Big and Little Sisters - Theodora R. Jenness
"I am glad I have the red dress in my trunk, but they will meddle with
my other things and look at Susie's blue dress, and then roll it up in
such bad wrinkles," she said to herself. "Just like they will drop a
skein of feather-stitching silk and tramp it with their feet till it is
very dirty. Then some girl will pick it up to sew her doll clothes, and
there will not be enough for Susie's dress."
Cordelia Running Bird held her breath as these thoughts came to her.
"But I do not know if I can feather-stitch it now, for there is no one
to teach me, that I know of. Just like Hannah Straight Tree and the
dormitory girls will tell the whole school to hate me, and they will.
If I cannot get a large girl to help make the red dress, and I try to do
it all alone, it will fit so bad, and I cannot get it done in time.
What if I should tell my mother to have Susie stay at camp, and not once
come inside the yard Christmas time? Then she would not need the
dresses, and they could not call them issue goods, and not choose Susie
in the games, and shut their eyes at her."
Cordelia lay very still, but the thought of Susie's missing the
festivities by staying in the big building in the mission pasture, where
the Indian visitors camped in winter, was put from her in short order.
"Susie shall not stay in camp. I shall find a way to get the dresses
done, and she shall motion Jack Frost and see the Christmas tree. I
shall tell them I am tired of playing silly games, and Susie shall not
play, either, so they cannot leave her out. And I shall tell the school
they must not watch Susie motion, for they are such horrid Indians they
would scare her very bad. When Hannah Straight Tree's big and little
sister come into the playroom I shall walk close up to them and pull my
dress away, and look at it so sharp, and say, so Hannah hears me, 'Those
wild Indians have so many grease spots I am much afraid of catching
them.'"
While plotting these misdeeds Cordelia Running Bird fell asleep. A
young girl from the teachers' table brought her dinner on a tray and set
it by the bed without awaking her. She did not wake up until near the
middle of the afternoon. She found that the white mother had stolen
into the dormitory with a small book which she had placed upon the
pillow. There was a narrow white ribbon, frayed and yellow, wound
around the book and tied on one side in a bow. The rooms below now were
quiet, for the wind had lulled and the entire school was out of doors.
Looking from the window near her bed, Cordelia saw the broad, white
plains illumined with brilliant sunshine and the girls exercising on the
glittering crust of snow occasioned by the thaw. The little girls were
sliding down hill on boards and broken shovels, cast-off dripping-pans
and ash-pans--everything, indeed, that could be seized on for coasting.
A group of large and middle-sized girls were walking over the mission
pasture, stretching for a mile on every side. Another band of girls was
packed into a long, wide bob-sled on the point of starting with the
white mother to the little log post office down the river.
"Very lots of fun, and I am being punished here in bed!" Cordelia said
to herself, mournfully. "Now the bob-sled starts, and very loud the
sleigh-bells ring. The white mother drives, and she must hold the lines
so tight, for very fast the horses want to go. We go to the post office
by the al-pha-bet on Saturday, and this day it is the P's and R's--there
are no Q's--so it is my turn. Very fast I meant to feather-stitch, so I
could spare the time to go. Ee! There is Hannah Straight Tree in my
place. She made me talk Dakota and get punished. Now she gets my
sleigh-ride!" And Cordelia Running Bird threw herself back upon the
pillow, giving vent to wild, resentful tears.
When the tears had spent themselves the Indian girl raised her head and
saw the little book on the other pillow.
"Tokee! The white mother put it here. She always keeps it, and it
means that I can look at it now."
Cordelia unwound the ribbon, opening the little book.
"Annie's Bible, and I never thought of her to-day! Just like I am
forgetting her so fast. Here is Helen's letter. I shall read that
first."
[Illustration: She read the little note slowly.]
She took a little white note from a dainty envelope and read it slowly,
but with understanding that spoke of previous acquaintance with the
words:
"_Dear Annie_: Will you let this little Bible be your
friend and guide, as I have tried to have it for my friend
and guide since I have been a King's Daughter? I have
marked some verses I have learned and have recited in
the meeting of our circle, and I wish that you might care
to learn them and recite them in your meeting at the
school.
"The King's Daughters in the Far East love to think
about the Indian girls away out West, who are also
members of our circle. Isn't it a sweet thought, Annie,
that although so widely separated, we are all the children
of one family in Christ, and are cared for by the same
heavenly Father?
