--you _shall_ have one
this year, you dear thing!" and Molly Elliston flung down the Christmas
muffler she was knitting, and stared at her visitor, as if she could
scarcely believe what she had just confessed to her. The visitor
laughed, showing a beautiful row of small white teeth as she did so. She
was a charming little maiden of twelve or thirteen, this visitor,--a
charming little maiden with the darkest of dark hair that hung in a
thick shining braid tied at the end with a broad red ribbon. Molly
Elliston thought she was a beauty, as she looked at her dimpled smiling
face,--a beauty, though she _was_ an Indian. Yes, this charming little
maiden was an Indian, belonging to what was once a great and powerful
tribe. When, three years ago, Molly Elliston had come out to the far
Northwest with her mother to join her father on his ranch, she had
thought she should never feel anything but aversion to an Indian. Molly
was then seven years old, and had always lived at some military post,
for her father had been an army officer until the three years before,
when he had given up his commission to enter into partnership with his
brother upon a sheep and cattle ranch. A few miles from this ranch was
an Indian reservation. The tribe that occupied it had for a long time
been quite friendly with white people, and were therefore not altogether
unwelcome neighbors to the Ellistons. Molly thought they were very
welcome, indeed, when one day, in the third summer of her ranch life,
she made the acquaintance of this pretty Wallula, who was not only
pretty, but very intelligent, and of a loving disposition that responded
gladly to Molly's friendly advances.

"But to think that you've never had a Christmas present!" exclaimed
Molly again, as Wallula's laugh rippled out. "If I'd _only_ known you
the first year we came! But I'll make it up _this_ year, you'll see; and
oh! oh!" clapping her hands at a sudden thought, "I know--I know what
I'll do! Tell you?" as Wallula clapped _her_ hands and cried, "Oh, tell
me, tell me!" "Of course I sha'n't tell you; that would spoil the whole.
Why, that's part of the fun that we don't tell what we are going to do.
It is all a secret until Christmas eve or Christmas morning."

"Yes, I know,--Metalka told me; but I forgot."

"Of course your sister must have known all about Christmas after she
came back from school. Why didn't _she_ make you a Christmas present,
then, Lula?"

"Metalka?" A cloud came over t