In rushing through a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and
almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her
hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat
and dropped it on the ground. She picked it up and hung it by the
draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong
course there came a corresponding halt of purpose. So she turned aside
and walked a few yards down the hollow, where she found a log on which
to seat herself.
Presently she murmured in the passive monotone of a despairing Indian
girl: "Just like I have to stop and think before I do it. If I drown
the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings and the red dress and
the brown shoes and stockings, I can write to Hannah Straight Tree, for
she will not let me speak to her: 'Now you see I truly am not vain, for
I have put the Christmas clothes for Susie in my workbag, and a stone,
so it would sink, and I have drowned them in the airhole in the middle
of the river.'
"But again that would be bragging," was her puzzled afterthought. "Just
like Jesus is not helping me one bit, for very fast I went and bought
the brown shoes and stockings after I had prayed to stop being vain.
And the teachers looked so sorry, and I was ashamed to tell the white
mother.
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