eceive."
I would give the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings to the
little girl named Dolly Straight Tree.'"

Cordelia looked another minute at the star.

"Of course Annie cannot speak those words up there, but she would like
to have me do it, and my father and my mother would not care, for I
should tell them just like Annie thought I ought to; and they always let
me do a thing I want to, anyhow.

"If an Indian likes another Indian very much he will give him a big
present. My father told an Indian man one time, 'I am your friend, so I
shall give you a pony.' And he did. And the Indian man told my father,
'I am your friend, so I shall give you a steer.' And a white man
laughed and said it was a good trade. But the Indians did not laugh.
They said my father and the other Indian were very generous.

"Now I have found the right way, and it makes me very happier, and I
shall not change my thoughts." in firm relief. "I shall do this kind:
Till Dolly and Lucinda come I shall not say one word to any girl, or
even tell the white mother. Then Susie's best things I shall give to
Hannah Straight Tree in a way that will surprise her. Tokee! there rings
the half-hour bell till supper, and I am down here, and it is
moonlight."

Cordelia hastily replaced the best things in the bag and scampered home.

CHAPTER VII.

Cordelia Running Bird carried out her plan of asking Jessie Turning
Heart, the playroom girl, to help her make the red dress, and the latter
willingly agreed to "trade work," and escape bringing in the wood to the
torture of her lame foot.

Cordelia found that she had undertaken no light task, for there were
violent snowstorms in the next two weeks, and an enormous quantity of
wood was swallowed by the great stove in the playroom, which must needs
be kept red-hot from long before dawn until bedtime, to dispel the
freezing atmosphere within.

Owing to the influence of the playroom girl, the large and middle-sized
girls in general ceased to be intensely hostile to Cordelia, but they
did not break the seal of silence, so she could not ask help from among
them. The small girls showed their friendship for Cordelia now and then
by marching in a line behind her from the wood-yard laden with what fuel
they could bring, or even going down the path the older girls had broken
to the flats for willow fagots, which they tied upon their backs and
brought to her for kindling.

Hannah Straight Tree tried Co