a sheltered niche in which the brooms were
+hanging.  They had thrown their aprons over their heads and shoulders,
+and were dreading to begin their work.
+
+"My floor and stairs always look nicer than your floor and stairs," said
+Hannah Straight Tree to Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Because you have the teachers' side, and that's always nicer, to begin
+with, than the girls' side," answered Cordelia Running Bird.  "You know
+the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing.  If they have
+to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do
+not make big tracks.  But all the children on my side walk whole-feet
+over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and
+muddy.  Ugh! big tracks they make!  But I have learned the motto, every
+word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work."
+Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls
+flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar
+monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:
+
+"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places,
+the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be
+said, 'Well done.'"
+
+"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "I do not like to think hard or work hard.  I am
+glad I have the teachers' side."
+
+"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place,
+like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of
+wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school.
+The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live.  I like to
+think hard," said Cordelia Running Bird.  "I heard the teacher tell the
+white mother that I had the best memory of any middle-sized girl, and
+she said it was as good as many white girls' memories of my age, and
+that is 'most fourteen.  So I am to speak the longest middle-sized piece
+in the Christmas entertainment."
+
+"Ee!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white
+memory!  If the teacher praised me, I should be ashamed to tell it!"
+
+"She will not praise you, for you are always very dumb in school.  You
+will not try to speak a lesson only with the class in concert," said
+Cordelia Running Bird.  "I shall try to finish very fast this morning.
+There are only two more Saturdays till Christmas, and to-day I want to
+feather-stitch the little new blue dress for Susie.  She will wear it
+every day when she is here Christmas.  Many white and Indian visitors
+will be here."
+
+"And you will feel so proud because the visitors and the school will
+look at Susie, and the middle-sized and little girls will always choose
+her in the games.  They would not choose my little sister if she
+played," said Hannah Straight Tree, with a sudden downcast look.
+
+"Dolly is so shy I do not know if she would go into the middle of the
+ring if they should choose her, and she would not know the way to choose
+back," answered Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Ee!  She would!  She would!" disputed Hannah Straight Tree.  "Dolly is
+as brave and smart as Susie--smarter, too, for she is shorter!  She
+could play the games if I would let her!"
+
+"But you will not," replied the other; "you must not scold about my
+little sister.  Susie knows the motions in the Jack Frost song so well
+the teachers says that she can motion with the children in the Christmas
+entertainment."
+
+"She does not motion right," said Hannah Straight Tree.  "She gets
+behind, and when they sing:
+
+  "'He nips little children on the nose,
+    He pinches little children on the toes,
+    He pulls little children by the ears,
+    And brings to their eyes the big, round tears,'
+
+she is only nipping her nose when the rest are pulling their ears."
+
+"But she is so little she looks cute, and the visitors and school will
+laugh at her and praise her," said Cordelia Running Bird, undismayed.
+"She will not wear the blue dress in the Jack Frost song.  She will wear
+a red dress from my mission box.  I asked the white mother if I could
+not buy the red cloth for an entertainment dress for Susie with the
+money that she paid because I tended baby one month till the nurse-girl
+came.  And she said if I wished I could put a nickel on the missionary
+plate twenty Sundays, which would be one dollar, and so buy the cloth.
+She said it would be teaching me to give, as well as to receive.  She
+keeps the nickel with the school pennies, and I take one every Sunday."
+
+"And you lift your hand so high and drop the nickel very too loud, so
+all the school can hear, when Amy Swimmer passes you the plate!" cried
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "Just like it says, 'Ee! I am putting on a
+nickel, and the rest can only give one penny!  And _I_ earned my money,
+and the pennies are money that their people sent them.'"
+
+"You are very jealous," was the calm reply.  "I shall hire a large girl
+to cut it fine and help make the red dress very fast.  The sewing
+teacher has not time for such dresses.  Ver-r-y pr-r-etty it will look!"
+Cordelia Running Bird smiled prospectively, displaying small white teeth
+and two round dimples.  "Christmas evening I shall curl Susie's hair
+with a slate pencil, and she will wear fine shoes, and black stockings
+with the red dress.  My father brought them with the blue dress, and I
+keep them in my cupboard."
+
+"You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns
+money, so he buys nice things for Susie," Hannah Straight Tree said,
+with growing envy. "Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not
+look pretty Christmas time!  Her dress will be a kind that looks black,
+and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress.  She
+will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored
+stockings. If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not
+mend it nice--only draw it up so puckery.  Very lots of grease spots
+will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her
+very fast."
+
+"My little sister is not torn and dirty any time," said Cordelia Running
+Bird, "for my mother came to mission school when she was young and
+learned the neat way."
+
+"My big sister only went to camp school just a little while," said
+Hannah Straight Tree.  "When my mother died she had to stay at home and
+work and keep my little sister.  Now again my father has got married,
+and Lucinda wants to come to school and bring my little sister.  Dolly
+was five birthdays last Thanksgiving dinner."
+
+"Susie was five birthdays while I was at home vacation. I would be so
+glad if she could stay at school next time she comes, but she was
+sliding on the ice, and she fell and broke herself right here."
+Cordelia touched her collarbone.  "She is mended, but my mother is
+afraid to leave her with the children now," she added.  "But next year
+she will leave her.  If your big and little sister come to school they
+will have nice mission things."
+
+"But they cannot for my father," Hannah Straight Tree said, with
+deepening gloom.  "He would let Lucinda, but he says Dolly is too short;
+she must be ten birthdays when she comes.  Lucinda loves Dolly, so she
+will not leave her, and my stepmother is cross-tempered.  Lucinda will
+be twenty-one birthdays--much too old to come to school--when Dolly is
+ten birthdays."
+
+"You can tell your father the teachers like the Indian children come to
+school when they are very short, so they can grow them more
+white-minded," said Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"I told him, but he says he does not want his children very
+white-minded.  He says I came to school so short that they have grown me
+too white-minded.  I tell him I am very Indian-minded, but he tells me I
+do not know white from Indian.  Lucinda is so sad she will not try. She
+looks so horrid--Dolly, too--I am much ashamed of them.  I shall not
+speak to them before the white visitors and the teachers--only down at
+camp."
+
+"Then you will be very wrong," said Cordelia Running Bird.  "I would not
+be ashamed to speak to my own people anywhere."
+
+"Ee!  You talk so good because your father wears a grand policeman's
+coat and trousers, and your mother's head is in a hood!" said Hannah
+Straight Tree, excitedly. "My father wears a very funny Indian clothes,
+and feathers in his hairs, and my big sister's head is in a shawl.  All
+the girls will say on Christmas, 'Susie looked just like a fairy in the
+Jack Frost song.  We shall give her very lots of candy from our
+Christmas bags.'  Dolly knows the Jack Frost motions; I taught her, and
+she did them with the children down at camp.  But I shall not tell the
+teacher, for Dolly has no pretty things to wear.  That is why I won't
+let her play the games.  If my father saw her in the Jack Frost songs
+and games, he would be glad she is so smart and just like he would let
+her come to school.  But you would be so sorry if my big and little
+sister came to school.  You think Susie is a skin-white girl and Dolly
+is a very copper-colored Indian."
+
+"You do not speak true," was the denial.  "I should not be sorry, and I
+do not think Susie is a skin-white girl. She is very copper-colored,
+too."
+
+"But you do not wish Dolly would be in the Jack Frost song and wear a
+red dress just like Susie's!" challenged Hannah Straight Tree,
+disconcerting her companion with the piercing gaze habitual to her race.
+
+Though not quite innocent of all the charges laid to her, Cordelia
+Running Bird was a truthful girl, and she would not disown a failing
+plainly set before her by another.  She evaded her companion's gaze in
+silence.
+
+"You are thinking hard!  You cannot say it!" was the fierce indictment
+from Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"But--I wish she could be in another motion song--and wear a--green
+dress," came the hesitating answer.
+
+"Ee!  You think they would not watch Susie all the time if Dolly
+motioned Jack Frost, too, and looked like Susie!  And you do not wish
+that Dolly had a blue dress--only ugly green--and looked like Susie in
+the games," said Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"But little white girls do not need to wear alike dresses," was Cordelia
+Running Bird's argument. "Because the little white visitor last summer
+looked just like a fairy in the pretty pink with white lace, did her
+sister have to wish another little white girl looked the very too same?"
+she asked.
+
+"There is a difference, but I cannot tell," answered Hannah Straight
+Tree, taking down her broom in puzzled moodiness.
+
+The two girls went about their work in a most unfortunate state of mind.
+Hannah's discontent at Dolly's lack and Susie's plenty, and the prospect
+of Cordelia's triumphs through the petted little sister, grew upon her,
+and resulted in unlooked-for trials to Cordelia, who was much
+discomfited by the force of her companion's criticisms.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird was a bright, attractive girl, quite conscientious
+in discharging her industrial and school duties, and much interested in
+the Sunday-school; but in a private talk the very day before, the
+teachers had referred to her in some perplexity.
+
+"I wish Cordelia Running Bird were a little different," said the
+school-teacher.  "She leads her class, and is a credit to the school in
+most respects, but she is rather too ambitious to outdo others.  It
+creates jealousy."
