The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks; Or, The House of the Open Door

“Who?” asked the Captain blankly. The “bid” for that party had cost the Captain just a dollar and a half, as he was not a member of the class, and he had made the investment for the sake of going with Hinpoha and no one else. So he repeated in a startled tone, “Who?”

“Oh, someone,” answered Hinpoha tantalizingly, and with that he had to be content. To herself she was saying, “How foolish it would be to promise to go with the Captain and then not be able to accept when—when he asks me.” For word had gone round the school that all the faculty were going to honor the Senior Dance with their presence, and whom else would Professor Knoblock ask but herself?

But of all things to happen just at this time, the very next day Hinpoha came down with the mumps, or rather the mump, for only one side of her throat was affected. The first half she had had in childhood.

“That horrid mump stayed away on purpose before,” she wailed, “and waited all these years to jump out on me just at this time. And my new party dress is too sweet for anything, and my gilt slippers—oh-oh-oh-oh was there ever such a disappointment?” Gladys and Sahwah and Katherine, who had all had theirs “on both sides” and were therefore allowed to call, were consumed with sympathy, and were loud in their efforts to console the stricken mumpee.

“Has he come to see you?” ventured Gladys.

Hinpoha shook her head, which was a somewhat painful process.

“Of course he can’t come,” said Sahwah, “he probably hasn’t had them.”

Katherine’s expression seemed to say that a really brave knight wouldn’t hesitate to expose himself to any danger for the sake of seeing his lady, seeing which Hinpoha croaked hoarsely, “They probably wouldn’t let him come,” the “they” in this case presumably referring to the school authorities.

“I saw him down in Forester’s this noon when I was ordering the flowers for mother’s birthday,” said Gladys, and they all sighed.

Just then the doorbell rang and Gladys, who was sent to answer it, returned with a long box in her hand addressed to “Miss Dorothy Bradford.”

“From Foresters,” said Sahwah breathlessly.

“Flowers!” said Gladys. “Hurry and open them.”

The box disclosed a dozen, long-stemmed pink roses. “Oh! Ah!” echoed the four in unison.

“From—him?” asked Gladys.

“There’s no card in the box,” said Hinpoha, vainly searching.

“They must be from him,” said Gladys decidedly. “Wasn’t he in Forester’s this morning? And it seemed to me I heard him asking for pink roses.”

Hinpoha put the flowers in a tall vase and regarded them with rapture. They were the first flowers ever sent to her by a man. In them she found comfort for having to miss the dance.

“Was he there?” she inquired falteringly of Gladys, the day after the party.

Gladys answered in the affirmative. “Did—did any of you dance with him?” Hinpoha wanted to know further.

Gladys shook her head. “I saw him dancing once or twice with Miss Snively,” she said. “I don’t believe he stayed very long. He disappeared before it was half over.”

Hinpoha was satisfied. He had not enjoyed himself without her. “Wasn’t it noble of him to dance with Miss Snively?” she said enthusiastically. “No one else would, I’m sure.”

At Commencement time the year before an old Washington High graduate, who had attained fame and fortune since his school days, presented the school with funds to build a swimming pool. Work had progressed during the year and now the pool was completed and about to be dedicated. An elaborate pageant was being prepared for the occasion. Mermaids and water nymphs were to gambol about in the green, glassy depths and lie on the painted coral reefs; Neptune was to rise from the deep with his trident; a garland bedecked barge was to bear a queen and her attendants; and then after the pageant there were to be swimming races, an exhibition of diving and then a stunt contest.

The Winnebagos, being experienced swimmers, were very much in the show. Sahwah had invented a brand new and difficult dive, which she had christened Mammy Moon; Hinpoha had learned the amazing trick of sitting down in the water and clasping her hands around her knees; Gladys could swim the entire length of the pool with the leg stroke only, holding a parasol over her head with her hands, thus giving the impression that she was taking a stroll on a sunshiny day. Katherine, alas, could not swim. The largest body of water she had seen at home had been the cistern, and most of the time it was low tide in that. But this did not prevent her from thinking up new and ludicrous stunts for the others to do. It was she who invented the “Kite-tail” stunt, which was one of the signal successes on the night of the pageant. In this one of the senior boys, who was a very powerful swimmer, swam ahead with a rope tied around his waist, to which another performer clung. Behind this second one four or five more boys were strung out like the tail of a kite, each one holding on to the heels of the one ahead, and all towed by the first swimmer.

