Chiquita, an American Novel: The Romance of a Ute Chief's DaughterTileston, Merrill
General
Chiquita, an American Novel: The Romance of a Ute Chief's Daughter
Tileston, Merrill
Indian women -- Fiction; Ute Indians -- Fiction
When the snow was deep, Jack took his dinner in a little basket, just
the same as the other scholars, and at the noon recess he was always in
the games in which the girls liked to have a few of the nice boys to
help out. Two chairs, facing each other, with a little gap between them,
then a ring of boys and girls holding hands to circle around between the
chairs, while a boy and a girl stood on the chairs, hands clasped across
the gap, all joining in singing the little couplet:
"The needle's eye that does supply
The thread that runs so true,
I've caught many a smiling lass,
And now I have caught you."
It was the boy's turn to choose the girl he wanted for a partner, and
she had to submit to the penalty of a kiss before she could mount the
chair. The desks were arranged in horseshoe form, and of course the
favorite seats were in the back row, farthest away from the teacher, but
Jack generally managed to be on a line with the first nail hole in the
horseshoe by the time the first third of the term was reached. This, so
the teacher could better keep her eye on him.
It was near the end of the summer term that a little event occurred
which made a lasting impression on Jack. His seat-mate was an ungainly
little urchin who had the faculty of being cunning without being smart.
His name was "Ted" Smith, but he was better known as "Ted Weaver," for
he had a habit of rocking to and fro from one hand to another while he
studied. Jack happened to be busy with lessons when some one shot a
paper wad at one of the scholars, which missed the scholar but hit the
teacher on the cheek.
Miss Freeman was spare and angular, with a pointed rose-colored nose,
hard, cold-gray eyes, and long neck circled with a severe white linen
collar, which lay flat over the prominent collar bones. The black waist
of her dress was severely plain, with, seemingly, a gross of buttons
made of wooden molds covered with the dress fabric. The skirt covered an
area of floor space that was in keeping with the period before the Civil
War, when hoop skirts ruled the fashion, and, as the "tilter" tilted, it
could be seen the school ma'am enumerated among her personal belongings
a pair of white hose and cloth gaiters. A head of luxurious hair was
parted exactly in the middle and divided into three portions, two side
and back strands, the side strands twisted to the temples, then the
smooth flat surface gracefully looped over the tops of the ears until
the curve of the hair reached the eyebrows; the ends of the strands were
then formed into a foundation, around which the back hair was wound,
after a sufficient quantity had been properly separated for curls--long
ones for the side, or short ones to dangle idly behind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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