Big and Little Sisters Part 3

"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-st.i.tching, 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 sh.o.r.e.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian dolls," said the teacher.]

"I've got some first-cla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed some peppermints to the children, which awoke a burst of grat.i.tude.

"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."