“But we aren’t mixed up in the House Party at all, Miss Snively,” she said earnestly. “We heard about it, and I found out that Cora Burton was going to be in it and I tried to make her stay home and she refused, so we girls decided we would take action to take her out of it by luring her up here and keeping her until the thing was over. That’s why I asked Cora to meet me on the corner, and I really thought you were Cora all the while. You imitated her squeaky voice to perfection.”
As Katherine was telling her perfectly truthful story she had a dreadful feeling that it didn’t sound plausible at all. Under Miss Snively’s cold eye nothing seemed real.
“Likely story!” said Miss Snively sneeringly. “And how does it happen that if you wanted to bring Cora out of temptation you should take her to the place where the mice were being boxed up ready to be taken to the party?” All the girls looked so disconcerted. Those dreadful mice did complicate matters so! They would have given anything if Nyoda had been there then.
The Captain was beginning to take in the situation. He came forward frankly. “It’s our fault about the mice,” he said, looking Miss Snively straight in the eye. “We found them in a field near here all boxed up and thought it would be a good joke on the girls to bring them over here and let them out. We don’t know anything about your squabbles at Washington High, except what little the girls here have told us; we’re all from Carnegie Mechanic. And we know the girls didn’t have a hand in it, because they were giving a show here to-night.”
His story was backed up by all the other boys, and then Mrs. Evans got in a word and declared that Katherine was telling the whole truth about Cora, and Miss Snively was forced, however ungraciously, to admit that she had been mistaken in her suspicions.
“If she’d been a man I’d have made her eat her words,” declared Slim wrathfully, after Miss Snively had departed from the scene.
Mrs. Evans and Gladys, with perfect courtesy, offered to drive her home in their car, and for the present oil was poured on the troubled waters.
Katherine sat hunched gloomily before the fire and held-forth to the Winnebagos. “I don’t know whether the joke’s on her or on us,” she said pessimistically; “but one thing I’m sure of, and that is, that never, never, as long as I live, will I ever again try to save a girl from herself.”
And the Winnebagos wearily agreed with her.
CHAPTER VII
AN ADVENTURE IN PHILANTHROPY
Katherine became officially a member of the Winnebago Camp Fire Group at the first Ceremonial after the circus, with the Fire Name of Iagoonah, the Story Maker. The name itself was an accident and the manner of its bestowing is cherished in the chronicles of the Winnebagos as one of the group’s best jokes. Just about the time Katherine was to be installed as a Winnebago, word was received that the Chief Guardian of the city was going to be present at the meeting and would take charge of the Ceremonial. Katherine had chosen the name, “Prairie Dandelion,” because she came from the plains, and because her hair was so fly-away. During the supper which preceded the Ceremonial meeting Katherine made such funny speeches and told such outrageous yarns about her life in the West that Nyoda said jestingly: “Your name ought to be Iagoo, the Marvellous Story Teller.” And the others began calling her Iagoo in fun. The Chief Guardian heard them calling her Iagoo and supposed that was the Camp Fire name she wished to take. So, when she was receiving Katherine into the ranks, she said: “Your name is Iagoo, isn’t it?”
Katherine, sobered and almost voiceless from the solemnity of the occasion, mumbled half-inarticulately, “Iagoo? Nah!”
And before anyone knew what had happened she had been officially installed as Iagoonah! The joke was so good that the name stuck, and Katherine was known to the Winnebago Circle as Iagoonah to the end of the chapter, although they did consent to change the interpretation to Story Maker instead of Story Teller as being more dignified and not so suggestive.
Katherine was one of the most enthusiastic Camp Fire Girls that ever lived, and her inspirations led the girls into more activities and adventures than they had ever dreamed of before. It was Katherine who started the Philanthropic Idea. They had been talking about the different things Camp Fire Girls could do together for the good of the community.
“Girls,” said Katherine, standing in her favorite attitude beside the fireplace, with her toes turned in and her elbow on the shelf, “I don’t believe we’re doing all we ought. We’re having a royal good time among ourselves and learning no end of things to our own advantage, but what are we doing for others? Nothing, that I can see.”
“We gave a Thanksgiving basket to Katie, the laundress,” said Hinpoha, “and we collected a barrel of clothes for the Shimky’s when their house burned down, and we gave a benefit performance to pay little Jane Goldman’s expenses in the hospital, and we send toys and scrapbooks to the Sunshine Nursery every Christmas.”
