At last, kneeling by her bed, she said over the carefully chosen words, “Our Father, who art in heaven and everywhere, I love Daddy Joe’s fiddle very much. Better even than the real china tea-set that Cousin Gertrude sent me, or my string of beads. But I can’t make music on it, I’m afraid it’s too old. Mr. Green said it couldn’t be, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand him right. I want to ask him. Can’t Thou make him not call me wicked, nor Daddy Joe, nor ever tell Aunt Mean, ’cause Thou knows how mad she’d be.” Chee paused. This was the prayer she had planned, but something seemed lacking. After a moment she added, “And if Thou do, I’ll do something for Thee sometime, only I can’t think of anything now. Thy kingdom come. And finally save us. Amen.”
CHAPTER IV.
NEXT day Chee plucked up courage and said, “Aunt Mean, please may I pick a bunch of white peonies and carry’em down to Mrs. Green?” Aunt Mean was straightening the rag-carpet rugs on the kitchen floor. “Take hold the end of this mat, Chee. Well, I don’t know, seems like you wanted to be on the go the hull time. Only last week you rode over to the ‘Corners’ with your uncle, and ’tain’t a month since you was took to a reg’ler concert—in the town hall, too. But I don’t know but you might as well go, an’ stop on the way an’ ask Mis’ Snow for that apern pat’en she said she’d just’s liev I took.”
“Yes’um,” and Chee bounded away to gather her flowers.
“Beats all, that child does, still’s a mouse inside, wild’s a deer the minute she’s out.” This had been spoken to a neighbor who had “jest dropped in a minute.”
“Well, I s’pose it’s her Injun blood, isn’t it?” was the reply. “What a worry she must be to you, Miss Almeana. She’s well brung up, though, if she is half savage, I will say that.”
“Poor Joe’s runnin’ off an’ marryin’ was a dretful thing,” stated Aunt Mean, “dretful for him, and dretful for us.”
“No doubt she was purty, and I s’pose findin’ she’d lived so long with a white family made some difference,” the neighbor remarked. There was a shadow of romance about her nature; there was not even that about Aunt Mean’s.
“It was better’n though he’d found her naked in a wigwam, but ’twas bad ’nough,” dryly returned poor Joe’s sister.
“Prob’ly the greatest attraction was her voice. It must have been purty hard on so good Meth’dist people as you an’ Reuben be, to have one of your own kin go roun’ fiddlin’ fer shows with an Injun singin’ woman fer his wife.”