Cordelia
brought a shoe-box from her cupboard in the playroom and applied it as
an inconvenient dustpan. Meanwhile dustpan Number 8 remained in the
darkest corner of the middle dormitory closet, where it had been pushed
in the rush of clearing up the day before.
Cordelia Running Bird's work of making clean her floor and stairs was
even harder than she had expected. Never had there seemed so many
errands to and fro by those who did the weekly cleaning in the three
dormitories, numbering quite a force. The thaw had ended in a freezing
snow squall in the night, but a sufficient quantity of mud was clinging
to the broad soles of the government shoes that tramped across
Cordelia's wet floor to insure a startling trail of footprints.
"I cannot keep them up, they come again so fast," she murmured to
herself in grim despair, while wringing out her mop-rag to attack a line
of tracks imprinted by the largest girl in school, in going to and from
the laundry to dispose of laid-off sheets and pillow-cases. "_Ver-ry
hor-r-i-d_ pictures of the ugly issue shoes. I will not wear them. I
am wearing kid store shoes my father buys for every day. The dormitory
girls are shovel-feeted, and I Wish they could not walk one step--only
lie in bed!"
She was overheard by Hannah Straight Tree, coming up the girls' stairs
at that moment.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25