“And I earned three dollars and gave it to the Red Cross,” said Sahwah. “Don’t you call that doing something for other people? We haven’t meant to be selfish, I’m sure. By the way, Katherine, your elbow’s in the fudge.”
Katherine shoved the dish away absently and returned to her subject. “Yes,” she admitted, “the Winnebagos have done a great deal that way, but it’s all been giving something. We haven’t done anything. It’s easy enough to pack a basket and hand it to someone, and collect a lot of old clothes from people who are anxious to get rid of them anyway, or pay the bill for somebody else to do something. But I think we ought to do something ourselves—give up our own time and put our own touch into it.”
“What do you mean we should do?” asked Gladys, hunting through the dish for a piece of fudge that had not been demolished by Katherine’s elbow.
“Well, there’s the Foreign Settlement,” said Katherine. “I’m sure we could find something to do there. It’s a grand and noble thing to show the foreigners how to live better.” And she launched into such an eloquent plea in behalf of the poor overburdened washerwomen who had to neglect their babies while they went to work that the girls wiped their eyes and declared it was a cruel world and things weren’t fairly divided, and surely they must do what they could to lighten the burdens of their sisters in the Settlement.
“What will we do, and when will we do it?” asked Hinpoha, all on fire to get the noble work started.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” answered Katherine. “We ought to go out into the Settlement and see what’s to be done. We’ll make a survey, sort of, and then we’ll step in and see where we’re needed most.”
Nyoda, appealed to for advice, told them to go ahead. She liked the idea of their trying to find out for themselves what needed a helping hand. She could not go with them to the Settlement on Saturday morning, but it was all right for them to go by themselves in daylight.
So, full of a generous desire to help somebody else, the Winnebagos followed Katherine’s lead toward the Settlement the next day. The Settlement, as it was called, embraced some three or four square miles of land adjacent to several large factories. In it dwelt some few thousand Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, packed like sardines in narrow quarters. The Settlement had its own churches, stores, schools, theaters, dance halls and amusement gardens, and looked more like an old world city than a section of a great American Metropolis, with its queer houses and signs in every language but English. The girls wandered up and down the narrow dirty streets, filled with chickens and children, and tried to decide what they should do first. They met the village baker, carrying a washbasket full of enormous round loaves of rye bread without a sign of a wrapping. He was going from house to house, delivering the loaves, and if no one came to the door he laid the loaf on the doorstep and went on.
Before one house, which had a small front yard, between twenty and twenty-five men were lounging on the steps, on the two benches and against the fence. “What do you suppose all those men are doing in front of that house?” whispered Hinpoha curiously.
Just then a woman came from the house carrying in her hand a huge iron frying-pan full of pancakes. She passed it around and each man took a pancake in his hand and ate it where he stood.
“They’re having their dinner!” exclaimed Gladys. “It’s just a little past noon. That’s one way of disposing of the dishwashing problem. I’ll store up that idea for use the next time it’s my turn to cook supper at a meeting. What a large family that woman has, though. I wonder if they are all her husbands?”
“Gracious no,” said Katherine. “These people aren’t poly—poly—you know what I mean, even if they are foreigners. Those men are boarders. Every family has some. Let’s go into that big house over there and ask if there are any babies the mothers would like to leave with us while they go washing.”
They picked their way across the muddy road toward a large building which opened right on to the sidewalk. The hall door stood open and they went in. There were more than a dozen doors leading from the hall on the first floor. “Gracious, what a number of people live here!” said Gladys, putting her arm through Katherine’s.
While they stood there, trying to make up their minds at which door to knock, one was opened and a barefooted woman came out, carrying a pan of dishwater, which she threw out on the sidewalk. At the same time another door opened and out came another woman, who stopped short when she saw the first one, and began to talk in a harsh foreign tongue. The second woman replied angrily and the girls could see that they were quarreling. Before long they were shaking fists in front of each other’s noses and shouting at the tops of their voices. Doors everywhere flew open and the hall was soon filled with excited women who took sides with one or the other and shook fists at each other while the girls huddled under the stairway, expecting to be set upon and beaten. The quarrel was waxing more violent, when the girls spied a door at the end of a hallway which had been opened to let in some of the shouting women. As quickly and as quietly as they could they darted down this passageway and out of the door which brought them into the back yard of the place. Terrified, they fled up the street and stood on the corner, discouraged and irresolute. Hinpoha was for going home right away. But Katherine talked her out of it.