"Yours with loving interest,
"HELEN MERRIAM, Hartford, Conn.
"Aged 16."
"It came in Annie's mission box, and Helen was her unknown white
friend," said Cordelia Running Bird, as she put the letter back into the
envelope. "I shall next read Annie's letter." And she took another
little missive from the Bible, written with a pencil on the tablet paper
of the school, in wavering penmanship that showed the weakness of the
writer's hand. Cordelia read:
"_Dear Cordelia_: Annie Running Bird will leave this
Bible to Cordelia Running Bird, my sister, for I cannot
carry it to heaven, and in heaven I shall not need to read
the words that Jesus spoke on earth, for I shall hear him
speak up there. But Cordelia will not just yet be bearing
Jesus speak up there, and she will need to read this Bible
and must mind just what it tells her. Dear Cordelia,
you can have this Bible for your own when you are
fourteen birthdays, so you will be old enough to take
good care of it and read it very lots. But if you want
to borrow it before it is your own, the white mother will
please lend it to you, so you always give it back, and do
not lose the letters and the pieces of my hairs that will
be in it. I did not learn all of Helen's verses for the
King's Daughters' meeting, for I got too sick to study,
and my memory feels so queer. I have put a cross behind
the ones I learned, and, dear Cordelia, wilt you try to
learn them, too, and all the rest that Helen marked?
The one I tried to think of most is St. Matthew, chapter 5:44.
"Good-by, dear sister, for I cannot live much longer,
I am so pained with the hard coughing all the time. These
words I write so you will not forget me. I wish to see
my father and my mother and my little sister very much.
But if I cannot, you must give my love to them, and all
my other friends, and tell them they must meet me in
the better world. And you must, too.
"So again I say good-by, dear sister,
"ANNIE RUNNING BIRD,
"Aged 16."
"P. S.--Write good-by to Helen and my love."
"She lies at the agency. She sleeps with those that are happy," mused
Cordelia, looking at the lock of hair with reverent eyes. "It was very
cold one year ago this winter, when she had the whooping-cough so hard
it made her lungs so sick she could not live.
"My mother had the fever very long and hard at home and could not come
to watch her; my father came, but could not stay long, for my mother was
so sick. But the teachers took good care of Annie, and the large girls
helped them. I could only sit by her in daytime, for the teachers said
I was too young to stay up nights. The dormitory girls were very kind
to Annie, and they used to sit up nights, when they had worked all day
and were so tired, to watch her.
"Emma Two Bears has a sweet song, and one night when she was watching
Annie, and there was a blizzard, and the wind cried very loud, like many
dogs all round the house, Annie was afraid; so she asked would Emma sing
'The Sweet By and By,' and Emma sang it louder than the wind, but very
sweet. Annie said it made her feel so happy that again she would not be
afraid.
"And once more when Annie could not eat one bite of anything and was so
very faint, Hannah Straight Tree thought that she could drink some
rosebud porridge, so she ran away without permission, and waded through
the deep snow to the rosebushes up the river, to pick off some buds to
make the porridge. She froze her shortest right side toe, and a wild
steer watched her very fierce, but Hannah Straight Tree did not care,
for she was all the time thinking Annie was so faint. And Annie drank a
little porridge and told Hannah she was very glad indeed. And they did
not punish Hannah, for the rosebuds were for Annie.
"When the Indian preacher told at Annie's funeral how she was so good
and learned so many Bible verses for the King's Daughters' meetings,
there was much crying in the schoolhouse, for the girls all felt so bad.
And before I got into the wagon with my father, when we carried Annie to
the agency, Hannah Straight Tree whispered that she did not want to
sleep with anyone but me, and if they put another girl in bed with her
she would be sure to turn her back and never say one word to her.
"Now the dormitory girls and Hannah Straight Tree are my enemies. The
verse that Annie tried to think of most is all about enemies. I cannot
read it just now. I shall read some other verses first."
Many of the verses her sister had marked were familiar to Cordelia, for,
as Annie had requested, she had been allowed to take the little Bible
when in thoughtful mood, perhaps when kept within doors on a stormy
Sunday afternoon. She had read them often, asking explanation of the
hard words from the teachers, and had learned a number of the simplest
ones in preparation for her own admission to the King's Daughters
Circle, which would be before long, she had hoped.
"Here is one about the tongue, that has the straight marks Helen made,
and Annie's cross behind it. This I have not learned to say."
