"You know
the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing. If they have
to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do
not make big tracks. But all the children on my side walk whole-feet
over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and
muddy. Ugh! big tracks they make! But I have learned the motto, every
word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work."
Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls
flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar
monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:
"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places,
the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be
said, 'Well done.'"
"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said
Hannah Straight Tree. "I do not like to think hard or work hard. I am
glad I have the teachers' side."
"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place,
like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of
wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school.
The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live.
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