The great night arrived and the building which housed the pool was crowded to the doors. The Senior girls and boys had spent hours decorating the hall with festoons of greens and potted palms and ferns, so that it looked like the depths of a forest in the center of which the pool glittered like a magic spring. Cries of admiration rose from the audience all around. Hinpoha, who in the first part of the performance was a mermaid, with water lilies plaited in her shining hair, saw only one face in the crowd, and that was Professor Knoblock, as he leaned over the polished brass rail and looked at her, and looked, and looked, and looked. Only that day Hinpoha, filled with the spirit of romance, had slipped a note into the dictionary on his desk, at the beginning of the letter “L,” the place where she had put the lock of hair, thanking Professor Knoblock for the flowers. An hour later, in sudden terror that he would not find it there and someone else would, she had gone to remove it. But it had vanished, and in its place was another verse from Gareth and Lynette:

The opening of the pool was a success in every way. The nymphs nymphed, and the mermaids wagged their spangled tails to the delight and wonder of the spectators, and the royal barge swept up and down to the strains of stately music. Then the pageant retired, the islands folded up their tents and vanished, and the swimmers went behind the scenes to prepare for the races and the stunts. To bridge over this interval, Hinpoha had been left in the pool all alone to amuse the crowd by floating on a barrel and trying to balance a tray on her head as she bobbed up and down. The crowd shouted with laughter and cheered her wildly. All but one. With arms crossed triumphantly over her breast and tray steady on her head, Hinpoha looked up to see Miss Snively standing by the edge regarding her with a coldly sarcastic expression. It was as if she said in words, “Only such a flathead as you could balance a tray on it.” But the great happiness that surged inside of Hinpoha made her charitable and forgiving toward all the world, and she sent a sweet and friendly smile into Miss Snively’s face. But that marble-hearted lady looked away. The next minute there was a slip, a shriek, the flash of a silk dress, and a splash, and Miss Snively had disappeared beneath the surface at the deep end of the pool. Hurling the tray into space Hinpoha made a magnificent plunge for distance toward the spot where Miss Snively had gone down. Simultaneously with her plunge there was another movement in the crowd, and Professor Knoblock, stripping off his coat, jumped over the rail into the pool. Hinpoha reached Miss Snively first, just as the blue silk appeared on the surface, and, evading her wildly clutching hand, managed to hold her head above water while she struck out for the rail toward the hands that were stretched down to her everywhere. Then she became aware of another figure struggling at her side. Professor Knoblock had come up after his plunge, struck out blindly and then suddenly doubled up and gone down again. Thrusting Miss Snively hastily toward the helping hands, Hinpoha turned and rescued her professor, who had miscalculated his leap and struck his head on the side of the pool. The whole business had not taken two minutes since the first alarm, but Hinpoha was the heroine of the hour. She was cheered and praised and petted and patted on the head and exclaimed over until she was quite bewildered. Her heart was thumping until it deafened her. She had saved her lover’s life, and, bashful as he was, she knew that now he must speak. It would not happen tonight. They had rushed him home in a taxicab. But tomorrow——

Somehow she managed to finish her part in the program and drink fruit punch in the gymnasium afterward. While she stood in a corner cooling her burning cheeks at an open window somebody came and stood beside her. Hinpoha turned and faced the Captain, and listened absent-mindedly to his words of praise. Then one sentence he said caught her attention. “Say,” he said bashfully, “how did you like the flowers?”

“What flowers?” asked Hinpoha wonderingly.

“The roses—pink ones—I sent you when you had the mumps.”

Hinpoha stared at him blankly, unbelievingly. No, no, it could not be true, the roses had come from her light-haired professor. “Did you send them?” she asked in a tone in which no one could have detected any degree of appreciation for the favor.

“Wasn’t there any card in the box?” asked the Captain. “I gave one to Mr. Forester to put in.”

“No,” answered Hinpoha, with a gulp, “there wasn’t; and I thought—somebody else sent them.”

“Didn’t you like them?” asked the Captain, feeling in the air that something was wrong somewhere. “Don’t you like roses?”

Hinpoha pulled herself together with an effort. Tears of disappointment were standing in her eyes. “Ye-es,” she answered politely, but without enthusiasm, “they were lovely; perfectly lovely.” And she ran hurriedly out of the corner, leaving the Captain staring after her in bewilderment.

