CHAPTER VII.

Cordelia Running Bird carried out her plan of asking Jessie Turning
Heart, the playroom girl, to help her make the red dress, and the latter
willingly agreed to "trade work," and escape bringing in the wood to the
torture of her lame foot.

Cordelia found that she had undertaken no light task, for there were
violent snowstorms in the next two weeks, and an enormous quantity of
wood was swallowed by the great stove in the playroom, which must needs
be kept red-hot from long before dawn until bedtime, to dispel the
freezing atmosphere within.

Owing to the influence of the playroom girl, the large and middle-sized
girls in general ceased to be intensely hostile to Cordelia, but they
did not break the seal of silence, so she could not ask help from among
them. The small girls showed their friendship for Cordelia now and then
by marching in a line behind her from the wood-yard laden with what fuel
they could bring, or even going down the path the older girls had broken
to the flats for willow fagots, which they tied upon their backs and
brought to her for kindling.

Hannah Straight Tree tried Cordelia's resolution to do good to her by
stealthy persecutions that escaped the notice of the teachers, who
remarked to one another in relief that Hannah and the other girls
appeared in better humor toward Cordelia, and the fatter had regained