“Let’s go up to the Neighborhood Mission on the hill and ask them for something to do,” suggested Katherine, when the rest inquired what they should do next. So they turned their footsteps toward the white building at the end of the street.
“If you really want to do something,” said the mission worker to whom they explained their errand, “come down here next Saturday morning and help take care of the children that are left with us. Two of the nurses will be away and we will be short-handed.”
The Winnebagos were charmed with the idea. “Oh, may we each take one home for the day?” begged Katherine, “if we promise to bring them back all right?”
Permission was granted for the next Saturday and Katherine was jubilant over the good beginning of their work. “I thought it best that we each take one home and take care of it by ourselves,” she explained. “We’ll have such fun telling experiences and comparing notes afterward.”
Promptly at nine o’clock the next Saturday morning the four Winnebagos, Katherine, Gladys, Hinpoha and Sahwah, presented themselves at the Neighborhood Mission and drove away ten minutes later in Gladys’ automobile, each with a youngster in tow.
At eight that night there was a lively experience meeting in the House of the Open Door. “Oh, girls, you never saw such a dirty baby as the one I had,” cried Gladys, with a little shiver of disgust at the remembrance.
“It couldn’t have been any worse than the one I had,” broke in Hinpoha.
“But I gave him a bath,” said Gladys, with a satisfied air, “and put all new clothes on him, and he was as sweet as a rose when I took him home.”
“Mine beat them all,” said Katherine, when she was able to get in a word edgewise. “He had a little fur tail of some kind tied around his neck on a string. I suppose it was meant for a ‘pacifier,’ for he was sucking it all the while.”
“Why, mine had one of those on, too,” said Gladys.
“So did mine,” said Hinpoha.
“There must have been a million germs on it,” continued Katherine. “I took it off and burned it up.”
“So did I,” said Gladys.
“So did I,” echoed Hinpoha.
After all things were talked over the Winnebagos decided that they had done pretty good work that day in cleaning up the dirty babies and unanimously voted to take them again the next Saturday.
When they arrived at the Neighborhood Mission the next Saturday morning they were met on the walk by half a dozen excited women with handkerchiefs on their heads, who formed a circle around them, shouting in a foreign tongue and making fierce gestures.
“What is the matter? What are they saying?” gasped Hinpoha in terror to Katherine, struggling to pull away from the hand that was clutching her coat lapel.
“I don’t know,” answered Katherine, completely at sea and vainly trying to understand the gibberish that was being uttered by the brown-skinned woman dancing up and down before her.
A startled group of workers ran from the Mission to see what the trouble was, and, forcing themselves through the circle, drew the frightened girls inside the fence of the Mission. Then from the group of women outside there arose a voice in broken English, demanding angrily: “Where is the charm that hung on the neck of my Stefan? The charm to keep away the fever and the sore eyes? I give you my boy to watch, you steal away the charm. Give it back! Give it back!” Here the angry shouting and gesticulating began again and threatening hands were waved over the fence.
“What does she mean?” asked Hinpoha. “What charm?”
“We didn’t steal any charms,” said Katherine indignantly. “We didn’t take a thing off the babies except some dirty old rabbits’ tails that were full of germs. We burned them up, and a good thing it was, too.”
Here the angry shouts of the women gave way to wails of despair. “They burned the rabbits’ tails!” groaned one woman, who could talk English, lifting her hands heavenward, “the rabbits’ tails that the Wonder Woman tied about their necks on Easter Sunday! Now Stefan will get the fever and the sore eyes and the teeth will not come through!” And she beat her breast in despair. Then her anger blazed forth again and she fell to berating the girls in her own language, and the other women fell in with her until there was a perfect hubbub. The workers at the Mission hustled the girls inside the building and the women finally departed, shaking fists at the Mission and raging at all the dwellers.
“It was nothing but a dirty old rabbit’s tail,” declared Hinpoha tearfully, as the shaken Winnebagos hastened homeward. “I hate foreigners! I guess we’ll never try to do anything for them again.”
“Oh, yes, we will,” answered Katherine optimistically; “we’ll learn not to make mistakes in time.”
“Look at that donkey over there,” said Sahwah. “Doesn’t he remind you of Sandhelo?”
“Poor old Sandhelo,” mourned Hinpoha. “I wonder what became of him? We certainly had fun with him, even if he never would go unless he heard music.”
