A long, thin girl of thirteen or so, in a starched blue gingham frock nearly to her sharp knees, who looked somehow as if blown straight forward by a strong wind, and a plump bud of a fair-haired damsel in pink, stood close together in an eddy of the murmuring stream.
“I don’t think it’s fair, Doris; no, I don’t!” were the long girl’s first words earnestly spoken, as she tossed the lank locks back from her eager face with a characteristic gesture.
“Don’t think what’s fair?” queried Doris, serenely. “Oh, Sin, you’ve dropped your glasses!”
“Bother the glasses—you know what I mean. That wild Indian girl from the ‘land of the Ojibways,’ or wherever it is they say she’s coming to our school, and the girls will make her life one long misery, just because she wears a red blanket, prob’ly, and a feather or two in her straight, black hair—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sin Parker. She never wore a blanket in her life, so there!”
“Why—why—isn’t she a sure-’nough Indian, then, after all?” stammered romance-loving Cynthia, dropping the glasses again in her excitement. “And how do you happen to know so much about it, Doris Brown?”
“Well, I do know; mother was out calling yesterday afternoon, and she’s heard all about it. I expect she’s over at the Spellman house now. You see, it’s this way…” And the two girls, with arms about each other’s waists and absorbed faces, drifted through the big doors in their turn and followed a chattering, fluttering throng down the wide, elm-lined village street.
In the prim parlor of an old New England homestead, watched over by the ghostly crayon portraits of departed ancestors, the fate of the brown-skinned little stranger was equally the topic of discussion.
Mrs. Brown, a stout, motherly lady in a creaking black silk, had timed her call neatly for the second day after the arrival from the west of Miss Spellman’s widowed sister, whose husband had lived for twenty years as a missionary among the Indians, and her unusual charge.
“No, I was never in favor of bringing the child to Laurel. I strongly advised Lucy to place her at once in one of the excellent Government boarding-schools for Indian children. I understand that they are everything that could be desired for a girl in her position—clean and well-managed—the common branches thoroughly taught, together with housework and sewing.”