"Mother," exclaimed Willie, "I want to give Moppet something. May I give her my Guinea-peas?"
"Certainly, my son, if you wish to," she replied.
He ran into the cabin, and came out with a tin box. When he uncovered it, and showed Moppet the bright scarlet seeds, each with a shining black spot, her dark eyes glowed, and she uttered a joyous "Eugh!" The passive, sad expression of the Indian woman's countenance almost brightened into a smile, as she said, "Wik-a-nee tank."
After resting awhile, she again strapped the baskets on her shoulder, and taking her little one by the hand, they resumed their tramp across the prairie,--no one knowing whence they came, or whither they were going. As far as they could be seen, it was noticed that the child looked back from time to time. She was saying to her mother she wished they could take that little pale-faced boy with them.
"So Moppet is gone," said Charley. "I wonder whether we shall ever see her again." Willie heaved a sigh, and said, "I wish she was my little sister."
Thus met two innocent little beings, unconscious representatives of races widely separated in moral and intellectual culture, but children of the same Heavenly Father, and equally subject to the attractions of great Mother Nature. Blessed childhood, that yields spontaneously to those attractions, ignoring all distinctions of pride or prejudice! Verily, we should lose all companionship with angels, were it not for the ladder of childhood, on which they descend to meet us.
It was a pleasant ripple in the dull stream of their monotonous life, that little adventure of the stray pappoose. At almost every gathering of the household, for several days after, something was recalled of her uncouth, yet interesting looks, and of her wild, yet winning ways. Charley persisted in his opinion that "Moppet would be pretty, if she wore her hair like folks."
"Her father and mother called her Wik-a-nee," said Willie; "and I like that name better than I do Moppet." He took great pains to teach it to his baby sister; and he succeeded so well, that, whenever the red-and-yellow basket was shown to her, she said, "Mik-a-nee,"--the W being beyond her infant capabilities.
Something of tenderness mixed with Mrs. Wharton's recollections of the grotesque little stranger. "I never saw anything so like the light of an astral lamp as those beautiful large eyes of hers," said she. "I began to love the odd little thing; and if she had stayed much longer, I should have been very loath to part with her."