“I don’t believe he sent them to me at all!” she told herself in the solitude of her own room that night. “The horrid thing found out that I got them and told me that just to tease me. Anyway, it doesn’t make a particle of difference about Professor Knoblock.” And she fell asleep whispering to herself with bated breath, “Tomorrow!”

She walked to school with lagging steps the next morning. Now that the great hour was at hand she was filled with a desire to flee. Then she heard footsteps behind her, and, glancing out of the corner of her eye, saw the professor approaching. With a wildly beating heart she walked on, her face straight to the front. He was coming. He was overtaking her. Now he was upon her. With a great effort she turned her head to look at him, her lips parted in a tremulous smile. Professor Knoblock raised his hat stiffly, nodded frigidly and passed on without a word, leaving Hinpoha staring after him stunned. Unseeingly she stumbled on to school. One question was racing back and forth in her mind like a shuttle in a loom—what was the meaning of it? Classes recited around her in school; she heard them as in a dream. Professor Knoblock did not look at her as she entered the Literature class room; he was taking two of the boys sharply to task for never being able to recite. Hinpoha sat with her eyes fixed on her book. Professor Knoblock was evidently ill-humored this morning, though apparently none the worse for his mishap the evening before. He was dealing out zero marks right and left if the recitations did not go like clock-work. And as was only to be expected the morning after such an elaborate affair as the dedication of a swimming pool, clock-work recitations were very few and far between.

The professor finally lost all patience. “Take your books,” he commanded, “open and study the lesson the remainder of the hour, and the first one I see dawdling or whispering will be sent back to the session room.” Hinpoha’s eyes followed the lines on the page, but she could not have told what she was reading. The question was still beating back and forth in her mind.

“Lend me your pencil,” whispered her neighbor. Mechanically she held it out to him and when he took it he thrust a stick of gum into her hand. He was still in a festive mood. Professor Knoblock caught the movement. At the same moment another pair in the back of the room began giggling about something.

“You two are out of order!” shouted the professor. “Leave the room!” All eyes were turned toward the two in the back.

“I mean you, George Hancock, and you, Dorothy Bradford,” said the Professor severely. Hinpoha turned pleading, unbelieving eyes on him. “Leave the room,” he repeated with rising anger, “go back to your session room!” And with the world rocking under her feet, Hinpoha went.

As the pupils came back from their respective classes that noon there was a sensation in the air. Groups of girls stood around whispering to one another and exclaiming. “Did you ever hear anything like it?” rose on all sides. “Who would ever dream of her getting——”

Hinpoha, dumb and miserable, sat apart, until some one dragged her into the center of a group. “Have you heard the news?”

“No,” she answered dully.

“Miss Snively’s engaged!” announced a young lady, in the same tone she would have said: “The sky has fallen!”

“She is!” said Hinpoha. “To whom?”

“Professor Knoblock!” continued the speaker. “They’ve been engaged a long time—but it just leaked out yesterday in a teachers’ meeting. That’s why he came here to teach.”

“But the notes he wrote me,” moaned Hinpoha to the Winnebagos, who had gathered for an indignation meeting that afternoon. “And the curl I gave him—— Oh-oh-oh!” and she hid her face in her hands and groaned.

Katherine had been poking about in a corner of the room during the preliminary wail. She now came forward carrying a box in her hand which she laid on Hinpoha’s knee.

“What’s this?” asked Hinpoha.

“Open it and see,” advised Katherine.

Hinpoha complied and there fell into her lap a long, curling, red ringlet and a piece of paper written over in Hinpoha’s hand.

“I have a confession to make,” said Katherine, striking a dramatic attitude. “I put that note into your book asking for the lock of hair, and watched until you put it into the dictionary. Then I took it out after you left the room. I wrote the notes that followed to keep the ball rolling. I don’t believe Professor Knoblock knows a thing about his great romance with you.”

“You did it!” cried Hinpoha blankly, turning fiercely upon Katherine. “You made such a fool out of me that I’ll never be able to show my face again as long as I live. You—you——” sobs choked her and cut off all utterance.

“But the flowers,” gasped Gladys, “who sent them?”

“Captain did, the mean old thing!” sobbed Hinpoha.

“But the Key, and the Horoscope, and the Fortune Teller,” continued Gladys, “they all said he would be the one. I don’t see how it could have come out any other way.”

