e lend it to you, so you always give it back, and do
not lose the letters and the pieces of my hairs that will
be in it. I did not learn all of Helen's verses for the
King's Daughters' meeting, for I got too sick to study,
and my memory feels so queer. I have put a cross behind
the ones I learned, and, dear Cordelia, wilt you try to
learn them, too, and all the rest that Helen marked?
The one I tried to think of most is St. Matthew, chapter 5:44.
"Good-by, dear sister, for I cannot live much longer,
I am so pained with the hard coughing all the time. These
words I write so you will not forget me. I wish to see
my father and my mother and my little sister very much.
But if I cannot, you must give my love to them, and all
my other friends, and tell them they must meet me in
the better world. And you must, too.
"So again I say good-by, dear sister,
"ANNIE RUNNING BIRD,
"Aged 16."
"P. S.--Write good-by to Helen and my love."
"She lies at the agency. She sleeps with those that are happy," mused
Cordelia, looking at the lock of hair with reverent eyes. "It was very
cold one year ago this winter, when she had the whooping-cough so hard
it made her lungs so sick she could not live.
"My mother had the fever very long and hard at home and could not come
to watch her; my father came, but could not stay long, for my mother was
so sick. But the teachers took good care of Annie, and the large girls
helped them. I could only sit by her in daytime, for the teachers said
I was too young to stay up nights. The dormitory girls were very kind
to Annie, and they used to sit up nights, when they had worked all day
and were so tired, to watch her.
"Emma Two Bears has a sweet song, and one night when she was watching
Annie, and there was a blizzard, and the wind cried very loud, like many
dogs all round the house, Annie was afraid; so she asked would Emma sing
'The Sweet By and By,' and Emma sang it louder than the wind, but very
sweet. Annie said it made her feel so happy that again she would not be
afraid.
"And once more when Annie could not eat one bite of anything and was so
very faint, Hannah Straight Tree thought that she could drink some
rosebud porridge, so she ran away without permission, and waded through
the deep snow to the rosebushes up the river, to pick off some buds to
make the porridge. She froze her shortest right side toe, and a wild
steer watch
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