Mary Hazelton Wade

Timid Hare Mary Hazelton Wade

Swift Fawn sat motionless on the river-bank. "Lap, lap," sang the tiny waves as they struck the shore. "Lap, lap," they kept repeating, but the little girl did not heed the soft music. Her mind was too busy with the story White Mink had told her that morning. After the men had started off on a buffalo hunt Swift Fawn had left the other children to their games in the village and stolen away to the favorite bathing place of the women-folk. "No one will disturb me there," she had said to herself, "and I want to be all by myself to think it over." After she had been there for sometime. Swift Fawn drew out from the folds of her deerskin jacket a baby's sock, and turned it over and over in her hands curiously. Never had she seen the like of it before. How pretty it was! Who could have had the skill to weave the threads of scarlet silk in and out of the soft wool in such a dainty pattern? Was it--the child whispered the word--could it have been her mother? White Mink had always been so good to her, Surely no real mother could have been more loving than the Indian woman who had watched over her and tended her, and taught her from the time when Three Bears had brought her, a year-old baby, to his wife. Where he found the little one, he had never told.