Katherine rose from her knees and rapped on the table for attention. “Girls,” she said seriously, “I suppose you think it was a very unkind and low-down sort of joke I played on Hinpoha, getting her all worked up like that with those notes, and under ordinary circumstances it would have been. But isn’t there a saying somewhere ‘that awfully sick people need awfully strong medicine,’ or something to that effect? Here you all were gone completely loony—excuse the expression, but it’s just what you were—gone perfectly loony about this fortune-telling business. You did it so much that I actually believe you began to think it was true. Then that fool fortune-teller told Hinpoha about the light-haired man that was coming into her life soon, and when the new professor arrived you all thought he was the one. I just happened to find out soon after he came that he was engaged to Miss Snively. I knew if I told you then you wouldn’t believe it, so I waited until it came out. But I was afraid Hinpoha would do something really silly before she got through, and decided to take a hand in the game myself. When I wrote that note about the hair I was sure she would see through it and come to her senses. The fact that she swallowed it shows how far out of her right mind she was. I never believed she would put a lock of hair into the dictionary. But when she seemed to take it all for gospel truth I couldn’t resist the temptation to go on and have some more fun.”

“But—his handwriting,” said Hinpoha faintly.

“Easiest thing in the world to imitate,” said Katherine, saying nothing about the weary hours it had taken her to accomplish that feat. “And I signed my own initial, ‘K.,’ which was certainly not taking the professor’s name in vain. I never told a soul, so there’s nobody to crow over you. You stand just exactly where you did at first with the professor.”

“But,” said Gladys, still not satisfied, “why did he always look at Hinpoha when he read the sentimental passages?”

“Because he’s built that way,” answered Katherine scornfully. “There are plenty of men who will make eyes at every pretty girl they see, whether they have any right to or not. Besides I heard him tell one of the other teachers once that your red hair reminded him of the hair that belonged to a dear friend he ‘lost in youth.’”

After hearing Katherine’s clean-cut and sensible version of the affair the whole thing seemed unutterably ridiculous and one by one they began to think that she was right, and had played the part of the friend instead of the mischief-maker, in shocking Hinpoha back into common sense. Hinpoha advanced shakily and held out her hand. “I thank you, Katherine,” she said, “for ‘saving me from myself’!” And Katherine seized her hand in a crushing grip, and soon they were hugging each other, and their friendship, instead of being shaken to its foundations, was cemented more strongly.

“I think he’s horrid,” said Gladys, “and if I were you, Hinpoha, I’d never look at him again—the way he treated you this morning, after you had taken the trouble to fish him out of the pool last night. He’s an ungrateful wretch, and doesn’t deserve to be rescued.”

Katherine was looking at them with a queer expression. “There’s something else I suppose I ought to tell you,” she said, “although I wasn’t going to at first. But now he’s acted so you really ought to know. Miss Snively’s falling into the pool wasn’t exactly an accident.”

“Did he push her in?” asked Gladys in a horrified tone.

“Goodness, no,” said Katherine. Then she added: “Yes, in a way he did, too, for he was responsible for her falling in. You know what a dub the boys all think him; they never call him anything but ‘that mutt,’ or ‘that cissy.’ He couldn’t help seeing it, and it bothered him that he wasn’t a hero in their eyes. Besides,” she continued shrewdly, “if he was thinking of getting married he probably was looking for promotion, and he never would get it as long as he couldn’t control the boys. So he complained to Miss Snively about it and she obligingly offered to fall into the pool and have him rescue her, and so make a hero out of him overnight. I heard them planning it yesterday; they were on one side of a big pile of greens waiting to go up and I was on the other. She was to do it during the intermission when no one was in the pool. They didn’t seem to know that you were going to be in then. But she did it anyway, thinking that the professor would reach her first. But you were too quick for them. That’s why he’s so furious with you; you kept him from being a hero, and got all the praise he expected to get. Then when he bumped his head on the side of the tank and had to be rescued himself, it put the finishing touch to the tragedy.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Hinpoha and Sahwah and Gladys and the other two girls, all in a breath. In moments of great emotional stress refined language seems an utter failure as a vehicle of expression. Slang is the only thing that adequately expresses the feelings. They said it again, intentionally and emphatically—“Gee!”

“What a foolish thing to do,” said Sahwah, when they had all recovered somewhat, “falling into the pool to give a man a chance to be a hero. She might have been drowned.”

“She didn’t run such an awful risk,” observed Katherine, the all-knowing. “She’s a good swimmer herself; I’ve heard people say so.”

And again the girls sought relief in the expression not sanctioned by the grammar.

