"I did not say we shall—I said we can," retracted Hannah, in confusion.
"The girls were very mean to walk whole-feet where she was scrubbing," said the playroom girl, who knew from sad experience what Cordelia's trials must have been. "It makes me very cross because the little girls will not stay out or, sit still on the benches when I scrub the playroom, and they do not make big tracks, if they do walk whole-feet."
"You can speak to her, because she could not call you shovel-feeted, for the white mother lets you always wear the mission shoes," said Hannah Straight Tree, growing bold again.
"Because I have an onion—no, a bunion—on my foot. The issue shoes would make it worse. Just like there is no girl in school that does not hate to have the horrid whole-feet tracks on her wet floor."
"I hate them—some," confessed a middle dormitory girl.
"I, too," admitted a south dormitory girl. "I threw a few drops of scrub water on a girl that walked whole-feet."
"I told a girl her tracks were so big, just like she had on snowshoes," said a north dormitory girl, relentingly.
"Of course, I made the very biggest kind of tracks on Cordelia Running Bird's wet floor," said the largest girl; "but if we walk tiptoe all the other girls will laugh and say, 'See how she nips along. She tries to walk so nice, just like the teachers.' And if we are walking on our heels they say, 'Very awkward; hear her tramp just like a steer.' But it is not kind to walk whole-feet."
The race mood was upon the wane, and Hannah Straight Tree was fast losing influence.
"I would not have cared so much about the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings, but she bought the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings, when her little sister does not need them," Hannah argued in an injured tone.