The strangers were received with the utmost friendliness, but their stock of English was so very scanty that little information could be gained from them.  The man pointed to the child, and said, “Wik-a-nee, me go way she.”  And the woman said, “Me tank.”  No further light was ever thrown upon Willie’s adventure in finding a pappoose alone on the prairie.  The woman unstrapped from her shoulder a string of baskets, which she laid upon the ground.  Moppet said something to her mother, and placed her hand on a small one brightly stained with red and yellow.  The basket was given to her, and she immediately presented it to Willie.  At the same time the Indian woman offered a large basket to Mrs. Wharton, pointing to the child, and saying, “Wik-a-nee.  Me tank.”  Money was offered her, but she shook her head, and repeated, “Wik-a-nee.  Me tank.”  The man also refused the coin, with a slow motion of his head, saying, “Me tank.”  They ate of the food that was offered them, and received a salted fish and bread with “Me tank.”

“Mother,” exclaimed Willie, “I want to give Moppet something.  May I give her my Guinea-peas?”

“Certainly, my son, if you wish to,” she replied.

He ran into the cabin, and came out with a tin box.  When he uncovered it, and showed Moppet the bright scarlet seeds, each with a shining black spot, her dark eyes glowed, and she uttered a joyous “Eugh!” The passive, sad expression of the Indian woman’s countenance almost brightened into a smile, as she said, “Wik-a-nee tank.”

After resting awhile, she again strapped the baskets on her shoulder, and taking her little one by the hand, they resumed their tramp across the prairie,—­no one knowing whence they came, or whither they were going.  As far as they could be seen, it was noticed that the child looked back from time to time.  She was saying to her mother she wished they could take that little pale-faced boy with them.

“So Moppet is gone,” said Charley.  “I wonder whether we shall ever see her again.”  Willie heaved a sigh, and said, “I wish she was my little sister.”

Thus met two innocent little beings, unconscious representatives of races widely separated in moral and intellectual culture, but children of the same Heavenly Father, and equally subject to the attractions of great Mother Nature.  Blessed childhood, that yields spontaneously to those attractions, ignoring all distinctions of pride or prejudice!  Verily, we should lose all companionship with angels, were it not for the ladder of childhood, on which they descend to meet us.

It was a pleasant ripple in the dull stream of their monotonous life, that little adventure of the stray pappoose.  At almost every gathering of the household, for several days after, something was recalled of her uncouth, yet interesting looks, and of her wild, yet winning ways.  Charley persisted in his opinion that “Moppet would be pretty, if she wore her hair like folks.”