“Going to the Lodge?” said the Captain’s voice in Hinpoha’s ear a few days later, as she swung along the street. The Captain’s manner was decidedly diffident. He was not at all sure how she would treat him this time.

Hinpoha nodded companionably. “I’m going to practice with the handball,” she said energetically. “Come on, I’ll race you across the field.”

“That was great, wasn’t it?” she cried laughingly, as she stopped before the door, breathless, with her hair flying around her face.

“Say, give us a curl, will you?” begged the Captain, tugging at one that hung over the collar of her coat.

“Don’t be silly, Captain,” she said reprovingly. “You know I hate people who are sentimental.”

Hinpoha’s romance was a thing of the past.

CHAPTER XIII
RANDALL’S ISLAND

“I can’t help it, it simply won’t roll!” exclaimed Katherine in despair. “I’ve tugged and tugged until my fingernails are all broken, and it just naturally won’t turn over!” And Katherine sat down with a discouraged thud and fanned herself with a hair-brush.

“Well, we’ll ‘just naturally’ have to stop and see what’s the matter with it,” said Nyoda soothingly. The Winnebagos were having a contest in poncho rolling to be in practice for the coming summer’s camping trips. The aim of each one just now was to accomplish this in two minutes. Two minutes to spread out a poncho, two blankets and enough clothes for an overnight trip, roll it up into a neat stove-pipe, bend it into a tidy horseshoe and fasten the ends together with a rope tied in square knots.

The record was held by Medmangi, quiet, neat Medmangi, who, while the others were working like mad, had serenely completed her task in a minute and three-quarters.

“She’s a regular phenomenay, that woman,” said Sahwah, who had thought she was doing wonders when she straightened up at the end of two minutes exactly. “She must have four hands, or else she packed with her feet. But what else could you expect of a girl who’s going to be a doctor?”

Poor Katherine, alas, made no time at all that could be recorded in Nyoda’s book. It was only her second attempt at poncho rolling, but it is doubtful whether it would have been any different if it had been her hundred and second. She simply was not built for order and speediness. At the end of ten minutes she still sat beside her pile of belongings, the poncho askew, the blankets askew on it and hanging over the edge, the extra middy bundled up into a wrinkled lump and the small articles sliding off on all sides. She had begun to roll it from the wrong end, and after one or two turns it absolutely refused to go any farther, in spite of forceful attempts.

“Here, spread your things out properly, and then it will go,” said Nyoda patiently, picking up the blankets. Out rolled the object which had obstructed the wheels of progress—an umbrella, which had been tucked under the blankets lengthwise of the roll. “No wonder it wouldn’t roll!” exclaimed Nyoda, laughing aloud. “Did you expect the umbrella to bend round and round like a hose? Whatever would you want an umbrella for, anyway?”

“For rain,” answered Katherine with touching simplicity. Nyoda and the other Winnebagos doubled up in silent mirth. Katherine’s inspirations invariably left them without power of comment.

“Katherine, you’re positively hopeless,” sighed Gladys affectionately. “The only safe way is to divide your things up among the other ponchos; yours would never arrive at a journey’s end, anyhow.”

“Oh, if I had only been born neat instead of handsome!” said Katherine plaintively, and then joined heartily in the irresistible laughter that followed.

“Hush, girls!” said Nyoda. “There’s somebody down at the door. Don’t you hear somebody rapping?”

Hinpoha, who was nearest the window, peeped down. “It’s a whole bunch of girls,” she reported in an excited whisper. “All strangers. I don’t know any of them. What can they want?”

“Want to see us, probably,” said matter-of-fact Sahwah. “Isn’t somebody going down to let them in?”

“The way this place looks!” sighed Nyoda, looking at the floor strewn with the contents of Katherine’s poncho. “Gladys, you and Hinpoha go down and let them in and detain them downstairs until the rest of us can put this room in order. It’s a disgrace to the Winnebagos.”

Gladys and Hinpoha descended the ladder and threw open the door. “Welcome,” they cried, “whoever you are! Welcome to the House of the Open Door!”

The six strange girls came in. One who was tall and thin and had hair almost as red as Hinpoha’s, stepped forward. “We are members of the San-Clu Camp Fire,” she said. “We have heard quite a bit about you Winnebagos and thought we would come and call. Is this your famous Lodge?”

“It certainly is,” said Gladys hospitably. “We are delighted to become acquainted with you. Make yourselves at home. This gymnasium outfit belongs to a club of boys who share our Lodge, and over there is Sandhelo’s stall. Sandhelo is our pet donkey; you must see him right away.” She led the girls to the stall and kept them there telling about Sandhelo’s exploits until she was sure from the sounds above that the room was in order. Then she invited them to ascend the ladder.