Cordelia Running Bird read aloud slowly: "'_Even so the tongue is a
little member, and boast-eth great things. Behold how great a matter a
little fire kind-leth_.'
"That means to brag with the tongue and make folks very cross. Hannah
Straight Tree bragged because her floor and stairs are always nicer than
my floor and stairs," Cordelia said. "But just like I have bragged
some, too," she added. "My tongue has talked so much because my father
is an agency policeman and my little sister has nice things. And I
bragged about my white memory and my store shoes. But I was only
talking to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and Hannah Straight Tree
went and told it."
She turned the leaves and found another text: "'_A soft answer turneth
away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger_.' I did not speak soft
when I told Hannah Straight Tree she was very dumb in school, and I was
glad Dolly could not motion in a single song, or even have an ugly green
dress, and I was not sorry that her big and little sister could not come
to school. And Dolly and Lucinda have not said mean things to me, so
why should I be cross at them? But Hannah would not find the dustpan
and take up her dirt, and that was very mean. Now here is one that I
have learned. I can say it without looking at the book."
Cordelia Running Bird shut her eyes and carefully re-peated: "'_Pride
goeth before de-struction, and a haught-y spirit before a fall_.'
Haughty means to feel stuck-up. The pail fell downstairs and made me
talk Dakota, so I had to come to bed, because I was stuck-up and made
Hannah Straight Tree cross. Just like they all would not be hating me
if I had not been haught-y. But the dormitory girls were very mean to
walk whole-feet on my wet floor. If they had walked heel or tiptoe I
should not have scolded to myself about the ugly issue shoes, and called
them shovel-feeted, and wished they had to lie in bed. But I did not
wish them to be cripples--only have a good long rest till I was through
scrubbing. But Hannah was mean to go and tell. I can find no verse
that will excuse her and the dormitory girls."
Here Cordelia Running Bird fell to pitying herself anew.
"I shall now read Annie's best verse, but it will be very hard to mind
those words that Jesus spoke."
Cordelia Running Bird wound the ribbon round the little Bible, tying it
with care, and laid the book close by her on the bed; then she ate her
dinner with a hearty relish. She had hardly finished when the door from
the front hall was opened, and the young white mother, rosy from her
sleigh-ride, looked into the dormitory. She saw the little Bible lying
near Cordelia, glanced inquiringly at the dark-faced girl, and then
smiled and nodded, to receive a cheerful smile in answer.
"Jump up quickly, dear, and dress," she said. "Some little girls are
going up the river to the store, and one of the girls is Cordelia
Running Bird."
Cordelia started out of bed in joyful haste.
"Are you ready to give back the Bible?" asked the white mother, coming
to the bed.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Cordelia Running Bird, handing her the little
book. "Thank you very much. It made me think of Annie, so I read it,
and it told me I must love my enemies, so just like I shall do it now."
"I am very glad the cross thoughts have left you," was the answer. "Now
put on your plaid dress and be ready in ten minutes."
Cordelia flew to get the plaid dress from the closet, and was ready and
downstairs in a twinkling. The little girls selected for the drive were
in the playroom putting on their hoods and coats in great delight.
Cordelia hurriedly put on her own, and, opening her cupboard, she
unlocked a doll trunk, taking out a tiny purse for coins, whose portly
sides bespoke some wealth within. She looked an instant at the blue
dress and the silk for feather-stitching, finding to her great relief
that they had not been touched. She locked them in the doll trunk, put
the little key into the purse, and whisked away.
"The store is much nicer than the post office," was her joyous
reflection, as she slipped the purse into her pocket on her way
outdoors. "Very long have I been saving this last part of all the money
that I earned tending baby; now I have a chance to spend it with my own
eyes."
Down the steep hill went the bob-sled to the great Missouri River, where
it took the straight, smooth road on the snow-laden ice. The sewing
teacher drove the horses, giving them free rein. The school-teacher sat
beside her on the seat, and Cordelia and the girls were snuggled down in
hay upon the bottom of the sled, with comforters for lap-robes.
The little log store was but two miles distant, and the party were not
long in reaching it. It stood upon a steep bluff on the opposite shore.
The white man who kept it dealt to some extent in Indian curiosities, of
which the two teachers were in quest to send as Christmas gifts to
Eastern friends.
"We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian dolls," said the
school-teacher to the trader when they had made known their errand.