+
+"I have observed that she is notional in the making of her dresses,"
+said the sewing teacher.  "She is apt to want the skirt a little wider
+and the hem a half-inch deeper than the regular uniform.  And she asks
+to have more buttonholes, which means more buttons, and an extra ruffle
+on the waist.  But she begs me so politely and appears so thankful, if I
+grant these trifling favors, that I find myself indulging her too
+frequently.  She does the extra work herself, cheerfully and neatly, if
+not speedily, but closely watched by others.  She has learned as if by
+intuition that variety is the spice of life, but she seems unconscious
+of the fact that she makes the other girls discontented.  But she is so
+pleasant and obedient, as a rule, that minor faults may be forgiven
+her," the white mother charitably concluded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+As something quite unusual at that season in the Dakotas, there had been
+a thaw the day before, and a great quantity of mud had been tracked in
+on the girls' side by the sewing classes coming from the schoolhouse,
+separate from the main mission building, to the upstairs room in which
+the sewing work was done.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree quickly swept her portion of the hall, for there
+was but little mud on the teachers' side, and was proceeding to her
+stairs before Cordelia Running Bird was half way along her floor.
+
+"You have not taken up your dirt!  You have swept it over on my side!"
+exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, who, with all her close attention to
+her own work, kept a sharp eye on the other's movements.
+
+"There is little, and it will not be much work to take it up with
+yours," was Hannah's reply.  "When we finished yesterday I lent our
+dustpan to the middle dormitory girls--they said theirs was too broken
+--and they lost it.  Now they say they can borrow the south dormitory
+dustpan, and they shall not hunt ours. You can always find things better
+than I can, so you must hunt it and take up my dirt," was Hannah
+Straight Tree's demand.
+
+"Tokee!  How strange you talk!" exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, in
+amazement.  "The dormitory girls must ask for a new dustpan if they
+break theirs.  It is not the rule to lend things, for it makes
+confusion; if you lent the dustpan you must find it and take up your
+dirt, for I have more to do than you.  It is Number 8, and you can tell
+it when you see it."
+
+"You are very cross as well as proud and vain--and you have learned the
+motto, every word.  If I had learned the motto I should try to be good,"
+said Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"The motto does not say a girl can tell us we must do a work that is not
+ours, and we must mind her.  I shall sweep your dirt back," was the warm
+reply.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird gave her broom a sudden push and sent the
+sweepings flying backward in a cloud.
+
+"Now look how mean you are! Again I have to sweep my floor!" cried
+Hannah Straight Tree, angrily.  "Proud--vain--cross--mean!"  She
+counted the four failings on her fingers.
+
+"Not the least bit do I care," replied Cordelia Running Bird, stung
+beyond endurance by Hannah's taunts.  "I was not cross at first, but now
+I am, because you call me four bad names.  I am now glad your little
+sister cannot play the games, or motion in one song, or even have an
+ugly green dress.  I am not sorry that your big and little sister cannot
+come to school, and very much I wish I had not learned the motto."
+
+Here the young Sioux girl, who was compelled to battle with hereditary
+pride and stubbornness in every effort to do right, forgot the white
+mother's admonition that the heart might be a dark place and a cold
+place needing to be cleansed of evil thoughts.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree did not hunt the dustpan, but with perseverance
+worthy of a better cause, she brushed the sweepings from her floor and
+stairs upon a ragged palm-leaf fan which she discovered in a corner,
+and, dropping them into the scrub-pail, took them out of doors. Cordelia
+brought a shoe-box from her cupboard in the playroom and applied it as
+an inconvenient dustpan. Meanwhile dustpan Number 8 remained in the
+darkest corner of the middle dormitory closet, where it had been pushed
+in the rush of clearing up the day before.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird's work of making clean her floor and stairs was
+even harder than she had expected. Never had there seemed so many
+errands to and fro by those who did the weekly cleaning in the three
+dormitories, numbering quite a force.  The thaw had ended in a freezing
+snow squall in the night, but a sufficient quantity of mud was clinging
+to the broad soles of the government shoes that tramped across
+Cordelia's wet floor to insure a startling trail of footprints.
+
+"I cannot keep them up, they come again so fast," she murmured to
+herself in grim despair, while wringing out her mop-rag to attack a line
+of tracks imprinted by the largest girl in school, in going to and from
+the laundry to dispose of laid-off sheets and pillow-cases.  "_Ver-ry
+hor-r-i-d_ pictures of the ugly issue shoes.  I will not wear them.  I
+am wearing kid store shoes my father buys for every day.  The dormitory
+girls are shovel-feeted, and I Wish they could not walk one step--only
+lie in bed!"
+
+She was overheard by Hannah Straight Tree, coming up the girls' stairs
+at that moment.  Hannah's own work had been done with little difficulty,
+and she had obtained permission to help the middle dormitory girls, for
+reasons all her own.
+
+The reckless speech was repeated to the dormitory girls by Hannah
+Straight Tree, much to their displeasure.
+
+"The dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, and she wishes they could not
+walk one step, only lie in bed!" exclaimed the largest girl, sitting
+down on a straw-tick to discuss the matter.  "Then we should be
+cripples, and, tokee! how many cripples there would be!"
+
+"If they came from both the other dormitories into this to lie down with
+the middle dormitory girls, there would be one cripple in each bed, and
+in one there would be two cripples," said a broom girl, who was quite
+expert at figures, having studied on the problem with the aid of
+broom-straws representing cripples.
+
+This portrayal of the startling situation, if Cordelia Running Bird's
+wish could be fulfilled, increased the shock of indignation in the
+dormitories.
+
+"Ee!" cried one, "we hate the ugly government shoes, of course, and wish
+that we could wear the nice shoes from our mission boxes every day.  But
+we cannot, only Sundays--and we have to change them after Sunday-school
+--and when we wear our best clothes for white visitors.  Cordelia Running
+Bird will not wear the government shoes because her father is an agency
+policeman, and can buy store shoes for every day."
+
+"I was always much ashamed of my big feet, and now I am more ashamed,"
+complained the largest girl.  "If the dormitory girls are shovel-feeted,
+every large girl in this school is shovel-feeted."
+
+"Cordelia was very cross about the dustpan, too, but we can pay her
+back," said Hannah Straight Tree, adding fresh fuel to the fire.
+
+"Now I shall not show her how to feather-stitch the little blue dress,"
+said the largest girl, who was quite famous at embroidery, and had
+partly promised to instruct Cordelia Running Bird in her work that day.
+
+"And I shall not help her make the little red dress, as she will be
+wanting me next week," resolved a south dormitory bed girl, Emma Two
+Bears, who was standing in the doorway.  Emma was the most experienced
+dressmaker of the large girls' class and was generous, as a rule, in
+helping younger girls. "I am sorry now that I cut and made the little
+blue waist, but I did not think she would so soon be wishing me a
+cripple."
+
+"And you need not praise the little blue and red dresses if she gets
+them done; but I am sure she cannot," gloried Hannah Straight Tree.
+
+"Ee!  We will not.  We will call them ugly issue goods," said one of the
+girls.
+
+"Or watch her little sister in the Jack Frost song," said another.
+
+"We will shut our eyes!" exclaimed another.
+
+"And the middle-sized and short girls need not choose Susie in the
+games," came from another.
+
+"We will tell them not to.  They will choose Dolly," cried a fifth.
+
+"But Dolly looks so horrid, I am much ashamed of her," was Hannah
+Straight Tree's answer.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird heard the fierce discussion through the open door,
+near which she knelt at work, and the bitter tears ran down her face.
+
+When at length her work was done as well as she was able, and the last
+stair wiped, she went back upstairs on tiptoe to inspect her floor and
+see if it was dry.  She was met by Hannah Straight Tree on the upper
+landing, carrying a pail of scrub water, mixed with ashes, from the
+dormitory. Hannah set it on the top stair, and then glanced wickedly at
+Cordelia through half-closed eyes that meant mischief.
+
+"What if I should tip it over?" she said.
+
+"Ee! You must not.  It would freeze, and I should have to scald my hands
+with too hot water, thawing it!" exclaiming Cordelia Running Bird,
+rushing to prevent her.
+
+In her haste to keep the pail from being overturned Cordelia hit it with
+her foot, upsetting it herself.  The stairs were deluged with the
+contents, Hannah Straight Tree fell back with a laugh.  "Now see what
+you have done yourself!  I did not spill one drop.  You cannot say I
+did."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird burst into upbraiding exclamations in Dakota,
+which, because they wished them to learn to speak English, was a
+forbidden language in the school except on Sundays and on holidays.  By
+an odd mishap of memory, Cordelia was apt to break the rule in moments
+of excitement, and she knew the penalty too well.
+
+"Now you have talked Dakota, and you must report yourself," Hannah
+Straight Tree said triumphantly. "You wished the dormitory girls would
+have to lie in bed--now you must lie in bed yourself.  You cannot
+feather-stitch or speak to anyone."
+
+The unclean water froze upon the stairs, and Cordelia Running Bird's
+work of thawing it with hot water was a long and painful process.  When
+it was accomplished, though but poorly, she went upstairs a second time,
+passing through the front hall to the white mother's room to report that
+she had spoken in Dakota.
