The Project Gutenberg EBook of Big and Little Sisters, by Theodora R. Jenness

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Title: Big and Little Sisters

Author: Theodora R. Jenness

Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10902]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIG AND LITTLE SISTERS ***

Produced by Prepared by Al Haines.

BIG AND LITTLE SISTERS

A Story of an Indian Mission School

By THEODORA R. JENNESS

CHAPTER I.

It was a Saturday morning in December at the Indian Mission School. Two young Sioux girls were going up the stairs—Hannah Straight Tree and Cordelia Running Bird. It was their Saturday for cleaning. The two girls drew a heavy breath in prospect of the difficult task that confronted them. The great unplastered mission building was a chilly place throughout the winter, and the halls and stairway that morning were drafty from the blustering wind that swept the Dakota plains and came through the outer doors below, where restless children kept going to and fro continually. The young hall-girls shivered on the upper landing, and stepped back in a sheltered niche in which the brooms were hanging. They had thrown their aprons over their heads and shoulders, and were dreading to begin their work.

"My floor and stairs always look nicer than your floor and stairs," said
Hannah Straight Tree to Cordelia Running Bird.

"Because you have the teachers' side, and that's always nicer, to begin with, than the girls' side," answered Cordelia Running Bird. "You know the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing. If they have to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do not make big tracks. But all the children on my side walk whole-feet over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and muddy. Ugh! big tracks they make! But I have learned the motto, every word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work." Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:

"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places, the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be said, 'Well done.'"

"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said Hannah Straight Tree. "I do not like to think hard or work hard. I am glad I have the teachers' side."

"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place, like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school. The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live. I like to think hard," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I heard the teacher tell the white mother that I had the best memory of any middle-sized girl, and she said it was as good as many white girls' memories of my age, and that is 'most fourteen. So I am to speak the longest middle-sized piece in the Christmas entertainment."

"Ee!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white memory! If the teacher praised me, I should be ashamed to tell it!"

"She will not praise you, for you are always very dumb in school. You will not try to speak a lesson only with the class in concert," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I shall try to finish very fast this morning. There are only two more Saturdays till Christmas, and to-day I want to feather-stitch the little new blue dress for Susie. She will wear it every day when she is here Christmas. Many white and Indian visitors will be here."

"And you will feel so proud because the visitors and the school will look at Susie, and the middle-sized and little girls will always choose her in the games. They would not choose my little sister if she played," said Hannah Straight Tree, with a sudden downcast look.

"Dolly is so shy I do not know if she would go into the middle of the ring if they should choose her, and she would not know the way to choose back," answered Cordelia Running Bird.

"Ee! She would! She would!" disputed Hannah Straight Tree. "Dolly is as brave and smart as Susie—smarter, too, for she is shorter! She could play the games if I would let her!"

"But you will not," replied the other; "you must not scold about my little sister. Susie knows the motions in the Jack Frost song so well the teachers says that she can motion with the children in the Christmas entertainment."

"She does not motion right," said Hannah Straight Tree. "She gets behind, and when they sing:

  "'He nips little children on the nose,
    He pinches little children on the toes,
    He pulls little children by the ears,
    And brings to their eyes the big, round tears,'

she is only nipping her nose when the rest are pulling their ears."

"But she is so little she looks cute, and the visitors and school will laugh at her and praise her," said Cordelia Running Bird, undismayed. "She will not wear the blue dress in the Jack Frost song. She will wear a red dress from my mission box. I asked the white mother if I could not buy the red cloth for an entertainment dress for Susie with the money that she paid because I tended baby one month till the nurse-girl came. And she said if I wished I could put a nickel on the missionary plate twenty Sundays, which would be one dollar, and so buy the cloth. She said it would be teaching me to give, as well as to receive. She keeps the nickel with the school pennies, and I take one every Sunday."

"And you lift your hand so high and drop the nickel very too loud, so all the school can hear, when Amy Swimmer passes you the plate!" cried Hannah Straight Tree. "Just like it says, 'Ee! I am putting on a nickel, and the rest can only give one penny! And I earned my money, and the pennies are money that their people sent them.'"

"You are very jealous," was the calm reply. "I shall hire a large girl to cut it fine and help make the red dress very fast. The sewing teacher has not time for such dresses. Ver-r-y pr-r-etty it will look!" Cordelia Running Bird smiled prospectively, displaying small white teeth and two round dimples. "Christmas evening I shall curl Susie's hair with a slate pencil, and she will wear fine shoes, and black stockings with the red dress. My father brought them with the blue dress, and I keep them in my cupboard."

"You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns money, so he buys nice things for Susie," Hannah Straight Tree said, with growing envy. "Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not look pretty Christmas time! Her dress will be a kind that looks black, and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress. She will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored stockings. If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not mend it nice—only draw it up so puckery. Very lots of grease spots will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her very fast."

"My little sister is not torn and dirty any time," said Cordelia