“The San-Clu Camp Fire have come visiting,” she announced, as she stepped out on the floor.

“All Hail to the San-Clu Camp Fire from the Winnebagos,” chanted the hostess ceremoniously, and seven pairs of hands performed the fire sign.

“San-Clu returns All Hail,” responded the guests with no less ceremony.

The newcomers were shown the beauties of the Winnebago Lodge, and it seemed they would never get done exclaiming over the rugs and skins and pottery, and most of all, the beds.

“They aren’t so terribly hard to make,” the Winnebagos assured them modestly, but at the same time glowing with a feeling of superiority. The San-Clu girls were plainly older than the Winnebagos; they all wore dresses down to their ankles and seemed quite grown up, almost enough to be guardians themselves; yet they did not appear to have won nearly so many honors as the younger Winnebagos.

During the tour of inspection Nyoda and Gladys held a whispered consultation in one end of the room. “Nothing here to make a spread with,” said Gladys. “I’ll have to hurry out and get something.”

“Do,” said Nyoda. Gladys nudged Hinpoha and drew her down the ladder and together they sped after canned shrimp and condensed milk.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us a minute,” said Nyoda to the San-Clus, “we’ll retire behind our curtains and prepare to do the stunt with which we always inflict company. Come, girls,” she added in a whisper, “the Battle of Blenheim.” And the players retired to array themselves in the necessary sheets.

Five minutes later the curtains were shoved aside, and the players stood before the audience. They looked in bewilderment. For seated where they had left the San-Clu Camp Fire Girls were the Captain, Bottomless Pitt, the Monkey, Dan Porter, Peter Jenkins and Harry Raymond. The girls had vanished.

“Why, when did you come in, boys?” asked Nyoda in surprise. “And where are the girls?”

“What girls?” asked the Captain.

“Why, the San-Clu Camp Fire girls,” said Nyoda, “who were visiting us.”

“Here they are,” said the six boys, rising and speaking together. “We are the ‘San-Clu’ Camp Fire Girls. ‘San-Clu’—short for Sandwich Club! Ho-ho-ho, Katherine! You’d know us in a minute with girls’ clothes on, would you!” And from under the rugs and furniture they drew the dresses, hats, gloves and wigs which the late San-Clus had worn a-calling. “Oh-h-h, Katherine, we do this to each other!”

The girls sat staring, speechless for a minute, unable to believe that there really had been no girls there. But the evidence was before their eyes and it could not be doubted. And they were far too game not to see that the joke was on them, and laughed just as heartily over it as the boys did.

“We’ll have to have the spread, anyhow, for your benefit,” said Nyoda, taking up the cans of supplies that Hinpoha and Gladys had just brought in. “You carried that off too splendidly not to be rewarded. We congratulate you on your ability to act, and confess that we were completely taken in. Where’s Slim?”

“We left him behind the fence,” said the Captain, with a start of recollection. “We didn’t dare let him come in with us, because you’d have recognized him right away.”

“Figures never lie, especially stout ones,” laughed Nyoda. “Go and bring him to the spread.”

“Are you folks going on a trip?” inquired the Monkey, with his mouth full of Shrimp Wiggle and his eyes on the ponchos piled in the corner.

“We are, next Saturday,” answered Sahwah. “We were just practicing rolling the ponchos today. Saturday we’re going to take the steamer across the lake to Rock Island. Some friends of Nyoda’s have a cottage there, but they haven’t gone up yet and they said we might stay in it all night if we wanted to. We’re coming home on the boat Sunday night.”

“Are you going by yourselves?” asked Slim, leaning across the table and listening to the conversation. He was fishing for an invitation for the Sandwiches.

“We certainly are going by ourselves,” said Sahwah, to his disappointment. “We haven’t been off by ourselves for a long time. We’re going in a lonely place and have a Ceremonial Meeting on the shore of the lake and tell secrets and do stunts and have a beautiful time. It’s strictly a Winnebago affair—a hen party, you’d call it.”

Slim sighed and consoled himself with five pieces of fudge and an apple. He was one of those boys who like to be around girls all the time. Too fat to enjoy the more strenuous society of the boys, he preferred to sit with his gentler friends and dip his hand into the dishes of candy that they usually had standing around. The fact that they made no end of fun of him and never took him seriously only increased his desire for them. And, like the Captain, he delighted to look upon the hair when it was red. He admired Hinpoha with all his corpulent soul.