[Illustration: "We wish to look especially at moccasins and Indian
dolls," said the teacher.]
"I've got some first-class moccasins, both porcupined and beaded, but no
Indian dolls," replied the trader. "Indian dolls are growing mighty
scarce, now the young squaws get so much put into their minds to do.
Only the old-timers understand the trick of making dolls."
"I am disappointed that you have none, for I wished to send one to my
little niece. But I must wait and try to get one elsewhere."
While the two teachers were examining the moccasins, Cordelia Running
Bird and the children were absorbed in looking at the china dolls and
other articles displayed upon the shelves and hanging from a wire
stretched above the counter.
"I was telling Hannah Straight Tree I should buy a big doll for Susie,
and a red silk handkerchief for my father, and a blue silk handkerchief
for my mother, and should hang them on the Christmas tree," said
Cordelia, partly to herself and partly to the little girls.
"Kee! I would not hang them," said a prudent little maid of ten years.
"Hannah Straight Tree told the other girls, and they are very yelous--
that is not the word, but I forget it--for they say they cannot hang
their people anything. They say you think the name 'Running Bird' is
very stylish, and you wish to hear it called so often at the Christmas
tree."
"Of course I shall not hang them," said Cordelia, firmly. "And I shall
not buy a doll for Susie, for my father always buys her one. I was
going to brag about her having two," she added candidly. "And I shall
not buy the silk handkerchiefs. They have the issue cotton ones and
some other ones that my father bought;" and she withdrew her eyes from
the display of cheap and gaudy handkerchiefs of so-called silk material
suspended from the wire. "I shall buy a cake pan with a steeple for my
mother, and a hairbrush for my father, for his hairs stick up so
straight and stiff. And I shall give the presents very still at camp,
so the school will not be jealous."
Having thus subdued her vanity, Cordelia Running Bird shyly bought the
articles she had selected from the trader's boy, who helped his father
in the store. She also bought four hair ribbons and a little bag of
candy, having left two silver quarters. She was considering how to
spend them when her eyes alighted on some little brown shoes and a pair
of stockings matching them, beneath a small glass show-case.
"Ver-r-y st-y-lish little shoes and stockings!" she exclaimed,
forgetting in her rapture to be shy before the trader's boy.
The small girls crowded upon tiptoe at the show-case, peering through
the glass sides to inspect the little wonders.
"Just the color of an Indian," observed a little maid of seven, holding
up her slim hand to compare it with the red-brown shoes and stockings.
"But they made them for a little white girl. They are like the ones the
little white visitor with the pink dress wore last summer."
"They are just as pretty for a little Indian girl," replied Cordelia.
"They would be just right for Susie," with a longing eye.
"But Susie does not need them," said the prudent little girl. "She has
a black shoes and stockings in your cupboard that are very nice."
"But she could have two pairs. These would be so pretty with the red
dress in the Jack Frost song. She could wear the black ones with the
blue dress," said Cordelia, seized anew with her besetting sin and
growing helpless in its grasp.
She asked the number of the shoes, finding it the same that Susie wore.
Then she asked the price. She could buy the shoes and stockings for a
dollar and a half.
"One dollar more than I have got," she said in feverish regret. She was
intently silent for a little, then she turned, and, running quickly to
the school-teacher, drew her to one side, where they could talk unheard.
"The Indian doll my grandmother made for me is very nice and new, for I
have kept it in my trunk so much. I will give it to you if you please to
give me one dollar--that is what they gave my grandmother for her dolls
when she would sell them at the agency," Cordelia said, in eager
undertone.
"Why, child, you surely cannot wish to sell your Indian doll that has a
beaded buckskin dress just like the one your grandmother wore when she
was your age?" said the school-teacher in surprise. "No, thank you,
dear. You wish to give me pleasure, but I cannot accept it, for I know
you love the little Indian grandmother better than you could the
prettiest white doll in the Christmas box," she added, gratefully.
"It is very Indian-minded, and I do not now care for it," replied the
girl, with a clouded face. "I wish to buy the little brown shoes and
stockings in the glass box," pointing to the show-case. "I have only
fifty cents."
"Why, of course, Cordelia, if you really wish to sell it," was the
response. "The shoes and stockings are for Susie, I suppose, but are
not the black ones nice enough?"
Cordelia had displayed the little black shoes and stockings to the
teachers with a deal of pride.