+
+"Again, Cordelia?  How can you forget so often?" said the young white
+mother in a seriously inquiring tone.
+
+The little Indian girl's excitement had now given place to
+discouragement.  She was silent for some time, then she murmured an
+original defense.
+
+"The cross thoughts come in Indian, and I speak them out that way.
+Che-cha (hateful) means much more in Indian than in English.  Dakota
+is my own language, and it tells me how to scold just right."
+
+"No, dear, just wrong," was the reply.  Then looking at the draggled
+little figure with head drooped moodily and smarting hands locked
+tightly at the sides, the white mother added, "You have had a cold, hard
+time this morning in the hall, I know.  Have you been cross about your
+work?"  The gentle voice invited confidence, but it did not melt
+Cordelia Running Bird.
+
+"Yes, ma'am.  I was very cross at Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory
+girls.  I called the dormitory girls a name, and then a pail of very
+dirty water was tipped over on my stairs, so again I had to clean them,
+and I screamed at Hannah Straight Tree in Dakota."
+
+"Did Hannah tip it over?"
+
+"No, ma'am, I tipped it over."
+
+With all her sense of injury, Cordelia Running Bird would not tell tales
+to divide the blame.
+
+The white mother saw that there was more than she knew of connected with
+the trouble in the hall, but seeing that the race mood was upon
+Cordelia, she forbore all further questions.
+
+"It has often been explained that if the older pupils spoke Dakota very
+much the little ones would speak it, too, and not learn English as they
+should," she said. "I'm sorry that the cross thoughts caused you to
+forget, Cordelia Running Bird."
+
+"I am very cross now," said Cordelia, fearing her confession might be
+misconstrued as a repentance.  "I have enemies that I am hating very
+hard.  I shall be thinking Indian thoughts about them while I lie in
+bed."
+
+"I hope the cross thoughts will leave you if you lie in bed, where you
+can be alone, and try to drive them out. I will send your dinner to the
+dormitory," said the white mother.
+
+"I cannot eat one bite for many days.  I wish to starve," Cordelia
+Running Bird said, as she turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The girls had finished working in the dormitories and had gone below.
+Cordelia Running Bird was relieved that she would not have to meet them
+and endure such looks as they might give, though not allowed to speak to
+her.
+
+Going to her corner in the south dormitory, she put on her nightgown and
+crept into bed.  She hid her head beneath the blankets to shut out the
+sounds below, in which she was to have no part for several hours.
+
+But though Cordelia Running Bird was in solitude, her sharp ears caught
+the noise of romping children in the playroom, and the frequent dropping
+of the sliding-doors upon the narrow individual cupboards, indicating an
+excessive rummaging of shelves.  Cordelia knew full well the prying
+habits of the Indian children.
+
+"I am glad I have the red dress in my trunk, but they will meddle with
+my other things and look at Susie's blue dress, and then roll it up in
+such bad wrinkles," she said to herself.  "Just like they will drop a
+skein of feather-stitching silk and tramp it with their feet till it is
+very dirty.  Then some girl will pick it up to sew her doll clothes, and
+there will not be enough for Susie's dress."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird held her breath as these thoughts came to her.
+
+"But I do not know if I can feather-stitch it now, for there is no one
+to teach me, that I know of.  Just like Hannah Straight Tree and the
+dormitory girls will tell the whole school to hate me, and they will.
+If I cannot get a large girl to help make the red dress, and I try to do
+it all alone, it will fit so bad, and I cannot get it done in time.
+What if I should tell my mother to have Susie stay at camp, and not once
+come inside the yard Christmas time?  Then she would not need the
+dresses, and they could not call them issue goods, and not choose Susie
+in the games, and shut their eyes at her."
+
+Cordelia lay very still, but the thought of Susie's missing the
+festivities by staying in the big building in the mission pasture, where
+the Indian visitors camped in winter, was put from her in short order.
+
+"Susie shall not stay in camp.  I shall find a way to get the dresses
+done, and she shall motion Jack Frost and see the Christmas tree.  I
+shall tell them I am tired of playing silly games, and Susie shall not
+play, either, so they cannot leave her out.  And I shall tell the school
+they must not watch Susie motion, for they are such horrid Indians they
+would scare her very bad.  When Hannah Straight Tree's big and little
+sister come into the playroom I shall walk close up to them and pull my
+dress away, and look at it so sharp, and say, so Hannah hears me, 'Those
+wild Indians have so many grease spots I am much afraid of catching
+them.'"
+
+While plotting these misdeeds Cordelia Running Bird fell asleep.  A
+young girl from the teachers' table brought her dinner on a tray and set
+it by the bed without awaking her.  She did not wake up until near the
+middle of the afternoon.  She found that the white mother had stolen
+into the dormitory with a small book which she had placed upon the
+pillow.  There was a narrow white ribbon, frayed and yellow, wound
+around the book and tied on one side in a bow.  The rooms below now were
+quiet, for the wind had lulled and the entire school was out of doors.
+
+Looking from the window near her bed, Cordelia saw the broad, white
+plains illumined with brilliant sunshine and the girls exercising on the
+glittering crust of snow occasioned by the thaw.  The little girls were
+sliding down hill on boards and broken shovels, cast-off dripping-pans
+and ash-pans--everything, indeed, that could be seized on for coasting.
+A group of large and middle-sized girls were walking over the mission
+pasture, stretching for a mile on every side.  Another band of girls was
+packed into a long, wide bob-sled on the point of starting with the
+white mother to the little log post office down the river.
+
+"Very lots of fun, and I am being punished here in bed!" Cordelia said
+to herself, mournfully.  "Now the bob-sled starts, and very loud the
+sleigh-bells ring.  The white mother drives, and she must hold the lines
+so tight, for very fast the horses want to go.  We go to the post office
+by the al-pha-bet on Saturday, and this day it is the P's and R's--there
+are no Q's--so it is my turn.  Very fast I meant to feather-stitch, so I
+could spare the time to go. Ee! There is Hannah Straight Tree in my
+place.  She made me talk Dakota and get punished.  Now she gets my
+sleigh-ride!"  And Cordelia Running Bird threw herself back upon the
+pillow, giving vent to wild, resentful tears.
+
+When the tears had spent themselves the Indian girl raised her head and
+saw the little book on the other pillow.
+
+"Tokee!  The white mother put it here.  She always keeps it, and it
+means that I can look at it now."
+
+Cordelia unwound the ribbon, opening the little book.
+
+"Annie's Bible, and I never thought of her to-day! Just like I am
+forgetting her so fast.  Here is Helen's letter.  I shall read that
+first."
+
+[Illustration: She read the little note slowly.]
+
+She took a little white note from a dainty envelope and read it slowly,
+but with understanding that spoke of previous acquaintance with the
+words:
+
+  "_Dear Annie_: Will you let this little Bible be your
+  friend and guide, as I have tried to have it for my friend
+  and guide since I have been a King's Daughter?  I have
+  marked some verses I have learned and have recited in
+  the meeting of our circle, and I wish that you might care
+  to learn them and recite them in your meeting at the
+  school.
+
+  "The King's Daughters in the Far East love to think
+  about the Indian girls away out West, who are also
+  members of our circle.  Isn't it a sweet thought, Annie,
+  that although so widely separated, we are all the children
+  of one family in Christ, and are cared for by the same
+  heavenly Father?
+
+       "Yours with loving interest,
+          "HELEN MERRIAM, Hartford, Conn.
+          "Aged 16."
+
+"It came in Annie's mission box, and Helen was her unknown white
+friend," said Cordelia Running Bird, as she put the letter back into the
+envelope.  "I shall next read Annie's letter."  And she took another
+little missive from the Bible, written with a pencil on the tablet paper
+of the school, in wavering penmanship that showed the weakness of the
+writer's hand.  Cordelia read:
+
+  "_Dear Cordelia_: Annie Running Bird will leave this
+  Bible to Cordelia Running Bird, my sister, for I cannot
+  carry it to heaven, and in heaven I shall not need to read
+  the words that Jesus spoke on earth, for I shall hear him
+  speak up there.  But Cordelia will not just yet be bearing
+  Jesus speak up there, and she will need to read this Bible
+  and must mind just what it tells her.  Dear Cordelia,
+  you can have this Bible for your own when you are
+  fourteen birthdays, so you will be old enough to take
+  good care of it and read it very lots. But if you want
+  to borrow it before it is your own, the white mother will
+  please lend it to you, so you always give it back, and do
+  not lose the letters and the pieces of my hairs that will
+  be in it. I did not learn all of Helen's verses for the
+  King's Daughters' meeting, for I got too sick to study,
+  and my memory feels so queer. I have put a cross behind
+  the ones I learned, and, dear Cordelia, wilt you try to
+  learn them, too, and all the rest that Helen marked?
+  The one I tried to think of most is St. Matthew, chapter 5:44.
+
+  "Good-by, dear sister, for I cannot live much longer,
+  I am so pained with the hard coughing all the time. These
+  words I write so you will not forget me. I wish to see
+  my father and my mother and my little sister very much.
