“Tell it once more, Other Mother. That beau’ful one ’bout the little papoose that hadn’t any shoes, and the flowers growed her some. Just like mine”; holding up her own tiny moccasined feet, and rubbing them together in the comfortable heat.
“Once upon a time a little girl papoose was lost. The enemies of her people had come to her father’s village, and had scattered all her tribe. There was not one of them left alive except the little maid.”
“I guess that’s just like Kitty, isn’t it?”
“No. No, it is not,” replied the story-teller, quickly. For she had felt a shiver run through Gaspar’s body, and pressed it close in warm protection. “No. It is not like either of you. For to you is Wahneenah, the Mother; the sister of a chief who lives and is powerful. But this was away in the long past, before even I was born. So the girl papoose found herself wandering on the prairie, and it was the time of frost. The ground was frozen beneath the grasses, which were stiff and rough and cut the tender feet that a mother’s hand had hitherto carried in her own palm.”
“Show me how, Mother Wahneenah.”
“Just this way Sweetheart,” clasping the tiny moccasins in a loving caress.
“Tell some more. I guess the fire is going to make Kitty sleepy, by and by.”
“Sleep, then, if you will, Girl-Child.”
“And then?”
“Then, when the little one was very cold and tired and lonely she remembered something: it was that she had seen her own mother lift her two hands to the sky and ask the Great Spirit for all she might need.”