The winter and spring months had flown by with swifter wings than the white-tailed swallow, and the clock of the year was once more striking June. Saturday found the Winnebagos skimming over the blue waters of the lake in the big daily excursion boat bound for Rock Island. Nakwisi, of course, had her spy glass and was carefully scrutinizing the empty horizon. “Has Katherine come into your range of vision yet?” asked Nyoda, a trifle anxiously. Katherine had boarded the boat with them safely enough, for she had been personally conducted from home by the whole six, but had disappeared within ten minutes after the boat started.

Nakwisi lowered her glass and laughed. “No, I don’t see her in the sky,” she said, “though I shouldn’t be very greatly surprised if I did.”

And they began a thorough search of the boat from top to bottom and finally found her hanging over the rail of a gangway, trying to touch the snowy foam flying in the swirling wake of the paddle wheel. It was the first time she had ever been on a lake, and she took a perfectly childish delight in the racing water. Pulled back to safety by Nyoda, she gave an animated account of her adventures since seeing them last, in the course of which she had nearsightedly walked into the pilot house and caught hold of the wheel to steady herself when the boat gave a lurch, and had been summarily put out by an angry first mate. “I’ve been everywhere on the boat except down the smokestack,” she concluded triumphantly.

Soon Rock Island appeared as a speck on the horizon in Nakwisi’s glass, then as a long black streak which they could all see, and finally grew by leaps and bounds into a beautiful wooded island with trees and lawns and beautiful summer cottages shining in the sunlight. Shouldering their ponchos, they went ashore, and walked around the point of the island to the cottage where they were to spend the night. It was close to the water, where a curving indentation of the shore line made a lovely little beach. If Sahwah did not make the record at poncho rolling, she left them all behind in getting into her bathing suit, and five minutes after the door was unlocked her hands clove the water in a flying dive from the end of the pier.

Katherine splashed about courageously, trying to swim, and finally succeeded in propelling herself through the water by a series of jerks and splashes unlike any stroke ever invented by the mind of man. “This is too hard on my dellyket constitooshun,” she remarked at last, clambering out and draping her ungainly length around a rock, thereby disclosing the fact that her bathing suit was minus one sleeve. Katherine regarded the yawning armhole with mild vexation. “Broke my needle when my suit was all done but putting in the one sleeve,” she remarked serenely, “and there wasn’t time to go out and buy one—I finished the suit at eleven o’clock last night—so I just pasted that sleeve in with adhesive tape, and it didn’t show a bit. But it must have let go in the water,” she finished plaintively. Nyoda looked at the girls, and the girls looked at Nyoda, and once more they were dumb.

Tired of swimming, they dressed and explored the island and then sat down on the big boat dock and dangled their feet over the edge. Soon a tug came up alongside the pier and the sailor who ran it chanced to be a man whom Nyoda had met the previous summer on the island. “Hello, Captain McMichael,” she called.

The sunburnt sailor looked up. “Hello, hello,” he answered. “What are you doing up here so early in the season?” When Nyoda had explained that she had brought the girls up on a sightseeing trip, Captain McMichael promptly offered to take them for a ride in the tug. “Got to go over to Jackson’s Island and get a lighter of limestone,” he said. “I’d have to set you ashore on Randall’s Island while I went over to Jackson’s to get the lighter,” he continued, “because you’d get all covered with lime dust if you stayed in the tug while they were loading, and it’s no place for ladies to go ashore. But Randall’s is all right. The quarries there aren’t worked any more and there are only a few summer cottages. But there are excellent wild strawberries,” he finished with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ll call for you on the way back and get you here before dark. Will you come?”

“Oh, Nyoda, may we?” cried the girls, delighted at the prospect.

“Why, yes,” answered Nyoda. “I think that will be a delightful way to spend the afternoon. I have always wanted to explore Randall’s Island; it looks so interesting from the steamer. We accept your invitation with pleasure, Captain McMichael.”

“Glad to have you,” responded the tug master heartily, as he set the powerful engine throbbing.