+  But if I cannot, you must give my love to them, and all
+  my other friends, and tell them they must meet me in
+  the better world. And you must, too.
+
+  "So again I say good-by, dear sister,
+            "ANNIE RUNNING BIRD,
+            "Aged 16."
+
+  "P. S.--Write good-by to Helen and my love."
+
+"She lies at the agency.  She sleeps with those that are happy," mused
+Cordelia, looking at the lock of hair with reverent eyes.  "It was very
+cold one year ago this winter, when she had the whooping-cough so hard
+it made her lungs so sick she could not live.
+
+"My mother had the fever very long and hard at home and could not come
+to watch her; my father came, but could not stay long, for my mother was
+so sick.  But the teachers took good care of Annie, and the large girls
+helped them.  I could only sit by her in daytime, for the teachers said
+I was too young to stay up nights.  The dormitory girls were very kind
+to Annie, and they used to sit up nights, when they had worked all day
+and were so tired, to watch her.
+
+"Emma Two Bears has a sweet song, and one night when she was watching
+Annie, and there was a blizzard, and the wind cried very loud, like many
+dogs all round the house, Annie was afraid; so she asked would Emma sing
+'The Sweet By and By,' and Emma sang it louder than the wind, but very
+sweet.  Annie said it made her feel so happy that again she would not be
+afraid.
+
+"And once more when Annie could not eat one bite of anything and was so
+very faint, Hannah Straight Tree thought that she could drink some
+rosebud porridge, so she ran away without permission, and waded through
+the deep snow to the rosebushes up the river, to pick off some buds to
+make the porridge.  She froze her shortest right side toe, and a wild
+steer watched her very fierce, but Hannah Straight Tree did not care,
+for she was all the time thinking Annie was so faint.  And Annie drank a
+little porridge and told Hannah she was very glad indeed. And they did
+not punish Hannah, for the rosebuds were for Annie.
+
+"When the Indian preacher told at Annie's funeral how she was so good
+and learned so many Bible verses for the King's Daughters' meetings,
+there was much crying in the schoolhouse, for the girls all felt so bad.
+And before I got into the wagon with my father, when we carried Annie to
+the agency, Hannah Straight Tree whispered that she did not want to
+sleep with anyone but me, and if they put another girl in bed with her
+she would be sure to turn her back and never say one word to her.
+
+"Now the dormitory girls and Hannah Straight Tree are my enemies.  The
+verse that Annie tried to think of most is all about enemies.  I cannot
+read it just now. I shall read some other verses first."
+
+Many of the verses her sister had marked were familiar to Cordelia, for,
+as Annie had requested, she had been allowed to take the little Bible
+when in thoughtful mood, perhaps when kept within doors on a stormy
+Sunday afternoon.  She had read them often, asking explanation of the
+hard words from the teachers, and had learned a number of the simplest
+ones in preparation for her own admission to the King's Daughters
+Circle, which would be before long, she had hoped.
+
+"Here is one about the tongue, that has the straight marks Helen made,
+and Annie's cross behind it.  This I have not learned to say."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird read aloud slowly: "'_Even so the tongue is a
+little member, and boast-eth great things. Behold how great a matter a
+little fire kind-leth_.'
+
+"That means to brag with the tongue and make folks very cross.  Hannah
+Straight Tree bragged because her floor and stairs are always nicer than
+my floor and stairs," Cordelia said.  "But just like I have bragged
+some, too," she added.  "My tongue has talked so much because my father
+is an agency policeman and my little sister has nice things.  And I
+bragged about my white memory and my store shoes.  But I was only
+talking to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and Hannah Straight Tree
+went and told it."
+
+She turned the leaves and found another text: "'_A soft answer turneth
+away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger_.'  I did not speak soft
+when I told Hannah Straight Tree she was very dumb in school, and I was
+glad Dolly could not motion in a single song, or even have an ugly green
+dress, and I was not sorry that her big and little sister could not come
+to school.  And Dolly and Lucinda have not said mean things to me, so
+why should I be cross at them? But Hannah would not find the dustpan
+and take up her dirt, and that was very mean.  Now here is one that I
+have learned.  I can say it without looking at the book."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird shut her eyes and carefully re-peated: "'_Pride
+goeth before de-struction, and a haught-y spirit before a fall_.'
+Haughty means to feel stuck-up. The pail fell downstairs and made me
+talk Dakota, so I had to come to bed, because I was stuck-up and made
+Hannah Straight Tree cross.  Just like they all would not be hating me
+if I had not been haught-y.  But the dormitory girls were very mean to
+walk whole-feet on my wet floor. If they had walked heel or tiptoe I
+should not have scolded to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and called
+them shovel-feeted, and wished they had to lie in bed. But I did not
+wish them to be cripples--only have a good long rest till I was through
+scrubbing.  But Hannah was mean to go and tell.  I can find no verse
+that will excuse her and the dormitory girls."
+
+Here Cordelia Running Bird fell to pitying herself anew.
+
+"I shall now read Annie's best verse, but it will be very hard to mind
+those words that Jesus spoke."
+
+
+
+
+Cordelia Running Bird wound the ribbon round the little Bible, tying it
+with care, and laid the book close by her on the bed; then she ate her
+dinner with a hearty relish. She had hardly finished when the door from
+the front hall was opened, and the young white mother, rosy from her
+sleigh-ride, looked into the dormitory.  She saw the little Bible lying
+near Cordelia, glanced inquiringly at the dark-faced girl, and then
+smiled and nodded, to receive a cheerful smile in answer.
+
+"Jump up quickly, dear, and dress," she said.  "Some little girls are
+going up the river to the store, and one of the girls is Cordelia
+Running Bird."
+
+Cordelia started out of bed in joyful haste.
+
+"Are you ready to give back the Bible?" asked the white mother, coming
+to the bed.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Cordelia Running Bird, handing her the little
+book.  "Thank you very much.  It made me think of Annie, so I read it,
+and it told me I must love my enemies, so just like I shall do it now."
+
+"I am very glad the cross thoughts have left you," was the answer.  "Now
+put on your plaid dress and be ready in ten minutes."
+
+Cordelia flew to get the plaid dress from the closet, and was ready and
+downstairs in a twinkling.  The little girls selected for the drive were
+in the playroom putting on their hoods and coats in great delight.
+Cordelia hurriedly put on her own, and, opening her cupboard, she
+unlocked a doll trunk, taking out a tiny purse for coins, whose portly
+sides bespoke some wealth within.  She looked an instant at the blue
+dress and the silk for feather-stitching, finding to her great relief
+that they had not been touched.  She locked them in the doll trunk, put
+the little key into the purse, and whisked away.
+
+"The store is much nicer than the post office," was her joyous
+reflection, as she slipped the purse into her pocket on her way
+outdoors.  "Very long have I been saving this last part of all the money
+that I earned tending baby; now I have a chance to spend it with my own
+eyes."
+
+Down the steep hill went the bob-sled to the great Missouri River, where
+it took the straight, smooth road on the snow-laden ice.  The sewing
+teacher drove the horses, giving them free rein.  The school-teacher sat
+beside her on the seat, and Cordelia and the girls were snuggled down in
+hay upon the bottom of the sled, with comforters for lap-robes.
+
+The little log store was but two miles distant, and the party were not
+long in reaching it.  It stood upon a steep bluff on the opposite shore.
+The white man who kept it dealt to some extent in Indian curiosities, of
+which the two teachers were in quest to send as Christmas gifts to
+Eastern friends.
+
+"We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian dolls," said the
+school-teacher to the trader when they had made known their errand.
+
+[Illustration: "We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian
+dolls," said the teacher.]
+
+"I've got some first-class moccasins, both porcupined and beaded, but no
+Indian dolls," replied the trader. "Indian dolls are growing mighty
+scarce, now the young squaws get so much put into their minds to do.
+Only the old-timers understand the trick of making dolls."
+
+"I am disappointed that you have none, for I wished to send one to my
+little niece.  But I must wait and try to get one elsewhere."
+
+While the two teachers were examining the moccasins, Cordelia Running
+Bird and the children were absorbed in looking at the china dolls and
+other articles displayed upon the shelves and hanging from a wire
+stretched above the counter.
+
+"I was telling Hannah Straight Tree I should buy a big doll for Susie,
+and a red silk handkerchief for my father, and a blue silk handkerchief
+for my mother, and should hang them on the Christmas tree," said
+Cordelia, partly to herself and partly to the little girls.
+
+"Kee!  I would not hang them," said a prudent little maid of ten years.
+"Hannah Straight Tree told the other girls, and they are very yelous--
+that is not the word, but I forget it--for they say they cannot hang
+their people anything.  They say you think the name 'Running Bird' is
+very stylish, and you wish to hear it called so often at the Christmas
+tree."
+
+"Of course I shall not hang them," said Cordelia, firmly.  "And I shall
+not buy a doll for Susie, for my father always buys her one.  I was
+going to brag about her having two," she added candidly.  "And I shall
+not buy the silk handkerchiefs.  They have the issue cotton ones and
+some other ones that my father bought;" and she withdrew her eyes from
+the display of cheap and gaudy handkerchiefs of so-called silk material
+suspended from the wire.  "I shall buy a cake pan with a steeple for my
+mother, and a hairbrush for my father, for his hairs stick up so
+straight and stiff.  And I shall give the presents very still at camp,
+so the school will not be jealous."
