Cordelia sat in a corner with her eyes upon her Sunday-school lesson.  Her feet were planted side by side as if with studied care.

“Just like she is very scared because the large and middle-sized girls do not speak to her since yesterday.  She is not sorry, only scared,” said Hannah Straight Tree.  “See, she sticks her feet out very far, so we will see the shoes and think she is not vain; but we will not believe her.  She has found the dustpan, too, because she is so scared of me.  She bragged so much she made me cross, so I told her she must find it and take up my dirt, yesterday.  She minded me this morning.”

“She will be more scared before we speak to her,” remarked the bread girl.  “Ver-r-y ugly issue shoes!  She ought to wear a dragging dress to hide them.”

There was a burst of laughter, while the keen, black eyes of the entire group were fixed upon Cordelia Running Bird’s feet.  She did not draw them back nor lift her eyes, but suddenly her dusky face grew scarlet, and there was a nervous trembling of her lips that moved persistently in an attempted study of the lesson.  She had heard the words, as the girls intended she should.  They were speaking in Dakota without fear of being understood by the white mother, who was in the playroom passing pennies for the missionary plate.

The white mother heard the laugh and stepped into the space between the sliding doors, which were ajar.  She saw the girls’ resentment at a glance, and that it was directed at Cordelia Running Bird.  She was troubled, but could not combat the feeling that had spread throughout the school, to mar the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, which these Indian girls were wont to keep in reverent spirit.

“She has bought another pair of shoes for Susie—­stockings, too—­not black ones, like the little schoolgirls have to wear for best, but very stylish brown ones,” Hannah Straight Tree said.  “She put them in her trunk last night.  I crept upstairs and watched her, for the children said she had them in her pocket.  The large and middle-sized girls must not see them till the entertainment, but the little girls keep saying they are like the ones the little white visitor that wore the dress that was pink dim-i-ty, had on.  Ver-ry white-minded shoes!  She wants to hire me to like her, if she does not wish to have Dolly in the Jack Frost song with Susie, so she bought new hair ribbons at the store for Dolly and Lucinda.  She told the little girls because she knew they would tell me.  But Dolly and Lucinda shall not wear them.  Very cotton silk, of course.”

The ringing of the bell for Sunday-school relieved Cordelia Running Bird of the torment she was undergoing.  Conversation was suspended, and the girls put on their hoods and marched in a procession to the school-house, guided by the teachers.

Cordelia had a trying hour in Sunday-school.  The middle-sized girls, her companions in the white mother’s class, indulged in frequent whispering at her expense and kept deep silence when she tried to lead the class, as she was wont, in reading reference verses and in concert recitation of the memory verses and the Golden Text.  Thus it happened that she read a reference verse alone, in faltering accents, with the eyes of all the class upon her: