CHAPTER II
THE GIRL FROM DAKOTA
Lucy Waring had no warriors’ blood that she knew of to fall back upon, so perhaps it was partly her long association with the stoics of the plains that made it possible for her to turn over her little girl to the “new teacher,” the very next day, with the stiff smile of her New England forebears under social duress—to drag her eyes away from the wild, despairing courage of Yellow Star’s great black ones—to walk quite steadily out of the door and down the long flight of wooden steps and along the drowsy village street, without even a backward look to share or soften the imaginary terrors of School.
These took no worse form, just at first, than the curious but not unfriendly stares of forty-two pairs of critical young eyes, and the penetrating susurrus of forty-two edged voices, all of which the Indian girl felt with a pricking and tingling anguish in every fiber of her sensitive body, as she sat rigid in a front seat, directly facing the teacher’s desk.
Then the second bell rang, and there was a hush. As soon as she could, after opening exercises, Miss Morrison supplied the new pupil with pen and ink and the usual blank for the school record. It looked something like this:
- Your name in full.
- Date of birth. Year, month and day.
- Name of father.
- Father’s occupation.
- School previously attended.
- What grade were you in?
A wild glance down the length of the paper made it certain that her worst fears had been promptly realized, and poor Stella, after setting down her new name, Stella Waring, sat staring at the other five questions, fairly tense with nervous dread, until her busy teacher had found time to note the situation. Then she bent over the girl from Dakota and asked very kindly, in a low voice:
“Why don’t you put down your age and your father’s name, Stella?”