Cordelia passed upstairs with quick steps.

"Just like the large and middle-sized girls--only Hannah Straight Tree--
will again be speaking to me pretty soon," she said to Jessie Turning
Heart, who sat beside a sunny window in the south dormitory sewing
briskly on the little red waist.

"They cannot speak to you till Christmas day, because they all said they
would not," Jessie answered. "Then if you ap-ol-ogize and say you do
not wish them to be cripples any more, and that you will stop talking
vain, they will again speak to you, and they will walk heel or tiptoe on
your floor."

"I shall write an ap-ol-ogy in Dakota on three papers Christmas morning,
and pin them on a side of the three dormitories, but you must not tell,
because I do not wish to brag what I shall do," Cordelia said, in
strictest confidence.

"I think it would be better if you had but one shoes and stockings and
best dress for Susie. But you cannot help it now," the playroom girl
replied. "Two best dresses and two shoes and stockings look too many,
when the other little home sisters have not one best thing."

Cordelia Running Bird was quite strongly tempted to confide still
further in the friendly playroom girl, who had sustained her through the
trying tempest of events, but she resisted and began to hem the little
skirt in silence.

"Ee! how short you have it!" Jessie noticed suddenly. "You must think
Susie is to grow the other way before she wears it."