"I'll tell Uncle Fred," said Rose.
"Yes, I guess that's what you'd better do," replied her mother. "Come up and sit down," she said to the Indian girl, but the little maiden Rose had found on the plain did not seem to understand. She looked at the chair which Mrs. Bunker pulled out from against the house, however, and then, with another shy smile, sat down in it.
"Poor thing," said Mrs. Bunker. "Maybe she belongs to Red Feather, and she may be lost. I wish she could talk to me, or that I could speak her language. I wonder——"
But just then Rose came hurrying back, not only with Uncle Fred, but with Daddy Bunker and Red Feather.
"What's all this I hear, about Rose going out in the fields and finding a lost papoose?" asked Uncle Fred.
"Well, here she is!" replied Mother Bunker.
Before any one else could say or do anything, Red Feather sprang forward, as well as he could on his lame foot, and, a moment later, had clasped the Indian girl in his arms. She clung to him, and they talked very fast in their own language.
Then Red Feather turned to Uncle Fred, and, motioning to Rose, said:
"She find lost papoose. Me glad!"
"So that's what he was trying to tell us!" exclaimed Uncle Fred. "Red Feather lost his little girl (his papoose as he calls her, though she isn't a baby), and he set out to find her. Then he hurt his foot and couldn't walk very well, so he came here. And that's what he meant when he tried to ask us if we had another—an Indian child—larger than Russ. This girl is bigger than Russ."