+
+Having thus subdued her vanity, Cordelia Running Bird shyly bought the
+articles she had selected from the trader's boy, who helped his father
+in the store.  She also bought four hair ribbons and a little bag of
+candy, having left two silver quarters.  She was considering how to
+spend them when her eyes alighted on some little brown shoes and a pair
+of stockings matching them, beneath a small glass show-case.
+
+"Ver-r-y st-y-lish little shoes and stockings!" she exclaimed,
+forgetting in her rapture to be shy before the trader's boy.
+
+The small girls crowded upon tiptoe at the show-case, peering through
+the glass sides to inspect the little wonders.
+
+"Just the color of an Indian," observed a little maid of seven, holding
+up her slim hand to compare it with the red-brown shoes and stockings.
+"But they made them for a little white girl.  They are like the ones the
+little white visitor with the pink dress wore last summer."
+
+"They are just as pretty for a little Indian girl," replied Cordelia.
+"They would be just right for Susie," with a longing eye.
+
+"But Susie does not need them," said the prudent little girl.  "She has
+a black shoes and stockings in your cupboard that are very nice."
+
+"But she could have two pairs.  These would be so pretty with the red
+dress in the Jack Frost song.  She could wear the black ones with the
+blue dress," said Cordelia, seized anew with her besetting sin and
+growing helpless in its grasp.
+
+She asked the number of the shoes, finding it the same that Susie wore.
+Then she asked the price.  She could buy the shoes and stockings for a
+dollar and a half.
+
+"One dollar more than I have got," she said in feverish regret.  She was
+intently silent for a little, then she turned, and, running quickly to
+the school-teacher, drew her to one side, where they could talk unheard.
+
+"The Indian doll my grandmother made for me is very nice and new, for I
+have kept it in my trunk so much. I will give it to you if you please to
+give me one dollar--that is what they gave my grandmother for her dolls
+when she would sell them at the agency," Cordelia said, in eager
+undertone.
+
+"Why, child, you surely cannot wish to sell your Indian doll that has a
+beaded buckskin dress just like the one your grandmother wore when she
+was your age?" said the school-teacher in surprise.  "No, thank you,
+dear. You wish to give me pleasure, but I cannot accept it, for I know
+you love the little Indian grandmother better than you could the
+prettiest white doll in the Christmas box," she added, gratefully.
+
+"It is very Indian-minded, and I do not now care for it," replied the
+girl, with a clouded face.  "I wish to buy the little brown shoes and
+stockings in the glass box," pointing to the show-case.  "I have only
+fifty cents."
+
+"Why, of course, Cordelia, if you really wish to sell it," was the
+response.  "The shoes and stockings are for Susie, I suppose, but are
+not the black ones nice enough?"
+
+Cordelia had displayed the little black shoes and stockings to the
+teachers with a deal of pride.
+
+"But the brown ones are much prettier for the Jack Frost song," she
+argued, pressingly.
+
+"Very well," replied the teacher, opening her purse and handing her the
+dollar, with a sorry look.  "Perhaps, however, we would better see the
+little things before you buy them."
+
+The brown shoes and stockings were examined by the teachers and were
+thought quite satisfactory for the price. Cordelia bought them
+breathlessly and hid them in her coat pocket to insure their safety.
+
+But the home-going in the early moonlight evening was less joyous than
+had been the journey to the store. To the young Sioux girl the
+sleigh-bells seemed to jingle harshly, and the gumbo hills, whose tops
+were bare of snow, seemed frowning blackly from across the river.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird passed some peppermints to the children, which
+awoke a burst of gratitude.
+
+"We little girls shall always choose Susie in the games," said one.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed another, "Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory girls
+have told us not to, but we shall."
+
+"Ee! Talk lower so the teacher will not hear you,"  said Cordelia, with
+a sudden flutter of the breath.  "You must choose Dolly half the time--
+if Susie plays."
+
+"She is too bad-looking," said a third.  "Susie has two pairs of pretty
+shoes, and two nice dresses, and we like her better."
+
+"But you must not talk that way before the larger girls," Cordelia
+cautioned in an undertone.  "Doily has a new hair ribbon like the red
+one I have bought for Susie--both are in my lap.  And I have bought a
+pink one for Lucinda.  I wish to do them good--Hannah Straight Tree,
+too.  You must tell the larger girls you like Dolly just as well as
+Susie.  If they wear alike ribbons on their braids it will be nice."
+
+"A new ribbon cannot dress Dolly up," remarked the prudent little girl.
+"The points of her hairs will look like Susie's points, and that is
+all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Sunday morning there was wonder in the school to see Cordelia Running
+Bird in the heavy government shoes that had been lying in her cupboard
+since the distribution of the clothing early in the fall.  And when it
+was observed that she had dressed for Sunday-school and had not changed
+the shoes the wonder grew to pure amazement.
+
+"Ee!  What ails the vainest girl in South Dakota? She will now be
+wearing issue shoes to Sunday-school!" exclaimed a dormitory girl, among
+a group of large and middle-sized pupils gathered in the music room,
+adjoining the playroom, in Sunday-school attire.
+
+Cordelia sat in a corner with her eyes upon her Sunday-school lesson.
+Her feet were planted side by side as if with studied care.
+
+"Just like she is very scared because the large and middle-sized girls
+do not speak to her since yesterday. She is not sorry, only scared,"
+said Hannah Straight Tree.  "See, she sticks her feet out very far, so
+we will see the shoes and think she is not vain; but we will not believe
+her.  She has found the dustpan, too, because she is so scared of me.
+She bragged so much she made me cross, so I told her she must find it
+and take up my dirt, yesterday.  She minded me this morning."
+
+"She will be more scared before we speak to her," remarked the bread
+girl.  "Ver-r-y ugly issue shoes! She ought to wear a dragging dress to
+hide them."
+
+There was a burst of laughter, while the keen, black eyes of the entire
+group were fixed upon Cordelia Running Bird's feet.  She did not draw
+them back nor lift her eyes, but suddenly her dusky face grew scarlet,
+and there was a nervous trembling of her lips that moved persistently in
+an attempted study of the lesson.  She had heard the words, as the girls
+intended she should. They were speaking in Dakota without fear of being
+understood by the white mother, who was in the playroom passing pennies
+for the missionary plate.
+
+The white mother heard the laugh and stepped into the space between the
+sliding doors, which were ajar. She saw the girls' resentment at a
+glance, and that it was directed at Cordelia Running Bird.  She was
+troubled, but could not combat the feeling that had spread throughout
+the school, to mar the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, which these
+Indian girls were wont to keep in reverent spirit.
+
+"She has bought another pair of shoes for Susie--stockings, too--not
+black ones, like the little schoolgirls have to wear for best, but very
+stylish brown ones," Hannah Straight Tree said.  "She put them in her
+trunk last night.  I crept upstairs and watched her, for the children
+said she had them in her pocket.  The large and middle-sized girls must
+not see them till the entertainment, but the little girls keep saying
+they are like the ones the little white visitor that wore the dress that
+was pink dim-i-ty, had on.  Ver-ry white-minded shoes!  She wants to
+hire me to like her, if she does not wish to have Dolly in the Jack
+Frost song with Susie, so she bought new hair ribbons at the store for
+Dolly and Lucinda.  She told the little girls because she knew they
+would tell me. But Dolly and Lucinda shall not wear them.  Very cotton
+silk, of course."
+
+The ringing of the bell for Sunday-school relieved Cordelia Running Bird
+of the torment she was undergoing. Conversation was suspended, and the
+girls put on their hoods and marched in a procession to the
+school-house, guided by the teachers.
+
+Cordelia had a trying hour in Sunday-school.  The middle-sized girls,
+her companions in the white mother's class, indulged in frequent
+whispering at her expense and kept deep silence when she tried to lead
+the class, as she was wont, in reading reference verses and in concert
+recitation of the memory verses and the Golden Text. Thus it happened
+that she read a reference verse alone, in faltering accents, with the
+eyes of all the class upon her:
+
+"'_Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed
+to give than to receive_.'"
+
+"She gives a nickel every Sunday, so she minds the verse and gets the
+red dress very cheap," Hannah Straight Tree whispered from the seat
+behind.
+
+The white mother heard the whisper, but the words were in Dakota, so she
+failed to understand.  She saw Cordelia Running Bird shrink and color
+and her face grow very grave.  Seeing this the class ceased whispering,
+but the white mother's faithful teachings went unheeded, and she saw the
+lesson was a failure.  In fact, the whole room was in sad disorder from
+the opening to the close of Sunday-school, and all three teachers were
+perplexed and disappointed by the strange behavior of their usually
+attentive pupils.
+
+"How unfortunate that the race mood has attacked the school when
+Christmas is approaching, and we wish the girls to do their best and be
+their happiest," said the white mother, lingering; for a minute in the
+schoolroom after the dismissal.  "Cordelia seems about the only one,
+except the little girls, who isn't out of sorts to-day, yet she is the
+one they are all against.  The older girls all seem displeased at her."
