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.