“Seems to be characteristic of the donkey tribe not to want to go,” observed Katherine. “That one over there is balking, too. Doesn’t the fellow that’s trying to drive him look like a pirate, though? I wouldn’t go for him either, if I were a donkey.”
“O look!” cried Sahwah in amazement, and they all stopped still.
A small boy was coming down the street blowing lustily on a wheezy horn, and as soon as the donkey heard it he wheeled around, facing the music, pricked up his ears, uttered a squeal of rapture and rose up on his hind legs, almost upsetting the queer little cart to which he was harnessed.
“Katherine! I do believe it is Sandhelo,” cried Sahwah, excitedly gripping Katherine’s arm.
The man sprang from the cart and seizing the donkey by the bit brought him down to earth with a rough pull that almost jerked his head off, shouting abuse at him in a foreign tongue. The little boy, frightened at the uproar, ran away, taking his music with him. The man got into the cart again and tried to drive away. The donkey refused to move. The man began to beat him unmercifully.
“Oh, girls, we must do something to stop him!” cried Hinpoha, hopping up and down in distress.
“Here, you, stop that!” shouted Katherine, running forward and waving her muff at him threateningly. “I’ll have the law on you!” The man either did not understand, or did not care, for he paid not the slightest heed to her words. “Stop it, stop it, I say!” she commanded, stamping her foot angrily and wildly wishing she were a man, that she might beat this bully even as he was beating the poor little beast.
The man looked at her and grinned derisively. “Who says so?” he growled.
“I say so!” said a voice behind Katherine, and she turned to see the Captain standing beside her. “You stop beating that donkey or I’ll punch your head.” He put his fingers to his lips and uttered a long shrill whistle which the girls recognized as the call of the Sandwiches, and the next minute the other boys came running up the side street, Bottomless Pitt, Monkey, Dan, Peter and Harry, with Slim trailing along in the rear, puffing violently in his efforts to keep up with the rest. They surrounded the cart threateningly and the man sulkily left off beating the donkey.
Sahwah went forward and stroked the little animal’s head and then she uttered a triumphant cry.
“It is Sandhelo!” she exclaimed. “Here’s part of his red, white and blue cockade still sticking in his hair.”
“That’s our donkey,” cried all the girls and boys, pressing close around. “Where did you get him?”
“He is not,” declared the man angrily. “I raise him myself since he was young.”
“That is not true,” said Sahwah shrewdly. “If you had had him very long you would know how to make him go. It seems to me that this is the first time you’ve ever tried to drive him.”
“He is mine, he is mine,” declared the man. “I know how to make him go. He always go for me.”
“Then make him go,” said Sahwah coolly.
The man tried to urge the donkey forward, but in vain.
“Now, we’ll show you how to make him go,” said Sahwah. “Where’s that boy with the horn?” She ran up the street a distance and found the boy seated on a doorstep and bribed him with a few pennies to let her take the horn. Then, walking along ahead of Sandhelo she played a half dozen lively notes, such as had sent him flying round the circus ring. No sooner had she started than he started at a great rate. When she stopped he stopped.
“It’s Sandhelo without mistake,” they all cried, and the last doubt vanished when he came up alongside of Sahwah and laid his head on her shoulder the way he always had done.
“He belongs to us,” said the Captain, looking the man in the eye, “and you’ll have to give him up.”
The man shifted his gaze. “I give him to you for five dollar,” he muttered. “I pay so much for him.”
“Not much,” said the Captain. “Nobody sold you a donkey for five dollars and you can’t get that much out of us. Now you either give him to us or we’ll report it to the police.” The man protested loudly, but he was evidently thinking all the while that a donkey that only went when he heard music was not such a good bargain after all, even if he did get it by the simple and inexpensive method of finding it in his dooryard and tying it up. So, after growling some more that they were robbing him, he suffered Sandhelo to be unharnessed from the cart and led away in triumph in the wake of the horn.
“Well, our charitable enterprise didn’t turn out so badly, after all,” said Katherine, when Sandhelo was once more established in his cozy stall in the House of the Open Door. “If it hadn’t been for that fuss about the babies we wouldn’t have been on the street in time to see Sandhelo. And if we hadn’t wanted to help those people there wouldn’t have been any fuss. It does really seem that virtue is its own reward and one good turn deserves another. Let’s do it some more.”
And as usual the others agreed with her.
CHAPTER VIII
A SELECT SLEEPING PARTY
“Gracious, Katherine, what is the matter with your fingers?” asked Gladys curiously, as Katherine came into the room with all five fingers on her right hand tied up.