+
+"The large girls worried me with loud and constant whispering and
+inattention to the lesson," was the school-teacher's sorrowful report.
+"There were so many, with the superintendent's class combined with mine,
+I found it quite impossible to keep good order, as you probably
+observed."
+
+The superintendent was not present.  He had started for the distant
+railroad station two days previously to get the Christmas boxes.
+
+"I have never had the slightest trouble with both classes, heretofore,
+but to-day they seemed to throw off all restraint, and I was simply in
+despair," added the young teacher with a strained expression in her
+voice. "They whispered in Dakota, and their meaning was a mystery, but I
+heard Cordelia Running Bird's name and Hannah Straight Tree's very
+often, also Susie, Dolly and Lucinda."
+
+"There was some trouble in the hall yesterday, which made Cordelia
+Running Bird moody for a time, but she recovered her good-nature in the
+afternoon and seems to be behaving nicely now, although much hurt by the
+treatment which she is receiving from the girls," the white mother said.
+
+"The children were excited also," said the teacher, who had taught the
+infant class.  "They whispered much in English, and I gathered from
+their talk that the unusual wardrobe which Cordelia is preparing for her
+little sister to appear in during her Christmas visit, has to do with
+the disturbance.  I was forced to hear about the red dress and the brown
+shoes and stockings, and the blue dress and the black shoes and
+stockings, till I knew not what to do.  It seems that Hannah is vexed
+about the little things, and the other girls are sympathizing with her,
+and they seem to have some grievance of their own, besides."
+
+"That explains it," said the white mother.  "Perhaps it was unwise to
+let Cordelia have the red cashmere for the little dress, but she is
+paying for it by contributing a portion of her hard-earned money to the
+missionary fund. Her patience with the baby, who was very fretful, was
+quite wonderful.  She cheerfully devoted all her playtime for a month to
+baby, while I gave attention to the little children, and I thought it
+but a just reward to let her have the little dress, especially as it was
+in her mission box.  Her father had not brought the blue dress then, But
+dear me! She has added brown shoes and stockings, which I didn't in the
+least expect."
+
+The children in their bedtime talk had told the white mother of Cordelia
+Running Bird's purchase at the store, and later in the evening the
+second teacher had informed her of the barter of the Indian doll.
+
+"The brown shoes and stockings must be laid to my account.  Whatever can
+be done?" exclaimed the school-teacher, in dismay.
+
+"Nothing," said the white mother, firmly.  "I wish Cordelia was less
+extravagant, and we will be careful to restrain her after this.  But
+Indian girls must learn as well as white girls to respect the right of
+property.  The girls have been allowed much freedom in the spending of
+what money they could call their own, but it has mostly gone for hair
+ribbons and candy, and there has been no trouble before.  I hope the
+feeling will subside, however, in a day or two.  So many Christmas
+pleasures are in prospect that the girls will surely have no room for
+strife and envy in their hearts."
+
+Here the teachers hastened to the mission building to discharge the
+duties that devolved upon them after Sunday-school.
+
+Just before sun\et Monday afternoon a flock of girls were gathered at
+the stile in front, watching with intensity a solitary little figure
+moving slowly on a far side of the pasture, near the barbed wire fence.
+
+"Again there walks Cordelia Running Bird very far away," said Hannah
+Straight Tree.  "She has walked alone two afternoons.  She must be
+thinking very hard."
+
+"She is going on the mourner's walk," observed the girl who kept the
+playroom.  "When an Indian walks alone, so far and very slow, that means
+they are too sad. She cannot be happy, for the large girls--only me--and
+the middle-sized girls do not talk to her.  Then, too, of course, she
+thinks of Annie.  It was just one year ago this Monday that they took
+her to the agency.  The large girls did not wash, because there was a
+funeral."
+
+"And Cordelia Running Bird was so proud because the girls all cried,"
+said Hannah.  "Now I wish we had not cried."
+
+"Kee!  You must not be so mean as that," exclaimed the largest girl, in
+shocked surprise.  "Of course we cried for Annie.  She was very kind to
+everyone--not cross like us."
+
+"She was a very little cross, sometimes, because she was an Indian.  She
+tried much harder than Cordelia Running Bird."
+
+"I am glad I sang 'The Sweet By and By' when she was so afraid," said
+Emma Two Bears.
+
+The girls were silent for a little, stirred by memories of the
+schoolmate who had passed into the life beyond.
+
+Meantime the solitary girl in the snowy pasture continued her walk.
+
+"I can wish I had not told Cordelia Running Bird that I would not sleep
+with anyone but her," said Hannah. "I am glad she is not in the middle
+dormitory now."
+
+"They put her in our dormitory so that she can go and tell the teachers
+if a little girl is sick, or cries," remarked the prudent little girl,
+who had arrived upon the scene with several other children.  "The
+teachers say she wakes up easy, and is braver in the dark than any other
+girl."
+
+"Ee!  Cordelia Running Bird is a dress pattern for the other girls--I
+mean a pattern!" Hannah cried.  "Cordelia is the bravest, and she has a
+white memory, so she has the longest piece.  Cordelia is polite.  She
+keeps her clothes so clean and does not tear them, so the missionary
+ladies send her prettier things, for the teachers write she is so nice.
+The visitors always talk about Cordelia Running Bird very lots.  They do
+not think the girls are listening, but they are."
+
+"They should not listen.  That is stealing talk, the white mother says,"
+replied the prudent little girl.  "We like Cordelia Running Bird, for
+she does not scold us little girls and tell us we are in the way, as you
+do," was the bold defense.  "We shall choose Susie in the games."
+
+"If the little girls choose Susie, the large and middle-sized girls can
+pull their hairs when they are combing them," was the appalling threat
+from Hannah Straight Tree.  "If they tell the teachers we can say their
+hairs were snarly and we could not help it."
+
+"Ee!  We shall not pull the little girls' hairs and tell a lie," said
+Emma Two Bears, rallying her honest principles.  "We can treat Cordelia
+Running Bird cross because she called us shovel-feeted, and is very
+vain, so we should punish her, but we will not be wicked."
+
+"I did not say we shall--I said we can," retracted Hannah, in confusion.
+
+"The girls were very mean to walk whole-feet where she was scrubbing,"
+said the playroom girl, who knew from sad experience what Cordelia's
+trials must have been.  "It makes me very cross because the little girls
+will not stay out or, sit still on the benches when I scrub the
+playroom, and they do not make big tracks, if they do walk whole-feet."
+
+"You can speak to her, because she could not call you shovel-feeted, for
+the white mother lets you always wear the mission shoes," said Hannah
+Straight Tree, growing bold again.
+
+"Because I have an onion--no, a bunion--on my foot. The issue shoes
+would make it worse.  Just like there is no girl in school that does not
+hate to have the horrid whole-feet tracks on her wet floor."
+
+"I hate them--some," confessed a middle dormitory girl.
+
+"I, too," admitted a south dormitory girl.  "I threw a few drops of
+scrub water on a girl that walked whole-feet."
+
+"I told a girl her tracks were so big, just like she had on snowshoes,"
+said a north dormitory girl, relentingly.
+
+"Of course, I made the very biggest kind of tracks on Cordelia Running
+Bird's wet floor," said the largest girl; "but if we walk tiptoe all the
+other girls will laugh and say, 'See how she nips along.  She tries to
+walk so nice, just like the teachers.'  And if we are walking on our
+heels they say, 'Very awkward; hear her tramp just like a steer.'  But
+it is not kind to walk whole-feet."
+
+The race mood was upon the wane, and Hannah Straight Tree was fast
+losing influence.
+
+"I would not have cared so much about the blue dress and the black shoes
+and stockings, but she bought the red dress and the brown shoes and
+stockings, when her little sister does not need them," Hannah argued in
+an injured tone.
+
+"She did not buy them with your money," said the playroom girl.  "You
+would not have taken care of a cross baby four weeks, and missed a plum
+picnic, and not played a leap, to earn pretty things for Dolly.  You are
+much too lazy."
+
+"Now I shall not stay another minute!" springing from the stile in deep
+chagrin.  "You all can like Cordelia Running Bird if you want to, but I
+shall not like her."
+
+Hannah Straight Tree ran into the house, and those remaining turned
+again to watch Cordelia.  She had reached a sloping bluff, down which
+the fence extended to the flats beside the river.  She stood a moment on
+the edge, then wrapped her clothes about her and sat down on the crust.
+Presently she disappeared.
+
+"She has slid down hill," observed the playroom girl. "She must be going
+to the river."
+
+"She should not.  It will soon be dark, and she is all alone," said Emma
+Two Bears, in a tone betraying some anxiety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Cordelia Running Bid held her clothes about her with one hand, steering
+with her feet, and reached the flats in safety.  She arose and stood
+still and looked toward the river to a space of open water on the near
+side of a sandbar, half way over.
+
+She took a few steps forward rather slowly, then her pace quickened more
+and more, till she was running breathlessly, as if in fear of losing her
+resolve to carry out some plan she was intent upon.
