“You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns money, so he buys nice things for Susie,” Hannah Straight Tree said, with growing envy.  “Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not look pretty Christmas time!  Her dress will be a kind that looks black, and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress.  She will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored stockings.  If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not mend it nice—­only draw it up so puckery.  Very lots of grease spots will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her very fast.”

“My little sister is not torn and dirty any time,” said Cordelia Running Bird, “for my mother came to mission school when she was young and learned the neat way.”

“My big sister only went to camp school just a little while,” said Hannah Straight Tree.  “When my mother died she had to stay at home and work and keep my little sister.  Now again my father has got married, and Lucinda wants to come to school and bring my little sister.  Dolly was five birthdays last Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Susie was five birthdays while I was at home vacation.  I would be so glad if she could stay at school next time she comes, but she was sliding on the ice, and she fell and broke herself right here.”  Cordelia touched her collarbone.  “She is mended, but my mother is afraid to leave her with the children now,” she added.  “But next year she will leave her.  If your big and little sister come to school they will have nice mission things.”

“But they cannot for my father,” Hannah Straight Tree said, with deepening gloom.  “He would let Lucinda, but he says Dolly is too short; she must be ten birthdays when she comes.  Lucinda loves Dolly, so she will not leave her, and my stepmother is cross-tempered.  Lucinda will be twenty-one birthdays—­much too old to come to school—­when Dolly is ten birthdays.”

“You can tell your father the teachers like the Indian children come to school when they are very short, so they can grow them more white-minded,” said Cordelia Running Bird.

“I told him, but he says he does not want his children very white-minded.  He says I came to school so short that they have grown me too white-minded.  I tell him I am very Indian-minded, but he tells me I do not know white from Indian.  Lucinda is so sad she will not try.  She looks so horrid—­Dolly, too—­I am much ashamed of them.  I shall not speak to them before the white visitors and the teachers—­only down at camp.”

“Then you will be very wrong,” said Cordelia Running Bird.  “I would not be ashamed to speak to my own people anywhere.”