“Yes. All your mother now. My Sun Maid. My Girl-Child. My papoose!”
“That is nice. But I’m hungry. Give me my breakfast, Other Mother. Then I will go seek my bunny rabbit, that runned away, and my yellow posies that went to sleep when I did. Did you put them to bed, too, Other Mother?”
“There are many which shall wake for you, papoose,” answered the woman, promptly; for though she did not understand about the missing blossoms, it was fortunate that she did both understand and speak the language of her adopted daughter. Her dead husband had been the tribe’s interpreter, and both from him and from the Fort’s chaplain she had acquired considerable knowledge.
Until her widowhood and voluntary seclusion the Woman-Who-Mourns had been a person of note at Muck-otey-pokee; and now by her guardianship of this stranger white child she bade fair to again become such.
CHAPTER II.
TWO FOR BREAKFAST.
The dead son of the Woman-Who-Mourns had never been disobedient, and small Kitty Briscoe had never obeyed anybody. She had laughed and frolicked her way through all rules and over all obstacles with a merry indifference that would have been insolent had it been less innocent and charming. During her short life the orphan had heard no voice but was full of tenderness, toward her at least; and every babyish misdemeanor had been pardoned almost before it was committed, by reason of her exceeding loveliness and overflowing affection. She had so loved all that she feared none, and not one of the kind mothers at the Fort had felt it her especial duty to discipline so sweet and fearless a nature. By and by, when she grew older, why, of course, the child must come under the yoke, like other children of that stern generation; but for the present, what was she but an ignorant baby, a motherless babe at that?