+
+In rushing through a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and
+almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her
+hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat
+and dropped it on the ground.  She picked it up and hung it by the
+draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong
+course there came a corresponding halt of purpose. So she turned aside
+and walked a few yards down the hollow, where she found a log on which
+to seat herself.
+
+Presently she murmured in the passive monotone of a despairing Indian
+girl: "Just like I have to stop and think before I do it.  If I drown
+the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings and the red dress and
+the brown shoes and stockings, I can write to Hannah Straight Tree, for
+she will not let me speak to her: 'Now you see I truly am not vain, for
+I have put the Christmas clothes for Susie in my workbag, and a stone,
+so it would sink, and I have drowned them in the airhole in the middle
+of the river.'
+
+"But again that would be bragging," was her puzzled afterthought.  "Just
+like Jesus is not helping me one bit, for very fast I went and bought
+the brown shoes and stockings after I had prayed to stop being vain.
+And the teachers looked so sorry, and I was ashamed to tell the white
+mother.  Everything I say and do is vain and bragging, and I cannot
+think hard enough to help it.  My tongue bragged about Dolly and
+Lucinda's hair ribbons to the little girls, and my feet bragged about
+the issue shoes, I stuck them out so far.  And when the girls made fun
+of me I did not pull the shoes back, for I wanted them to think I was
+not scared, but sorry.  I was truly trying to try hard, but I was trying
+the wrong way. Now my pencil will be bragging if it tells Hannah
+Straight Tree I have drowned the things."
+
+Cordelia sat in troubled thought while the pink and golden colors of the
+sunset faded from the sky above the bluffs and the wind sighed through
+the hollow.
+
+"The white mother says it is not right to even waste a pin, and many
+nice things that have cost much money would be wasted if I drowned them.
+I shall look at them and think again what I can do."
+
+She drew the contents from the bag and spread them on her lap.  First
+she gave attention to the little blue dress she had helped to make at
+the expense of many play hours.
+
+[Illustration:  She drew the contents from her bag and spread them on
+her lap.]
+
+"Emma Two Bears made the waist so nice and said she would not take one
+thing for pay, but I made her take a shell necklace that was very
+pretty; but I did not care for it myself, it was so Indian-minded.  Emma
+is so generous.  I wish I could be generous.  If I should give the blue
+dress to Dolly, and the black shoes and stockings, just like I should be
+some generous.  What if I should truly do it?" with a sudden interest in
+her tone.  "She would look as pretty as the little schoolgirls then, and
+she could motion Jack Frost, and Hannah and the others could not say
+Susie did not need the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings.  I
+am 'most sure Jessie Turning Heart will help me make the red dress, if I
+bring the playroom wood for her, till we change work next month.  She
+hates to bring wood, for her foot gets cold, and then the sore bunch
+pinches her much worse.  She is very fast and stylish making dresses,
+and she feather-stitches; and she says she is not cross at me.  She said
+one time she liked to sew so much, just like she would be getting up and
+sewing in her sleep.  So I shall ask her to trade work.
+
+"But Hannah Straight Tree says she hates light blue, for it makes a
+copper-colored Indian look much blacker; and she hates one tuck, and
+there would have to be one, for the blue dress is too long for Dolly.
+And it smuts some, too, and is not soft and fine.  Hannah would not want
+it.  She would say Susie looked much nicer in the red dress, and Dolly
+should not motion Jack Frost in the blue one."
+
+Cordelia put the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings back into
+the bag, and spread the red cashmere across her lap and smoothed it
+lovingly.
+
+"It feels so soft I like to rub it.  Just the color of the one rose on
+the white mother's window bush." She held it up, luxuriating in its warm
+red glow.  "Ver-ry sw-e-et and pretty--and the brown shoes and
+stockings, too. I shall put them on the clean snow and look at them."
+
+She spread the things on the hard white crust and viewed them with
+increasing admiration.  Suddenly she caught them up and hid them in her
+apron, for the sight of them was far too tempting; then she locked her
+hands together in her lap and sat so still a wood-mouse dared to leave
+his hole beneath the log and frisk about her feet.
+
+"The baby was so cross I could not play one bit the whole four weeks,"
+she said at length, in supplicating tones.  "Just like I earned the
+dress so hard.  I thought I did not care much for the Indian doll, but
+my grandmother cannot make another, for she now has par-a-lay-sis in her
+hands--the doctor says it is.  And I sold the Indian doll to get the
+brown shoes and stockings.  Dolly has a round face, and her eyes are
+pretty.  Susie has a thin face, and she is a very little cross-eyed, so
+she needs a prettier dress to look as nice as Dolly.
+
+"But Lucinda cannot come to school if Dolly cannot, and she feels so
+sad.  If Dolly's father saw her looking very pretty in a red dress and a
+brown shoes and stockings, just like he would feel so happier he would
+let her come to school.  Then Lucinda would be glad, and she would learn
+the neat way, and they would grow Dolly more white-minded.  The verse I
+read yesterday was a King's Daughters' verse.  Helen marked it--Annie,
+too.
+
+"What if Annie should be looking down from up there,"--pointing to a
+newly glimmering star--"and speaking just like this: 'Dear Cordelia,
+these words I tell you--" It is more blessed to give than to receive."
+I would give the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings to the
+little girl named Dolly Straight Tree.'"
+
+Cordelia looked another minute at the star.
+
+"Of course Annie cannot speak those words up there, but she would like
+to have me do it, and my father and my mother would not care, for I
+should tell them just like Annie thought I ought to; and they always let
+me do a thing I want to, anyhow.
+
+"If an Indian likes another Indian very much he will give him a big
+present.  My father told an Indian man one time, 'I am your friend, so I
+shall give you a pony.' And he did.  And the Indian man told my father,
+'I am your friend, so I shall give you a steer.'  And a white man
+laughed and said it was a good trade.  But the Indians did not laugh.
+They said my father and the other Indian were very generous.
+
+"Now I have found the right way, and it makes me very happier, and I
+shall not change my thoughts." in firm relief.  "I shall do this kind:
+Till Dolly and Lucinda come I shall not say one word to any girl, or
+even tell the white mother.  Then Susie's best things I shall give to
+Hannah Straight Tree in a way that will surprise her. Tokee! there rings
+the half-hour bell till supper, and I am down here, and it is
+moonlight."
+
+Cordelia hastily replaced the best things in the bag and scampered home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Cordelia Running Bird carried out her plan of asking Jessie Turning
+Heart, the playroom girl, to help her make the red dress, and the latter
+willingly agreed to "trade work," and escape bringing in the wood to the
+torture of her lame foot.
+
+Cordelia found that she had undertaken no light task, for there were
+violent snowstorms in the next two weeks, and an enormous quantity of
+wood was swallowed by the great stove in the playroom, which must needs
+be kept red-hot from long before dawn until bedtime, to dispel the
+freezing atmosphere within.
+
+Owing to the influence of the playroom girl, the large and middle-sized
+girls in general ceased to be intensely hostile to Cordelia, but they
+did not break the seal of silence, so she could not ask help from among
+them. The small girls showed their friendship for Cordelia now and then
+by marching in a line behind her from the wood-yard laden with what fuel
+they could bring, or even going down the path the older girls had broken
+to the flats for willow fagots, which they tied upon their backs and
+brought to her for kindling.
+
+Hannah Straight Tree tried Cordelia's resolution to do good to her by
+stealthy persecutions that escaped the notice of the teachers, who
+remarked to one another in relief that Hannah and the other girls
+appeared in better humor toward Cordelia, and the fatter had regained
+her cheerful spirits.
+
+Hannah took her station in the little outside hall one blustering
+afternoon, watching through the side window till Cordelia climbed the
+porch steps loaded to her chin with wood; then Hannah braced her back
+against the outside door.  Cordelia spared one hand with difficulty,
+tugging at the door with wind-tossed garments, all in vain.  She dropped
+her wood to use both hands.  The door would sometimes stick when lightly
+closed, and thinking this to be the case, she threw her weight against
+it in a forcible attempt to burst it open.  Hannah jumped away and
+darted through the inside door in silent glee.
+
+Cordelia fell full length into the hall and struck her head against the
+inner threshold. She lay in a dazed condition for a little, then aroused
+herself, to catch a glimpse of Hannah peering through the window of the
+inside door. She vanished instantly, but the expression of her face had
+told Cordelia where the mischief lay.
+
+"She will not let me like her," thought Cordelia, struggling to her feet
+with aching head, and blinking back the tears. "Just like I shall have
+to hate her just a little while I do her good."
+
+She turned, and saw to her surprise that Emma Two Bears, who had come
+behind her to the porch, was gathering up her wood. Emma often helped to
+fill the wood-box in the music room, as an especial friend of hers
+attended to that work, and Cordelia feared her wood was being boldly
+captured for that purpose.  She was about to cry out sharply, but
+restrained herself and fell back silently, while Emma passed into the
+house.  Cordelia followed her, and saw with sinking heart that Emma took
+a straight track through the playroom for the music room; but on the
+threshold of the room she whirled about, and, walking to the playroom
+wood-box, dropped the wood in.
