When both face and hair shone, the mother kissed her boy and announced to her husband that the child was ready. The father rose to go with him, but the boy held back.
“What is it?” asked the father; “are you not willing to go?”
“I am willing to go,” answered Oo-maʻ-a-be, “but I want to put on my embroidered moccasins and leggings and my little buffalo robe.”
The husband and wife looked at each other smiling, and let the youngster have his own way, so he was decked out in his gorgeous costume. He folded himself up in his robe, which was beautifully ornamented with porcupine quills of exquisite colors, he twisted his body and neck to see if he looked well, then said he was ready to go.
In the schoolroom a class of big boys and girls were learning to read in concert:—
“The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled.”
Again and again the teacher made them read the lines, but each time someone would either lag behind or read faster than the others. While this was going on I was busy with my spelling lesson, as my class came after the one now hard at work with the boy “on the burning deck.”
There was a click; I raised my eyes and looked toward the door; it slowly opened, then a tall man and a boy silently entered. I recognized them at once; the man was a friend of my father and the lad one of my playmates on my weekly visits home. The class on the floor was dismissed with a lecture on reading, and Graybeard turned to call, “Next class,” when he discovered the man and boy sitting on a bench near the door.
“How do you do, Wa-honʻ-e-ga?” said Graybeard, approaching the Indian with outstretched hand.
“Ka-gaeʻ-ha!”3 responded the Indian, his face brightening. Then in a low tone he called me to him and said, “I have brought your grandfather here to stay with you. Be as good to each other as you have always been, and try to learn the language of the White-chests.”
The boy was a distant relative, and, following the peculiar system of kinship among the Indians, there was no impropriety in my addressing him as my grandfather, although we preferred to call each other friend.
“What does Wa-honʻ-e-ga want?” asked Graybeard, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“My friend,” replied the Indian, looking with a kindly smile into the face of the teacher, “my wife wishes her son, this boy, to learn to speak the language of the Big-knives,4 so I have come with him. We have brought him up with great care, and I think he will give you no trouble.”
“Tell him,” said Graybeard, “I am very glad he has brought the boy, and we will do our best for him.”
The Indian turned and with silent dignity left the room.
“Now, children,” said Graybeard, taking out the school register and looking at us, “we have a new boy here, and we must select a good name for him; what have you to suggest?”
We promptly called him Edwin M. Stanton, and he was registered by that name.
Brush and I were detailed to take Edwin to the storeroom and fit him with a new suit of clothes. When he was dressed; we tied up his fine Indian costume in a neat bundle to be returned to his father.
At the supper-table Edwin and I sat together. I showed him how to bow his head when the blessing was asked, and to turn his plate. He silently followed my whispered instructions, and was very quiet while supper was going on, but during the religious exercises which followed, when we dropped on our knees, he became very anxious to know why we did so. He shuffled a good deal in his position, and after a while stood up and looked around. I pulled him down, and he demanded out loud, “What are we hiding for? This is the way we do when we are hiding in the grass.”
I gave him a good dig in the ribs. “That hurts!” he cried. I whispered to him to be quiet, but before long he was fidgeting again. Just as the superintendent lowered his voice at an earnest passage in his prayer Edwin spoke out again, in a louder tone than before, “I’ve got a dog; he can catch rabbits!”
Graybeard lifted his head, and the superintendent paused in his fervent appeal and looked toward us; he rapped with his knuckles on the table, and said, in a severe tone, “Boys, you must be silent and listen when I pray.”
I whispered to Edwin that he must keep still until we got out.
As we were going to bed that night Edwin said, “Ka-gaeʻ-ha,5 let you and me sleep together; I don’t want to sleep with anyone else.”
Lester too wanted to sleep with me; so it was arranged among us that Brush and Warren should have the double bed, and Edwin, Lester, and I were to have the wide bed for three.
After we had settled down, Edwin began talking, “When we finished eating,” he said, “we turned around and the old man began to talk, then you all sang. I like to hear you sing; you’ve got a good voice. Then we went down on our knees, just as though we were hiding in the grass; what did we do that for? The old man talked a long time; was he telling a story? I know a great many of them; I know one about a dog. He was a man, but he was turned