“Oh,” replied Katherine cheerfully, “I burned one, cut one, pounded one with a hammer and slammed the door on one, and that left only one good one, so I tied that up, too, for safe-keeping and only take it out when I want to use it. It’s a good thing I don’t need my hand to sing carols with, or I would be out of the running. Are we all here?”
“All but Veronica,” answered Nyoda, “and Sahwah—and Sahwah will be here presently. By the way, where is Veronica?”
“She’s over at the theater where her uncle is orchestra director,” answered Gladys. “She goes over there almost every Saturday afternoon. I believe she plays sometimes when one of the regular violinists is absent.”
Veronica, it must be confessed, was a great puzzle to the Winnebagos. Try as they might, they could never get her to enter into their work and fun with any degree of vim. She always sat aloof, her brooding eyes staring off into space. Not that they loved her any the less—they were too genuinely sorry for her—but they never seemed to be able to break down the barrier between them and her. They constantly stood abashed before her aristocratic airs. When the friends went together to get ice cream Veronica had a way of flinging a dollar bill down on the table and bidding the waitress keep the change that made the others feel cheap somehow, although they knew it was useless extravagance. When a poor woman came to the door one day, just as she was going out, and asked if she had any old clothes to give away she promptly took off her expensive furs and gave them to her.
The girls were mightily impressed by this act until Nyoda talked it over with them and made them see that the gift was entirely inappropriate. So while they admired her to distraction and each one secretly hoped that Veronica would single her out as a special friend, they had to admit that as yet they had not made much headway.
“If Sahwah doesn’t come in five minutes, we’ll have to start without her,” said Hinpoha, walking impatiently to the window. “Carol practice begins at two and it’s half-past one now.”
Just then the telephone rang. “It’s Sahwah,” reported Hinpoha, upon answering, “and she says she’s got a real charity case for us to look into—some old woman—and she’s down at Sahwah’s house now and we should all come down. She says it’s the saddest thing she ever heard. What shall we do, girls, shall we go?”
“Of course,” said Katherine promptly.
“What about carol practice?” asked Gladys. “Won’t it make us dreadfully late?”
“We’ll just have to be late, then,” said Katherine, jabbing her hatpins in swiftly. “Come on.”
Sahwah met them at the door with an unusually solemn countenance. “You’re a load of bricks to come, girls,” she said, “but I knew you would. Come right upstairs. In here,” she said, pausing before the door of her room. “Maybe you’d better go in one at a time. You go first, Hinpoha.”
Hinpoha, feeling queer, passed in. The next minute those outside heard a great shout. “Migwan! My Migwan! When did you come? We thought you weren’t coming for two whole days yet. Sahwah, you wretch, how could you get us so worked up?”
The others burst in and smothered Migwan in embraces while Katherine stood looking on curiously, until Gladys remembered her manners. “This is our Katherine,” she said, drawing her forward, “that we have all written you about. Make a speech, Katherine, to show her how you do it!”
And Katherine obligingly complied and Migwan laughed extravagantly and was soon sitting on the bed beside her with her arm locked in hers, and talking to her as if she had known her all her life instead of only five minutes. That was the effect Katherine had on everybody.
Then they dragged Migwan out to the House of the Open Door and introduced her to the Sandwiches, who were playing basket ball in their half of the barn. The Sandwiches began to plan a Christmas barn dance in her honor on the spot, and nobody thought of carol practice again until it was too late to go. Migwan had to explain how she got through with her work at college two days earlier than she had expected and came home to surprise them. She went to see Sahwah first and Sahwah worked the little stratagem which brought them all down to her house in such a hurry. Each one insisted upon Migwan’s going home with her to spend the night, but she could not be enticed away from her own home. “I guess you’d want to stay at home, too, if you hadn’t seen your mother for three months.” But she promised to attend a select sleeping party some night up in the House of the Open Door, which Sahwah had just “germed.”
“There’s a loose shingle on the roof and the snow comes in a little,” said Hinpoha regretfully. “It really ought to be fixed.”
“Never mind the shingle,” cried the others. “When did the Winnebagos ever balk at a snowflake or two on their beds?”
The barn dance was a grand success in spite of the fact that Slim fell down the ladder in his excitement and sprained all the portions of his anatomy that he needed most for dancing, besides demolishing a frosted cake in the tumble.
