Cordelia Running Bird was quite strongly tempted to confide still further in the friendly playroom girl, who had sustained her through the trying tempest of events, but she resisted and began to hem the little skirt in silence.

“Ee! how short you have it!” Jessie noticed suddenly.  “You must think Susie is to grow the other way before she wears it.”

Cordelia’s only answer was a noncommittal smile which Jessie failed to understand.  This thought, however, suddenly impressed Cordelia: 

“Now it is too short for Susie, and the hem is not one bit too wide, so I could not let it down.  What if Hannah Straight Tree is so cross she will not let Dolly wear it?  And there is no other little home sister just the size of Dolly that could wear it, and is coming Christmas.  Just like Hannah will not take it and will keep on hating me forever and ever, so I cannot do her good.”

Whether this foreboding was fulfilled, or otherwise, will be explained in Hannah’s letter to the King’s Daughter in the Far East, who had sent the little Bible and the loving message to the King’s Daughter in the Far West: 

  “Dear Helen Merriam:  Now I shall write you a letter,
    for Cordelia Running Bird cannot, for she says it,
  would be bragging.  It is all about Christmas, and our
  big and little sisters.  Cordelia’s big sister is now in
  heaven, and Cordelia wrote good-by to you from Annie. 
  My big sister is now in the First Reader, but she cannot
  help it, for my mother died, and so Lucinda had to stay
  at home and keep Dolly, and that is my little sister.

“And it was about Susie—­that is Cordelia’s little sister—­ that I got so mean and jealous, for she had a nice Christmas things—­two kinds—­and Dolly would not have one kind, and she would look so horrid.  So I called Cordelia Running Bird proud, vain, cross, mean.  And I talked about her so the girls got cross at her.  And I made her push a pail of scrub water downstairs, so she talked Dakota and had to lie in bed and could not feather-stitch the blue dress, for it smutted so the silk would be too dirty.  But she feather-stitched the red dress, and she sold her Indian doll, and it was her grandmother’s when she was Cordelia’s age, so she bought the brown shoes and stockings.

“And Cordelia read the King’s Daughters’ verses, ‘Love your enemies,’ and ’It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ so she put the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings and two hair ribbons in a box, and Jessie Turning Heart tied a blue scarf round my eyes so tight I could not see, and led me to the chicken house.  And I put my hand on the box, and Jessie pulled off the scarf, and I uncovered the box and found the things.  And Cordelia Running Bird had pinned a piece of paper on the red dress, and these words were written on it:  ’Dear Hannah Straight Tree, I am your friend, so I shall give you