“But Hannah Straight Tree says she hates light blue, for it makes a copper-colored Indian look much blacker; and she hates one tuck, and there would have to be one, for the blue dress is too long for Dolly.  And it smuts some, too, and is not soft and fine.  Hannah would not want it.  She would say Susie looked much nicer in the red dress, and Dolly should not motion Jack Frost in the blue one.”

Cordelia put the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings back into the bag, and spread the red cashmere across her lap and smoothed it lovingly.

“It feels so soft I like to rub it.  Just the color of the one rose on the white mother’s window bush.”  She held it up, luxuriating in its warm red glow.  “Ver-ry sw-e-et and pretty—­and the brown shoes and stockings, too.  I shall put them on the clean snow and look at them.”

She spread the things on the hard white crust and viewed them with increasing admiration.  Suddenly she caught them up and hid them in her apron, for the sight of them was far too tempting; then she locked her hands together in her lap and sat so still a wood-mouse dared to leave his hole beneath the log and frisk about her feet.

“The baby was so cross I could not play one bit the whole four weeks,” she said at length, in supplicating tones.  “Just like I earned the dress so hard.  I thought I did not care much for the Indian doll, but my grandmother cannot make another, for she now has par-a-lay-sis in her hands—­the doctor says it is.  And I sold the Indian doll to get the brown shoes and stockings.  Dolly has a round face, and her eyes are pretty.  Susie has a thin face, and she is a very little cross-eyed, so she needs a prettier dress to look as nice as Dolly.

“But Lucinda cannot come to school if Dolly cannot, and she feels so sad.  If Dolly’s father saw her looking very pretty in a red dress and a brown shoes and stockings, just like he would feel so happier he would let her come to school.  Then Lucinda would be glad, and she would learn the neat way, and they would grow Dolly more white-minded.  The verse I read yesterday was a King’s Daughters’ verse.  Helen marked it—­Annie, too.

“What if Annie should be looking down from up there,”—­pointing to a newly glimmering star—­“and speaking just like this:  ’Dear Cordelia, these words I tell you—­” It is more blessed to give than to receive.”  I would give the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings to the little girl named Dolly Straight Tree.’”

Cordelia looked another minute at the star.

“Of course Annie cannot speak those words up there, but she would like to have me do it, and my father and my mother would not care, for I should tell them just like Annie thought I ought to; and they always let me do a thing I want to, anyhow.

“If an Indian likes another Indian very much he will give him a big present.  My father told an Indian man one time, ’I am your friend, so I shall give you a pony.’  And he did.  And the Indian man told my father, ‘I am your friend, so I shall give you a steer.’  And a white man laughed and said it was a good trade.  But the Indians did not laugh.  They said my father and the other Indian were very generous.