I hope the
feeling will subside, however, in a day or two. So many Christmas
pleasures are in prospect that the girls will surely have no room for
strife and envy in their hearts."
Here the teachers hastened to the mission building to discharge the
duties that devolved upon them after Sunday-school.
Just before sun\et Monday afternoon a flock of girls were gathered at
the stile in front, watching with intensity a solitary little figure
moving slowly on a far side of the pasture, near the barbed wire fence.
"Again there walks Cordelia Running Bird very far away," said Hannah
Straight Tree. "She has walked alone two afternoons. She must be
thinking very hard."
"She is going on the mourner's walk," observed the girl who kept the
playroom. "When an Indian walks alone, so far and very slow, that means
they are too sad. She cannot be happy, for the large girls--only me--and
the middle-sized girls do not talk to her. Then, too, of course, she
thinks of Annie. It was just one year ago this Monday that they took
her to the agency. The large girls did not wash, because there was a
funeral."
"And Cordelia Running Bird was so proud because the girls all cried,"
said Hannah. "Now I wish we had not cried."
"Kee! You must not be so mean as that," exclaimed the largest girl, in
shocked surprise.
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