+
+"Thank you very much!" exclaimed Cordelia, in sign language on her
+fingers.  Etiquette forbade her to employ her tongue in the expression
+of her gratitude, seeing that the girls had placed a ban on it.  A
+curious contortion of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet was used among the
+Indian girls when pride forbade the use of speech.
+
+"You need not thank me.  I am only punishing Hannah Straight Tree," Emma
+answered, likewise with her fingers.
+
+This exchange of compliments was read without scruple by the many pairs
+of eyes, including Hannah's, that were watching the affair.
+
+"Emma Two Bears talks deaf-and-dumb to her.  Now we can plan
+crack-the-whip with her, for that is not a speaking game," observed a
+middle-sized girl, who had been a comrade of Cordelia's heretofore.
+
+"She will not have time to crack the whip," said Hannah.  "She is going
+to the south dormitory, where she sits her whole playtime helping sew
+the red dress for Susie, so she can look nicer than the other little
+home sisters and the little schoolgirls."
+
+"You are very jealous-minded, and you try hard to spite Cordelia Running
+Bird," said the recent comrade.
+
+"You can talk that way because you have no little sister," grumbled
+Hannah.
+
+Cordelia passed upstairs with quick steps.
+
+"Just like the large and middle-sized girls--only Hannah Straight Tree--
+will again be speaking to me pretty soon," she said to Jessie Turning
+Heart, who sat beside a sunny window in the south dormitory sewing
+briskly on the little red waist.
+
+"They cannot speak to you till Christmas day, because they all said they
+would not," Jessie answered.  "Then if you ap-ol-ogize and say you do
+not wish them to be cripples any more, and that you will stop talking
+vain, they will again speak to you, and they will walk heel or tiptoe on
+your floor."
+
+"I shall write an ap-ol-ogy in Dakota on three papers Christmas morning,
+and pin them on a side of the three dormitories, but you must not tell,
+because I do not wish to brag what I shall do," Cordelia said, in
+strictest confidence.
+
+"I think it would be better if you had but one shoes and stockings and
+best dress for Susie.  But you cannot help it now," the playroom girl
+replied.  "Two best dresses and two shoes and stockings look too many,
+when the other little home sisters have not one best thing."
+
+Cordelia Running Bird was quite strongly tempted to confide still
+further in the friendly playroom girl, who had sustained her through the
+trying tempest of events, but she resisted and began to hem the little
+skirt in silence.
+
+"Ee! how short you have it!" Jessie noticed suddenly. "You must think
+Susie is to grow the other way before she wears it."
+
+Cordelia's only answer was a noncommittal smile which Jessie failed to
+understand.  This thought, however, suddenly impressed Cordelia:
+
+"Now it is too short for Susie, and the hem is not one bit too wide, so
+I could not let it down.  What if Hannah Straight Tree is so cross she
+will not let Dolly wear it? And there is no other little home sister
+just the size of Dolly that could wear it, and is coming Christmas. Just
+like Hannah will not take it and will keep on hating me forever and
+ever, so I cannot do her good."
+
+Whether this foreboding was fulfilled, or otherwise, will be explained
+in Hannah's letter to the King's Daughter in the Far East, who had sent
+the little Bible and the loving message to the King's Daughter in the
+Far West:
+
+  "_Dear Helen Merriam_: Now I shall write you a letter,
+    for Cordelia Running Bird cannot, for she says it,
+  would be bragging.  It is all about Christmas, and our
+  big and little sisters.  Cordelia's big sister is now in
+  heaven, and Cordelia wrote good-by to you from Annie.
+  My big sister is now in the First Reader, but she cannot
+  help it, for my mother died, and so Lucinda had to stay
+  at home and keep Dolly, and that is my little sister.
+
+  "And it was about Susie--that is Cordelia's little sister--
+  that I got so mean and jealous, for she had a nice
+  Christmas things--two kinds--and Dolly would not have
+  one kind, and she would look so horrid.  So I called
+  Cordelia Running Bird proud, vain, cross, mean.  And
+  I talked about her so the girls got cross at her.  And
+  I made her push a pail of scrub water downstairs, so she
+  talked Dakota and had to lie in bed and could not
+  feather-stitch the blue dress, for it smutted so the silk
+  would be too dirty.  But she feather-stitched the red dress,
+  and she sold her Indian doll, and it was her grandmother's
+  when she was Cordelia's age, so she bought the brown shoes
+  and stockings.
+
+  "And Cordelia read the King's Daughters' verses,
+  'Love your enemies,' and 'It is more blessed to give than
+  to receive,' so she put the red dress and the brown shoes
+  and stockings and two hair ribbons in a box, and Jessie
+  Turning Heart tied a blue scarf round my eyes so tight
+  I could not see, and led me to the chicken house.  And
+  I put my hand on the box, and Jessie pulled off the scarf,
+  and I uncovered the box and found the things.  And
+  Cordelia Running Bird had pinned a piece of paper on the
+  red dress, and these words were written on it: 'Dear
+  Hannah Straight Tree, I am your friend, so I shall give
+  you these best Christmas things for Dolly.  And will
+  you please take the hair ribbons, for they are not very
+  cotton silk?'
+
+  "And I was very 'shamed, and said I would not take
+  them, I had been so mean.  But Cordelia Running Bird
+  said I must, for she had made the red dress too short for
+  Susie, so if I did not it would be wasted. So I told her
+  I would take it if she would excuse my meanness, but I
+  should not take the brown shoes and stockings--only just
+  the black ones.  But she begged so hard just like I had to.
+  And Cordelia and I scrubbed Dolly very hard in a tub,
+  for Lucinda has not learned the neat way, and she did
+  not cry, only laughed.  And the white mother found some
+  very little underclothes for her, and we curled her hair
+  with a slate pencil, and she wore the best things and
+  looked so pretty.  And the brown shoes were a little bit
+  too large, but they did not show.
+
+  "And Dolly motioned Jack Frost very cunning, and
+  they looked at Dolly more than Susie, but Cordelia
+  Running Bird did not care.  And my father was so happier
+  he laughed and laughed when Dolly nipped her nose and
+  pinched her toes just right, and when the song stopped he
+  slapped his knees and cried very loud, he was so glad
+  about Dolly.
+
+  "And after the Christmas tree my father told the
+  teachers (and Emma Two Bears was interpreter): 'Your
+  school is a good place, for it makes the Indian children
+  very smart, and you treat the Indian visitors very kind,
+  so I shall let Dolly stay, and then Lucinda will stay, too.'
+  Very fast Lucinda stopped being sad, for she thought
+  before my father would not let Dolly stay till she was ten
+  birthdays, and Lucinda loves her so she would not stay
+  without her.
+
+  "And the doll they hung me on the Christmas tree was
+  bigger than Cordelia Running Bird's, and its hairs and
+  clothes were prettier, so I told Cordelia, 'I am your
+  friend, and I shall give you my doll.'  And she did not
+  want to take it, but I made her.  So she said, 'I am your
+  friend, and I shall give you my doll, but it is not so nice
+  as yours.'
+
+  "And Cordelia Running Bird and I now walk together
+  all the time, and again I shall never be mean to her.  And
+  they did not choose Susie quite so much as Dolly in the
+    games, but Cordelia says that makes her glad. And it
+  was because she read the King's Daughters' verses.
+
+  "Now I shall put an end to this too long letter. Many
+  days have I been writing it, and the girls, said just like
+  I was writing a book. And Cordelia sends her love.
+
+     "From your unknown American Indian friend,
+          "HANNAH STRAIGHT THEE."
+
+  "P. S.--Cordelia Running Bird nearly drowned both
+  kinds of Christmas clothes, and then she thought to give
+  the best kind to Dolly.  And Susie did not care because
+  she had to wear the blue dress, and it smutted so her
+  hands and face got dirty, and the black shoes and stockings.
+  She was just as happier.  And the teacher saved Cordelia's
+  Indian doll and gave it back to her, because she knew
+  she loved it very hard.  And Cordelia was so glad
+  she hugged it very tight.
+
+  "Again P. S.--Cordelia wrote, 'Peace on earth, good-will
+  toward men.  I do not wish the dormitory girls were
+  cripples, and I will stop talking vain and will always
+  wear the issue shoes every day.  And will they please
+  excuse me?'  And they did.  And now they walk heel or
+  tiptoe on Cordelia's wet floor.  Lucinda will now learn
+  the neat way, and they will grow Dolly more white-minded,
+  for she came to school so short.  And again I say it was
+  the King's Daughters' verses.  And I do not like to think
+  hard, but I shall try to learn them, too.  And we did
+  not shut our eyes at Susie when she motioned Jack Frost,
+  as we meant to just for spite.  And the girls all said
+  Cordelia was so generous, she said she nearly got vain
+  again.  So I shall stop this time."
+
+[Illustration:  Helen read the letter to her King's Daughters circle.]
+
+Helen read the letter to her King's Daughters Circle, and a young
+member, thinking of the little Sioux maiden at the far Northwestern
+Mission who had tried to overcome her faults and love her enemies,
+repeated softly:
+
+  "'For thou hast a little strength, and thou hast kept
+  my word and hast not denied my name.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Big and Little Sisters, by Theodora R. Jenness
+
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