“Too bad you can’t dance,” said the Captain sympathetically, when Slim’s ankles had been strapped with plaster and he had been comfortably settled on a pile of bearskins brought down from the bed upstairs. “But you don’t need to waste your time. You can be musician and play the banjo while the rest of us dance.”
“But I can’t play the banjo,” objected Slim.
“Play anyway,” commanded the Captain. “Here, I’ll teach you a couple of tunes that you can play with one finger that we can do most of the dances to.” So Slim learned to play the banjo under pressure and picked banefully away while the rest whirled about on the floor. Sometimes he got his tunes or his time so badly mixed that it was impossible to dance and then the Captain would make him sing and beat time with a hatchet on the floor. Finally Nyoda took pity on him and took over the banjo, producing such lively strains and keeping the dancers going at such a mad pace that they sank down breathless one by one, and a series of loud thumps from Sandhelo’s stall told them that he was also capering to the music and nearly battering his stall down in the process.
The boys went home reluctantly at eleven o’clock and the girls climbed the ladder to the joys of the “select sleeping party.” This was the first time any of them had stayed all night in the House of the Open Door. “Covers were laid for nine,” as Katherine wrote in the Count Book. Nyoda had her camp bed, Sahwah had her pile of bearskins, Gladys her Indian Bed and Nakwisi her willow bed. Migwan was invited to share them all and chose the bearskins. Katherine had brought a couch hammock, which she declared surpassed them all in comfort. The rest of the girls played John Kempo for the privilege of sleeping with Nyoda, and Veronica got it, and the other two spread their blankets on mattresses on the floor. The fireplace was filled with glowing hard coals, which would keep all night, and the Lodge was as warm as toast, so the snowflakes which drifted in through the hole in the roof were never noticed. Of course they talked half the night, for there was so much to tell Migwan and so much she had to tell them it seemed they never would get it all told. But finally the conversation was punctuated by steadily lengthening yawns, and then trailed off into silence.
Nyoda was awakened by the touch of a cold hand on her face. “What is it?” she asked, sitting up.
“It’s I—Migwan,” said the figure standing beside her. “Do you know where Sahwah is?”
“Isn’t she in bed with you?” asked Nyoda, still in a low tone of voice, so as not to disturb the other girls.
“No, she isn’t,” whispered Migwan. “I woke up a minute ago and felt around for her and she wasn’t there. I called and asked where she was and there was no answer.”
Nyoda got up and lit a candle, and looked carefully around the room. All the other girls were sound asleep in their beds; Sahwah’s clothes lay on a chair, but there was no sign of Sahwah. “She can’t be under the bed,” said Migwan, “because this bed has no ‘under.’”
Nyoda went to the top of the ladder and called: “Sahwah, are you down there?” No answer. All was dark and silent below. When it was evident that Sahwah was not in the barn, Nyoda roused all the sleepers unceremoniously.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” they all cried sleepily. There was a great uproar when Sahwah’s disappearance became known. “Where could she have gone without her clothes?” they all asked.
“Do you think she was dragged from her bed, Nyoda?” asked Hinpoha anxiously, filled with the wildest fears.
“No, I don’t,” answered Nyoda promptly, suddenly remembering certain facts in Sahwah’s history. “I think she’s walking in her sleep again. She always does when she gets excited. She’s probably gotten out of the barn and is wandering around somewhere and we must find her and bring her in without delay. This is altogether too cold a night to be promenading without a coat on.” She had dressed herself fully while she was talking and the others followed suit with all speed.
The barn door was carefully closed, but the big inside bolt was unfastened and they knew by that that Sahwah was outside somewhere. The wind had swept the snow off the drive and there was not a footprint to be seen. They spent some time looking all around the barn and up on the roof and then concluded that she must have gone down the drive, because, if she had gone anywhere else, there would be footprints. The snow in the road had been so packed down by passing vehicles that a person walking would leave no trace.
“Where can she be?” exclaimed Nyoda anxiously after a fruitless search of some ten minutes.
“Do you think she could have climbed a tree?” asked Hinpoha.
“And be roosting on a branch?” asked Katherine, and they all had to laugh in spite of their concern.
“Well, you never can tell what Sahwah will do next,” returned Hinpoha, “especially in her sleep. You haven’t known her as long as we have. Once in camp she climbed to the top of the diving tower and jumped off. So I guess climbing a tree wouldn’t be impossible for her.”
