“But to think that you’ve never had a Christmas present!” exclaimed Molly again, as Wallula’s laugh rippled out.  “If I’d only known you the first year we came!  But I’ll make it up this year, you’ll see; and oh! oh!” clapping her hands at a sudden thought, “I know—­I know what I’ll do!  Tell you?” as Wallula clapped her hands and cried, “Oh, tell me, tell me!” “Of course I sha’n’t tell you; that would spoil the whole.  Why, that’s part of the fun that we don’t tell what we are going to do.  It is all a secret until Christmas eve or Christmas morning.”

“Yes, I know,—­Metalka told me; but I forgot.”

“Of course your sister must have known all about Christmas after she came back from school.  Why didn’t she make you a Christmas present, then, Lula?”

“Metalka?” A cloud came over the little bright face.  “Metalka didn’t stay long after she came back.  She didn’t stay till Christmas; she went ’way—­to—­to heaven.”

“Oh!”

“If Metalka had stayed, I might have gone to school this year.”

“I thought you had been to school, Lula.”

“Oh, no! only to little school out here summers,—­little school some ladies made; and Metalka tole me—­taught me—­showed me ev’ry day after she came back—­ev’ry day, till—­til she—­went ’way.  I can read and write and talk, talk, talk, all day in English,”—­smiling roguishly, then more seriously and anxiously.  “Is it pretty fair English,—­white English,—­Major Molly?”

“’White English’!” laughed back Major Molly.  “You are such fun, Lula.  Yes, it’s pretty fair—­white English.”

Lula dimpled with pleasure, then sighed as she said, “If I could go ’way off East to Metalka’s school, two, three, four, five year, as Metalka did, then I could talk splen’id English, and I could make heap—­no, all sort things, and help keep house nice, and cook like Metalka.”

“But why don’t you go, Lula?”

“Why don’t I?  Listen!” and Wallula bent forward eagerly.  “I don’t go because my father won’t have me go.  Metalka went.  When she first came back, she was so happy, so strong.  She was going to have everything white way, civ—­I can’t say it, Maje Molly.”

“Do you mean civilized?”

“Yes, yes; civ’lized—­white way.  And she worked, she talked, she tried, and nobody’d pay much ‘tention but my father.  The girls, some o’ them, wanted to be like her; but the fathers and mothers would n’ help, and some, good many, were set hard ’gainst it; and then there was no money to buy white people’s clothes, they said.  It took all the money was earned to pay big ’counts up at agency store, where Indians bought things,—­things to eat, you know; so what’s the use, they said, to try to live white ways when everything was ’gainst them, and they stopped trying; and Metalka was so dis’pointed, for she was going do so much,—­going help civ-civ’lize.  She was so dis’pointed, she by-’n’-by got sick—­homesick, and just after the first snow came, she—­she went ’way to heaven.  And that’s why my father won’t have me go to the school.  He say it killed Metalka.  He say if she’d stayed home, she’d been happy Indian and lived long time.  He say Indian got hurt; spoiled going off into white man’s country.”