“I, too,” admitted a south dormitory girl.  “I threw a few drops of scrub water on a girl that walked whole-feet.”

“I told a girl her tracks were so big, just like she had on snowshoes,” said a north dormitory girl, relentingly.

“Of course, I made the very biggest kind of tracks on Cordelia Running Bird’s wet floor,” said the largest girl; “but if we walk tiptoe all the other girls will laugh and say, ’See how she nips along.  She tries to walk so nice, just like the teachers.’  And if we are walking on our heels they say, ‘Very awkward; hear her tramp just like a steer.’  But it is not kind to walk whole-feet.”

The race mood was upon the wane, and Hannah Straight Tree was fast losing influence.

“I would not have cared so much about the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings, but she bought the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings, when her little sister does not need them,” Hannah argued in an injured tone.

“She did not buy them with your money,” said the playroom girl.  “You would not have taken care of a cross baby four weeks, and missed a plum picnic, and not played a leap, to earn pretty things for Dolly.  You are much too lazy.”

“Now I shall not stay another minute!” springing from the stile in deep chagrin.  “You all can like Cordelia Running Bird if you want to, but I shall not like her.”

Hannah Straight Tree ran into the house, and those remaining turned again to watch Cordelia.  She had reached a sloping bluff, down which the fence extended to the flats beside the river.  She stood a moment on the edge, then wrapped her clothes about her and sat down on the crust.  Presently she disappeared.

“She has slid down hill,” observed the playroom girl.  “She must be going to the river.”

“She should not.  It will soon be dark, and she is all alone,” said Emma Two Bears, in a tone betraying some anxiety.

CHAPTER VI.

Cordelia Running Bid held her clothes about her with one hand, steering with her feet, and reached the flats in safety.  She arose and stood still and looked toward the river to a space of open water on the near side of a sandbar, half way over.

She took a few steps forward rather slowly, then her pace quickened more and more, till she was running breathlessly, as if in fear of losing her resolve to carry out some plan she was intent upon.

In rushing through a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat and dropped it on the ground.  She picked it up and hung it by the draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong course there came a corresponding halt of purpose.  So she turned aside and walked a few yards down the hollow, where she found a log on which to seat herself.