“I wish Cordelia Running Bird were a little different,” said the school-teacher.  “She leads her class, and is a credit to the school in most respects, but she is rather too ambitious to outdo others.  It creates jealousy.”

“I have observed that she is notional in the making of her dresses,” said the sewing teacher.  “She is apt to want the skirt a little wider and the hem a half-inch deeper than the regular uniform.  And she asks to have more buttonholes, which means more buttons, and an extra ruffle on the waist.  But she begs me so politely and appears so thankful, if I grant these trifling favors, that I find myself indulging her too frequently.  She does the extra work herself, cheerfully and neatly, if not speedily, but closely watched by others.  She has learned as if by intuition that variety is the spice of life, but she seems unconscious of the fact that she makes the other girls discontented.  But she is so pleasant and obedient, as a rule, that minor faults may be forgiven her,” the white mother charitably concluded.

CHAPTER II.

As something quite unusual at that season in the Dakotas, there had been a thaw the day before, and a great quantity of mud had been tracked in on the girls’ side by the sewing classes coming from the schoolhouse, separate from the main mission building, to the upstairs room in which the sewing work was done.

Hannah Straight Tree quickly swept her portion of the hall, for there was but little mud on the teachers’ side, and was proceeding to her stairs before Cordelia Running Bird was half way along her floor.

“You have not taken up your dirt!  You have swept it over on my side!” exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, who, with all her close attention to her own work, kept a sharp eye on the other’s movements.

“There is little, and it will not be much work to take it up with yours,” was Hannah’s reply.  “When we finished yesterday I lent our dustpan to the middle dormitory girls—­they said theirs was too broken —­and they lost it.  Now they say they can borrow the south dormitory dustpan, and they shall not hunt ours.  You can always find things better than I can, so you must hunt it and take up my dirt,” was Hannah Straight Tree’s demand.

“Tokee!  How strange you talk!” exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, in amazement.  “The dormitory girls must ask for a new dustpan if they break theirs.  It is not the rule to lend things, for it makes confusion; if you lent the dustpan you must find it and take up your dirt, for I have more to do than you.  It is Number 8, and you can tell it when you see it.”

“You are very cross as well as proud and vain—­and you have learned the motto, every word.  If I had learned the motto I should try to be good,” said Hannah Straight Tree.

“The motto does not say a girl can tell us we must do a work that is not ours, and we must mind her.  I shall sweep your dirt back,” was the warm reply.