"She did not buy them with your money," said the playroom girl. "You would not have taken care of a cross baby four weeks, and missed a plum picnic, and not played a leap, to earn pretty things for Dolly. You are much too lazy."
"Now I shall not stay another minute!" springing from the stile in deep chagrin. "You all can like Cordelia Running Bird if you want to, but I shall not like her."
Hannah Straight Tree ran into the house, and those remaining turned again to watch Cordelia. She had reached a sloping bluff, down which the fence extended to the flats beside the river. She stood a moment on the edge, then wrapped her clothes about her and sat down on the crust. Presently she disappeared.
"She has slid down hill," observed the playroom girl. "She must be going to the river."
"She should not. It will soon be dark, and she is all alone," said Emma
Two Bears, in a tone betraying some anxiety.
CHAPTER VI.
Cordelia Running Bid held her clothes about her with one hand, steering with her feet, and reached the flats in safety. She arose and stood still and looked toward the river to a space of open water on the near side of a sandbar, half way over.
She took a few steps forward rather slowly, then her pace quickened more and more, till she was running breathlessly, as if in fear of losing her resolve to carry out some plan she was intent upon.
In rushing through a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat and dropped it on the ground. She picked it up and hung it by the draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong course there came a corresponding halt of purpose. So she turned aside and walked a few yards down the hollow, where she found a log on which to seat herself.
Presently she murmured in the passive monotone of a despairing Indian girl: "Just like I have to stop and think before I do it. If I drown the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings and the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings, I can write to Hannah Straight Tree, for she will not let me speak to her: 'Now you see I truly am not vain, for I have put the Christmas clothes for Susie in my workbag, and a stone, so it would sink, and I have drowned them in the airhole in the middle of the river.'