He handed her the letter, with its neat, old-fashioned penmanship, its
primness a little tremulous from the excitement of the writer at the time
she had penned it. Susie read it carefully, and when she had finished she
looked up at him with softened, grateful eyes.
"Isn't she good!"
"The kindest of gentlewomen--your Aunt Harriet."
"My Aunt Harriet!" Susie said it to herself rapturously.
"She hasn't much in her life now--_she's_ lonely, too--and if you can be
spoiled, Susie, you soon will be well on the way--between Aunt Harriet and
me." He stroked her hair fondly.
"And I'm to go to school back there and live with her. I can't believe it
yet!" Susie declared. "So much has happened in the last twenty-four hours
that I don't know what to think about first. More things have happened in
this little time than in all my life put together."
"That's the way life seems to be," McArthur said musingly--"a few hours at
a tension, and long, dull stretches in between."
"Does she know--does Aunt Harriet know--how _green_ I am?"
McArthur laughed at her anxiety.
"I am sure," he replied reassuringly, "that she isn't expecting a young
lady of fashion."
"Oh, I've got clothes," said Susie. "Mother made me a dress that will be
just the thing to wear in that--what do you call it?--train. She made it
out of two shawls that she bought at the Agency."
McArthur looked startled at the frock of red, green, and black plaids
which Susie took from a nail behind the door.
"The colors seem a little--a little----"
"If that black was yellow, it _would_ look better," Susie admitted. "I've
got a new Stetson, too."
"It will take some little time to arrange your affairs out here, and in
the meantime I'll write Aunt Harriet to choose a wardrobe for you and send
it. It will give her the greatest pleasure."
"Can I take Croppy and Daisy May?"
"Daisy May?"
"The pet badger," she explained. "I named her after a Schoolmarm we
had--she looks so solemn and important. I can keep her on a chain, and she
needn't eat until we get there," Susie pleaded.
Trying not to smile at the mental picture of himself arriving in the staid
college town, with a tawny-skinned child in a red, green, and black frock,
a crop-eared cayuse, and a badger on a chain, McArthur ventured it as his
opinion that the climate would be detrimental to Daisy May's health.
"You undoubtedly will prefer to spend your summers here, and it will be
pleasant to have Croppy and Daisy May home to welcome you."
Susie's face sobered.
"Oh, yes, I must come back when school is over. I wouldn't feel it was
right to go away for always and leave Dad and Mother here. Besides, I
guess I'd _want_ to come back; because, after all, you know, I'm half
Injun."
"I wish you'd try and sleep, and let me sit here," urged McArthur kindly.
Susie shook her head.
"No; Ling will stay after awhile, and I'm not sleepy or tired now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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