Wonota smiled rather grimly.  “The white people expect to see Indians in their national costumes.  Otherwise it would be no novelty, would it?  Why, some of the girls—­Osage girls of pure blood too—­at Three Rivers Station wear garments that are quite up to date.  You must not forget that at least we have the catalogs from the city stores to choose from, even if we do not actually get to the cities to shop.”

“Printer’s ink!  It is a great thing,” admitted Helen.  “I don’t suppose there are really any wild Indians left.”

The four girls and Aunt Kate were whisked in a big limousine to the play, and Wonota enjoyed the brilliant spectacle and the music as much as any of the white girls.

“Believe me,” whispered Jennie to Ruth, “give any kind of girl a chance to dress up and go to places like this, and see other girls all fussed up, as your Tommy says—­”

“Helen’s Tommy, you mean,” interposed Ruth.

“Rats!” murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang in her momentary disgust.  “Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is so.  Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat—­see that one yonder!  Isn’t it superb?”

“The poor birdie that lost it,” murmured Ruth.

“I declare, I don’t believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the reverse of the shield all the time,” sniffed Jennie Stone.  “And yet you do manage to dress pretty good yourself.”

“One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date,” declared the girl of the Red Mill.  “But that has nothing to do with Wonota.”

“I did get off the track, didn’t I?” laughed Jennie.  “Oh, well!  Dress her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fashion and she seems to fit into the picture all right—­”

“‘Foreign girl’ and ’American fashion’?” gasped Ruth.  “As—­as you sometimes say, Jennie, ‘how do you get that way’?  Wonota is a better American than we are.  Her ancestors did not have to come over in the Mayflower, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“Isn’t that a fact?” laughed Jennie.  “I certainly am forgetting everything I ever learned at school.  And, to tell the truth,” she added, making a little face at her chum, “I feel better for it.  I just crammed at Ardmore and Briarwood.”

Helen heard this.  She glanced scornfully over Jennie’s still too plump figure.  “I should say you did,” she observed.  “You used to create a famine at old Briarwood Hall, I remember.  But I would not brag about it, Heavy.”

“Crammed my brain, I mean,” wailed the plump girl.  “Can’t you let me forget my avoirdupois at all?”

“It is like the poor,” laughed Ruth.  “It is always with us, Jennie.  We cannot look at you and visualize your skeleton.  You are too well upholstered.”

This sort of banter did not appeal to the Indian girl.  She did not, in fact, hear much of it.  All her attention was given to the play on the stage and the brilliant audience.  She had traveled considerably with Dakota Joe’s show, but she had never seen anything like the audience in this Broadway theatre.