“Don’t fall overboard,” he yelled above the steam exhaust a minute later as Katherine hung over the stern and trailed her hands in the water. Nyoda clung to her dress and the rest sang in chorus:

The run to Randall’s Island took just fifteen minutes and Katherine managed to get there without accident, other than upsetting an oil can into her lap. The wild strawberries were as abundant and as delicious as Captain McMichael had promised, and it was with sighs of regret that they finally admitted they could hold no more. Then they scrambled around in the abandoned limestone quarries until Nyoda, coming face to face with Katherine, announced it was time to play something else. Katherine had torn her dress on sharp points until it was nearly a wreck; she had stepped into a puddle up to her shoetops, her hat brim hung down in a discouraged loop and her hands and face were scratched with briers.

“If one more thing happens to you, Katherine Adams,” said Nyoda sternly, “you’ll have to spend the rest of your life on this island, for you won’t be respectable enough to take home.”

“Then I’ll be Miss Robinson Crusoe,” said Katherine, “and eat up all the strawberries on the island, and not have to write the class paper. I believe I’ll consider your offer. Our literary member, Migwan, can write a book about it—Living on Limestone, or The Queen of the Quarry. Wouldn’t that be a fine sounding title!”

“What is that long stone building way over there?” asked Hinpoha, as they promenaded decorously over the island beyond the quarries, two of them arm-in-arm with Katherine, to keep her in the straight and narrow path.

“Looks like a fort,” said Sahwah, with immediate interest. “Is it a fort, Nyoda?”

“I doubt it very much,” answered Nyoda. “I never heard of a fort on any of these islands. Let’s go over and investigate.”

Katherine hung back, screwing up her face and rolling her eyes like an old negress. “Don’ lead dis child into temptation,” she begged. “Feel lak de climbin’ debbil would get into mah feet agin foh sartin sure, ef ah went near dat pile of stone, an’ den good-bye, dress! Only safe way’s to keep dis child far away!”

Her veiled, husky voice made her imitation indescribably droll, and the girls shouted with laughter. “Never fear, my weak sister,” said Gladys, “we’ll all keep you out of danger.”

“I can’t imagine what this could have been,” said Hinpoha, when they had reached the ruin. “It looks more like a mill than a fort.”

“Mill!” exclaimed Sahwah scornfully. “There isn’t any wheel, and there isn’t a sign of a stream. Mills are always on streams.”

“Maybe this was a windmill,” suggested Katherine. “It’s windy enough to set any kind of machinery going,” and she started in pursuit of her hat, which that moment had been whirled from her head by a mischievous zephyr.

The ruin which the girls had found that afternoon was the remains of an old wine cellar which had been used for storing great quantities of grape wine in the old days when Randall’s Island had been in the heart of the grape region, before quarrying became the chief industry. Nothing was left now to tell what valuable stores it had once sheltered, only stones and crumbling brick walls, overgrown with high weeds and wild vines.

“It’s an enchanted castle,” said Hinpoha. “A beautiful princess used to live here, only she got married and moved to—to the big hotel on Rock Island, and when she left the bad imps came and knocked out the mortar with their little hammers and it all fell to pieces.”

“Oh, wonderful,” drawled Katherine. “Let’s poke about a bit in the ruins and see if we can find any of the solid gold toothpicks the princes used to strew around after a meal.”

The ruined wine cellar proved utterly fascinating. They could still see where it had been divided into rooms; and here and there a thick wall still stood higher than their heads.

“Hi, what’s this?” asked Katherine, as they stood before a doorway partially filled with débris, behind which a black hole yawned.

“It’s a cave,” said Sahwah, poking her head forward into the hole like a turtle. “Let’s explore it,” she continued, stepping carefully over the pile of bricks. “Come on,” she called over her shoulder; “it’s perfectly wonderful. It’s a room, but it’s under the hill. Come on in.”

“Are there any bats?” asked Gladys, hanging back.

“Nothing but brickbats,” came Sahwah’s cheerful voice from within.

Gladys and Hinpoha crawled through the opening, and Katherine, with a resigned, “Goodbye, dress,” followed with Nyoda and Nakwisi and Medmangi. The room was nothing more than an extension of the cellar, built into the side of the hill, but to them it was filled with romantic possibilities.

“What do you suppose it was?” asked Hinpoha, straining her eyes in the semi-darkness.

“The dungeon, of course,” answered Katherine promptly. “Here’s where your beautiful princess confined the lovers that didn’t suit her fancy—light-haired ones and fat ones, especially. She chained them to the wall and the rats nibbled their toes.”

“Oh-oh-oh!” shrieked Hinpoha, stopping her ears. “Don’t say such dreadful things. I can feel the rats nibbling at my toes this minute.”