“Don’t what, my little Puritan?” asked Robert.
“Don’t raise hopes which you know can never be realized,” answered Marian.
Robert was silent for a while, and then said, “I reckon my orthodox cousin is right;” then turning to Orianna, he asked how her reading progressed.
Charlie answered for her, saying that she could read in words of one syllable as well as any one, and that she knew a great deal besides! Robert was about testing her powers of scholarship, when they were joined by George Wilder, before whom Orianna absolutely refused to open her mouth, and in a few moments she arose and left them, saying, “I shall come again to-morrow.”
That night, by the wigwam fire, Narretta was listening to her daughter’s account of the “white dove,” as she called Marian. Suddenly a light seemed to dawn on Orianna’s mind, and clasping her hands together she said, “Mother, do you remember when I was sick, many, many moons ago?”
“Yes, child,” answered Narretta, and Orianna continued: “I slept a long time, I knew, but when I woke, I remember that you, or some one else, said, “She is getting white; it will never do.” Then I looked at my hands, and they were almost as fair as Marian’s, but you washed me with something, and I was dark again. Tell me, mother, was I turning white?”
“Turning white! No child,” said Narretta; “now shut up and get to bed.”
Orianna obeyed, but she could not sleep, and about midnight she stole out at the door, and going to the spring, for more than half an hour she bathed her face and hands, hoping to wash off the offensive colour. But all her efforts were vain, and then on the withered leaves she knelt, and prayed to the white man’s God,—the God who, Charlie had said, could do everything. “Make Orianna white, make her white,” were the only words she uttered, but around her heart there gathered confidence that her prayer would be answered, and impatiently she waited for the morrow’s light.
“Mother, am I white?” aroused Narretta from her slumbers, just as the first sunlight fell across the floor.
“White! No; blacker than ever,” was the gruff answer, and Orianna’s faith in “Charlie’s God” was shaken.