"But the brown ones are much prettier for the Jack Frost song," she
argued, pressingly.
"Very well," replied the teacher, opening her purse and handing her the
dollar, with a sorry look. "Perhaps, however, we would better see the
little things before you buy them."
The brown shoes and stockings were examined by the teachers and were
thought quite satisfactory for the price. Cordelia bought them
breathlessly and hid them in her coat pocket to insure their safety.
But the home-going in the early moonlight evening was less joyous than
had been the journey to the store. To the young Sioux girl the
sleigh-bells seemed to jingle harshly, and the gumbo hills, whose tops
were bare of snow, seemed frowning blackly from across the river.
Cordelia Running Bird passed some peppermints to the children, which
awoke a burst of gratitude.
"We little girls shall always choose Susie in the games," said one.
"Yes," exclaimed another, "Hannah Straight Tree and the dormitory girls
have told us not to, but we shall."
"Ee! Talk lower so the teacher will not hear you," said Cordelia, with
a sudden flutter of the breath. "You must choose Dolly half the time--
if Susie plays."
"She is too bad-looking," said a third. "Susie has two pairs of pretty
shoes, and two nice dresses, and we like her better."
"But you must not talk that way before the larger girls," Cordelia
cautioned in an undertone. "Doily has a new hair ribbon like the red
one I have bought for Susie--both are in my lap. And I have bought a
pink one for Lucinda. I wish to do them good--Hannah Straight Tree,
too. You must tell the larger girls you like Dolly just as well as
Susie. If they wear alike ribbons on their braids it will be nice."
"A new ribbon cannot dress Dolly up," remarked the prudent little girl.
"The points of her hairs will look like Susie's points, and that is
all."
CHAPTER V.
Sunday morning there was wonder in the school to see Cordelia Running
Bird in the heavy government shoes that had been lying in her cupboard
since the distribution of the clothing early in the fall. And when it
was observed that she had dressed for Sunday-school and had not changed
the shoes the wonder grew to pure amazement.
"Ee! What ails the vainest girl in South Dakota? She will now be
wearing issue shoes to Sunday-school!" exclaimed a dormitory girl, among
a group of large and middle-sized pupils gathered in the music room,
adjoining the playroom, in Sunday-school attire.
Cordelia sat in a corner with her eyes upon her Sunday-school lesson.
Her feet were planted side by side as if with studied care.
"Just like she is very scared because the large and middle-sized girls
do not speak to her since yesterday. She is not sorry, only scared,"
said Hannah Straight Tree. "See, she sticks her feet out very far, so
we will see the shoes and think she is not vain; but we will not believe
her. She has found the dustpan, too, because she is so scared of me.
She bragged so much she made me cross, so I told her she must find it
and take up my dirt, yesterday. She minded me this morning."
"She will be more scared before we speak to her," remarked the bread
girl. "Ver-r-y ugly issue shoes! She ought to wear a dragging dress to
hide them."
There was a burst of laughter, while the keen, black eyes of the entire
group were fixed upon Cordelia Running Bird's feet. She did not draw
them back nor lift her eyes, but suddenly her dusky face grew scarlet,
and there was a nervous trembling of her lips that moved persistently in
an attempted study of the lesson. She had heard the words, as the girls
intended she should. They were speaking in Dakota without fear of being
understood by the white mother, who was in the playroom passing pennies
for the missionary plate.
The white mother heard the laugh and stepped into the space between the
sliding doors, which were ajar. She saw the girls' resentment at a
glance, and that it was directed at Cordelia Running Bird. She was
troubled, but could not combat the feeling that had spread throughout
the school, to mar the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, which these
Indian girls were wont to keep in reverent spirit.
"She has bought another pair of shoes for Susie--stockings, too--not
black ones, like the little schoolgirls have to wear for best, but very
stylish brown ones," Hannah Straight Tree said. "She put them in her
trunk last night. I crept upstairs and watched her, for the children
said she had them in her pocket. The large and middle-sized girls must
not see them till the entertainment, but the little girls keep saying
they are like the ones the little white visitor that wore the dress that
was pink dim-i-ty, had on. Ver-ry white-minded shoes! She wants to
hire me to like her, if she does not wish to have Dolly in the Jack
Frost song with Susie, so she bought new hair ribbons at the store for
Dolly and Lucinda. She told the little girls because she knew they
would tell me. But Dolly and Lucinda shall not wear them. Very cotton
silk, of course."