“Hark, girls,” said Nyoda, bending her head in a listening attitude. “Don’t you hear music?” The others listened, but could hear nothing. “When that breath of wind came in this direction I thought I heard it,” said Nyoda. “There it is, again.” This time they all heard it, faint and far, a soft strain of music, but what kind of music or whence it came they could not make out.
“It came with the wind,” said Nyoda, “so we must walk against the wind and see if we can find it.” Heading into the wind they walked up the road. They shivered as they walked and the snow crunched under their feet. The very moonlight seemed cold as it touched them and the stars glistened like splintered icicles. Verily, it was a cold night to be sleepwalking. The music began to sound more clearly now, and at a turn in the road they stopped still in amazement at the sight before their eyes. There in the road just ahead of them ambled Sandhelo, and by his side walked Sahwah, dressed in her troubadour costume, the red cloak flying out in the breeze. She held her mouth organ to her lips, and the drawing of her breath in and out of it was producing the strains of music which the girls had followed. As they suspected, she was sound asleep. They hurried forward to waken Sahwah, and she turned around and faced them. Her eyes were wide open in the moonlight. A moment she looked at them and then turned suddenly and swung herself onto Sandhelo’s back. At her touch on his bridle Sandhelo started and then began running down the road as fast as he could. Sahwah woke up, gave one shriek of fright, and then mechanically dug her knees into his sides and hung on. Sandhelo did not have his regular harness on, only his bridle, and she was riding bareback in this strange adventure. The girls pursued as fast as they could, shouting at the top of their voices, but of course they were soon left behind. Far ahead of them in the moonlit road they saw Sandhelo stop suddenly and slide his rider over his head into a snowdrift and then sit down on his haunches beside her like a dog. Sahwah had emerged from her drift and was shaking the snow off when the others came up. “What’s the matter?” she asked in a bewildered tone. “How did I get out here?”
“Home first, explanations afterward,” said Nyoda, wrapping her in the bear rug she had brought with her. And they made Sahwah run every step of the way back to the Lodge, and swallow quarts of hot lemonade before they would tell her a single thing.
Migwan insisted on tying Sahwah’s foot to the post of Nyoda’s bed for the rest of the night to insure her being there in the morning. They had just gotten quieted down when the ropes of Katherine’s hammock broke and down she came with a resounding crash.
Morning found them heavy-eyed and full of yawns, but to all inquirers they stoutly maintained that the select sleeping party had been the best ever.
CHAPTER IX
THE CANDLE IN THE WINDOW
“What’s all this about singing carols?” asked Migwan. “Everywhere I go the talk is all of carols, carols, carols. And the air is full of ‘God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen,’ and similar melodies.”
“It’s the Music Club League,” explained Gladys. “They have revived the old custom of going through the streets on Christmas Eve with lanterns and singing carols, and are training the boys and girls all over the city to sing them. People who are interested in the work of the Music Club League and wish to give a gift of money for its support will put a candle in their windows and we will stop outside and sing carols for them. Isn’t it a pretty idea?”
“Beautiful,” said Migwan. “I wish I might have attended the rehearsals so I could go around with you.”
“We’ll teach you the carols,” said Gladys eagerly, “and I’ll explain to Miss Jones and I know she’ll let you be in our group. We’ve been given one of the best districts in the city—Garfield Avenue, from the Cathedral to the Park, where all the rich people live—and we expect to bring in more money than any other group. There was great rivalry among the groups for that district, and Miss Jones tested and tested us to see which sang the best. I nearly passed away from surprise when she decided in favor of our group. Oh, won’t it be glorious, though, stopping before all those fine houses?” and Gladys and Hinpoha, unable to keep still any longer, got up and began to dance.
“That isn’t the best part of it, though,” said Sahwah. “All the carolers are invited to the Music League’s clubhouse after the singing is over for an oyster supper and a frolic. And the troupe of midgets that are playing in the Mansfield Theater this week are coming and will give a real Punch and Judy show. Hurrah for the Music Club League! Hurrah for carols! Hurrah for Christmas!”
“I smell something burning,” said Gladys, sniffing the air suspiciously.
“It’s probably something that has been spilled on the stove,” said Katherine serenely. They were all up at Katherine’s house.
“Here are the carols we are going to sing,” said Gladys, pulling Migwan toward the piano. “We might as well begin at once.”
“Do you really think Miss Jones will let me do it?” asked Migwan rather doubtfully.
