Big and Little Sisters | Page 3

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