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Page 27
"No buts or ands about it!" exclaimed her friend. "If you don't come,
Ruthie Fielding, I'll never speak to you again. And if Wonota doesn't
come I declare I'll tell Dakota Joe where she is, and he'll come after
her and steal her. In fact," Jennie added, wickedly smiling, "his old
Wild West Show is playing right here in the Big Town this week."
"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Ruth, while the Indian girl shrank a
little closer to her friend.
"Sure do. In Brooklyn. A three-day stand in one of the big armories over
there, I believe. So a telephone call--"
"Shucks!" exclaimed Helen. "Don't you believe her, Wonota. Just the same
you folks had better come to the Stone house. Mr. Stone has taken a
whole box to-night for one of the very best musical shows that ever
was!"
Ruth could see that the Indian girl was eager to agree. She did show
some small emotions which paleface girls displayed. She laughed more
than at first, too. But she was often downright gloomy when thinking of
Chief Totantora.
However, seeing Wonota wished to accept the invitation, and desiring
herself to please Helen and Jennie, Ruth agreed. They telephoned a
message to the Hotel Borneaux and then went off to dinner at the Stone
house. It was a very nice party indeed, and even busy Mr. Stone did his
best to put Wonota at her ease.
"Some wigwam this, isn't it, Wonata?" said Helen, smiling, as the girls
went upstairs after dinner to prepare for the theatre.
"The Osage nation does not live in wigwams, Miss Cameron," said Wonota
quietly. "We are not blanket Indians and have not been for two
generations."
"Well, look at the clothes you wore in that show!" cried Jennie. "That
head-dress looked wild enough, I must say--and those fringed leggings
and all that."
Wonota smiled rather grimly. "The white people expect to see Indians in
their national costumes. Otherwise it would be no novelty, would it?
Why, some of the girls--Osage girls of pure blood too--at Three Rivers
Station wear garments that are quite up to date. You must not forget
that at least we have the catalogs from the city stores to choose from,
even if we do not actually get to the cities to shop."
"Printer's ink! It is a great thing," admitted Helen. "I don't suppose
there are really any wild Indians left."
The four girls and Aunt Kate were whisked in a big limousine to the
play, and Wonota enjoyed the brilliant spectacle and the music as much
as any of the white girls.
"Believe me," whispered Jennie to Ruth, "give any kind of girl a chance
to dress up and go to places like this, and see other girls all fussed
up, as your Tommy says--"
"Helen's Tommy, you mean," interposed Ruth.
"Rats!" murmured the plump girl, falling back upon Briarwood Hall slang
in her momentary disgust. "Well, anyway, Miss Fielding, what I said is
so. Wonota would like to dress like the best dressed girl in the
theatre, and wear ropes of pearls and a plume in her hat--see that one
yonder! Isn't it superb?"
"The poor birdie that lost it," murmured Ruth.
"I declare, I don't believe you half enjoy yourself thinking of the
reverse of the shield all the time," sniffed Jennie Stone. "And yet you
do manage to dress pretty good yourself."
"One does not have to be bizarre to look well and up-to-date," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "But that has nothing to do with Wonota."
"I did get off the track, didn't I?" laughed Jennie. "Oh, well! Dress
her up, or any other foreign girl, in American fashion and she seems to
fit into the picture all right--"
"'Foreign girl' and 'American fashion'?" gasped Ruth. "As--as _you_
sometimes say, Jennie, 'how do you get that way'? Wonota is a better
American than we are. Her ancestors did not have to come over in the
_Mayflower_, with Henry Hudson, or with Sir Walter Raleigh."
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