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.”