nt little girl. "We like Cordelia Running Bird, for
she does not scold us little girls and tell us we are in the way, as you
do," was the bold defense. "We shall choose Susie in the games."

"If the little girls choose Susie, the large and middle-sized girls can
pull their hairs when they are combing them," was the appalling threat
from Hannah Straight Tree. "If they tell the teachers we can say their
hairs were snarly and we could not help it."

"Ee! We shall not pull the little girls' hairs and tell a lie," said
Emma Two Bears, rallying her honest principles. "We can treat Cordelia
Running Bird cross because she called us shovel-feeted, and is very
vain, so we should punish her, but we will not be wicked."

"I did not say we shall--I said we can," retracted Hannah, in confusion.

"The girls were very mean to walk whole-feet where she was scrubbing,"
said the playroom girl, who knew from sad experience what Cordelia's
trials must have been. "It makes me very cross because the little girls
will not stay out or, sit still on the benches when I scrub the
playroom, and they do not make big tracks, if they do walk whole-feet."

"You can speak to her, because she could not call you shovel-feeted, for
the white mother lets you always wear the mission shoes," said Hannah
Straight Tree, growing bold again.

"Because I have an onion--no, a bunion--on my foot. The issue shoes
would make it worse. Just like there is no girl in school that does not
hate to have the horrid whole-feet tracks on her wet floor."

"I hate them--some," confessed a middle dormitory girl.

"I, too," admitted a south dormitory girl. "I threw a few drops of
scrub water on a girl that walked whole-feet."

"I told a girl her tracks were so big, just like she had on snowshoes,"
said a north dormitory girl, relentingly.

"Of course, I made the very biggest kind of tracks on Cordelia Running
Bird's wet floor," said the largest girl; "but if we walk tiptoe all the
other girls will laugh and say, 'See how she nips along. She tries to
walk so nice, just like the teachers.' And if we are walking on our
heels they say, 'Very awkward; hear her tramp just like a steer.' But
it is not kind to walk whole-feet."

The race mood was upon the wane, and Hannah Straight Tree was fast
losing influence.

"I would not have cared so much about the blue dress and the black shoes
and stockings, but she bought the red dress and the brown shoes and
stockings, wh