“If only the Little Father would not take them all away from us, as soon as they can walk, almost, to fill his school!” mourned an older woman.
“Did you know that the Little Father had given his permission for a dance to-night?” whispered a flighty girl to Blue Earth, whose face lighted up quickly at the news. Then she glanced half guiltily at her friend, justly fearing that the Indian dance might be under a ban. The comfortable house and abundance of food, to say nothing of sympathetic companionship, were too good to risk lightly.
“But you went to the white people’s dances when you were in the East,” she pleaded, after the others had gone, and the slow, teasing throbs of the dance-drum resounded through the village.
“That’s quite different,” Yellow Star explained. “We want our people to forget these exciting customs, and care for better things,” she reasoned, gently.
“But I’m not going to dance; I only want to look on a little while,” begged Blue Earth, as humbly as a child.
“All the white people do that; even the Little Father himself,” pronounced Grandmother.
“Then, will you promise to come home as soon as it is dark?”
“Oh, yes!” cried the other, eagerly.
But, like another Cinderella, she forgot, and lingered near an open window of the large, circular dance-house, her baby asleep on her back, gazing fascinated on the gorgeous, barbaric spectacle of painted, half-clad men executing their wonderful steps and poses, till aroused by a touch on her arm and a sweet, reproachful voice in her ear. And this is the true story of how the field matron chanced to be observed by old Standing Cloud and others, in the outer circle of the Grass Dance after dark of a balmy September evening, a fact which came duly to Jack Pepper’s ears and made her some little trouble, later on.