ne, while the mother and the biggest brother were saluting her as
Victoria.

Matters were still in this unsettled condition when the army chaplain
rode in from the reservation one night late in the summer. He was on his
way to a big Sioux tepee camp, and carried in the saddle-bags flung
across his pommel a well-worn Bible and a brace of pistols. As he
entered the sitting-room, the little girl eyed him tremblingly, for his
spurs jingled loudly as he strode, and the leather fringe on his
riding-breeches snapped against his high boot-legs.

He was grieved to find the farm-house in such a state, and counseled
the little girl's mother to delay the christening no longer, suggesting
a private baptism, such as the big brothers had had. But to no effect.
She declared that a private baptism might do very well for boys, but
that the only daughter in the family should be named with more ceremony.
The chaplain, finding that he could not settle the question, made it the
subject of his evening prayer in the home circle.

The fame of the baptismal robe and the white kid shoes had gone far and
wide over the prairie, and they were talked of from the valley of the
Missouri to Devil's Lake, and from the pipestone country to the
reservations. So every week of that summer the family welcomed
squatters' wives from the scattered claims round about, and women from
the northern forts, whose eyes, strange to dainty things or long starved
of them, fed greedily on the smooth skin of the ivory boots and the soft
folds of the dress. Shortly after the chaplain's stay, a swarthy Polish
woman, shod in buckskin, came on a pilgrimage to the farm-house, and the
little girl's mother, eager to show her handiwork, lifted the dress
tenderly, but with a flourish, from the pasteboard box where it lay upon
wild-rose leaves and a fragrant red apple, and held it against the
little girl with one hand, while with the other she displayed the
pretty boots. The big brothers, hurrying from the barn-yard, crowded one
another to share in the triumph.

But suddenly their delight was changed to dismay. For the little girl's
mother, eager to win more praise from the Polish woman, had started to
deck the little girl in the dress and shoes, and had discovered that the
beautiful robe was too short and too narrow for its plump wearer, while
its sleeves left her fat wrists bare to the elbow. And the white kid
shoes would not even go on!

The youngest brother started for the p