“I’m sure she will,” said Gladys, “if we all——Katherine, there is something burning; it smells like cloth.” And she rushed off unceremoniously to investigate. The kitchen was full of smoke when she reached it, proceeding from the ironing board, where Katherine had left the electric iron standing without being turned off.
“You ought to have a leather medal, Katherine,” scolded Hinpoha, switching off the current and setting the smoking board outside the back door, while Katherine stood idly by with such a look of pained surprise on her face that the others went into gales of laughter.
“I can’t get used to these self-starting, big city flat-irons, nohow,” she drawled mildly in self-defense. “Back where I come from the irons cool off when you leave them by themselves; here they start heatin’ up.” Katherine always left off her g’s when she spoke earnestly.
“Katherine, you’re hopeless,” said Hinpoha with a sigh, and then she added affectionately, “that’s why we love you so.”
“There’s Slim outside with his big bob-sled,” said Sahwah, looking out of the window. “He promised to take us all coasting down College Hill this afternoon. Come on.” And they trooped out.
Nyoda took a few round trips on the bob with the girls, and then, having other things to do, walked home by herself through the early winter twilight. A few blocks from her home she saw Veronica walking along just ahead of her. By her side walked a young man whom Nyoda recognized as Alex Tobin, one of the violins in the Temple Theater Orchestra. He was talking animatedly and earnestly to her, his white teeth showing often in a smile beneath his small black moustache. Veronica was listening eagerly with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. As Nyoda drew near she heard Veronica say: “Oh, a chance to study with him would be the greatest happiness of my life, but uncle would never allow it. Never!”
And Alex Tobin answered: “Does it have to depend upon your uncle’s permission? You have money in your own right, have you not?”
And then Veronica noticed that Nyoda was behind her and turned and spoke and Alex Tobin took his departure down the cross street. Nyoda looked after him thoughtfully. She was not fond of Alex Tobin, although she knew him only very slightly. He was a young Pole, and quite handsome, but there was something about his eyes that made a keen observer dislike him.
“I was at the rehearsal of the Symphony Orchestra this afternoon,” said Veronica, with more animation than Nyoda had ever seen her display. “You know uncle plays this year and he lets me go along and listen, that I may benefit from the director’s criticisms.”
“Does Mr. Tobin play in the Symphony Orchestra, too?” asked Nyoda idly.
“Yes,” answered Veronica. “He’s a wonderful player; and so kind to me. He takes such an interest in my playing. He says I will play at concerts in time.”
“I don’t doubt it in the least,” said Nyoda heartily. “But you mustn’t study music to the exclusion of everything else. You are growing quite thin. You must stay out of doors more and romp with the girls. You are missing all the coasting and skating. ‘Hold on to Health,’ you know.”
“Yes, of course,” murmured Veronica absently, and fell silent, as if she were day-dreaming.
“The Midgets are going to give Punch and Judy dolls to the carol singers as souvenirs of the occasion,” announced Sahwah, as the Winnebagos assembled before starting out for the singing on Christmas Eve. “Won’t they be jolly to put up in our rooms?”
“And did you know that Jeffry, the famous bird imitator, was going to be there and give some of his wonderful bird calls?” asked Gladys. “Migwan, you’re in luck, being home this week to take in all the good things.”
“The frolic afterwards is going to be as much fun as the carol singing,” said Hinpoha. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything. And the group that brings in the most money is going to get a prize,” she added, “and have its picture in the Sunday paper. Oh, I do hope we’ll get the most! We must sing our very best.”
“Oh, what a glorious night!” they all cried, as they passed out into the sparkling snow.
“Oh, but I’m glad I’m a carol singer,” said Katherine, and slipped and sat down on her lantern in her enthusiasm.
“Have you time to walk over to Division Street with me before we go to Mrs. Salisbury’s?” asked Gladys, as they went down the street. Mrs. Salisbury was the lady who had gathered together the band of carolers to which the Winnebagos belonged, and they were all to meet at her house.
“It’s early yet,” said Hinpoha, “we ought to have time. Come on.”
So they all went with Gladys to deliver a Christmas parcel to a poor family whom Gladys’ mother had taken under her wing. Along the big avenues through which they walked candles were already glimmering in windows in friendly invitation to the coming singers. But there were no candles in the windows on Division Street. The houses were all poor little one-story ones, with never a wreath or a bit of decoration anywhere to show that it was Christmas. The very lamp-posts burned dimly with a discouraged air. The girls delivered their bundle and hastened back up the dark street.