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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road, by
+Hildegard G. Frey
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road
+       or, Glorify Work
+
+
+Author: Hildegard G. Frey
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2011  [eBook #36485]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE OPEN
+ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE OPEN ROAD
+
+Or, Glorify Work
+
+by
+
+HILDEGARD G. FREY
+
+Author of
+The Camp Fire Girls Series
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A. L. Burt Company
+Publishers           New York
+
+
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+                                  THE
+                         Camp Fire Girls Series
+
+
+                          By HILDEGARD G. FREY
+
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods
+      or, The Winnebago's Go Camping
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls at School
+      or, The Wohelo Weavers
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls at Onoway House
+      or, The Magic Garden
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls Go Motoring
+      or, Along the Road That Leads the Way
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls Larks and Pranks
+      or, The House of the Open Door
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls on Ellen's Isle
+      or, the Trail of the Seven Cedars
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road
+      or, Glorify Work
+
+  The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit
+      or, Over The Top With the Winnebago's
+
+
+                            Copyright, 1918
+                         By A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                       Oct. 1, 19--.
+Dear First-And-Onlys:
+
+When I got to the post-office to-day and found there was no letter from
+you, my heart sank right through the bottom of my number seven boots and
+buried itself in the mud under the doorsill. All day long I had had a
+feeling that there would be a letter, and that hope kept me up nobly
+through the trying ordeal of attempting to teach spelling and geography
+and arithmetic to a roomful of children of assorted ages who seem as
+determined not to learn as I am determined to teach them. It sustained
+and soothed me through the exciting process of "settling" Absalom Butts,
+the fourteen-year-old bully of the class, with whom I have a preliminary
+skirmish every day in the week before recitations can begin; and through
+the equally trying business of listening to his dull-witted sister,
+Clarissa, spell "example" forty ways but the right way, and then dissolve
+into inevitable tears. When school was out I was as limp as a rag, and so
+thankful it was Friday night that I could have kissed the calendar. I
+fairly "sic"ed Sandhelo along the road to the post-office, expecting to
+revel in the bale of news from my beloveds that was awaiting me, but when
+I got there and the post box was bare the last button burst off the
+mantle of my philosophy and left me naked to the cold winds of
+disappointment. A whole orphan asylum with the mumps on both sides would
+have been gay and chipper compared to me when I turned Sandhelo's head
+homeward and started on the six-mile drive.
+
+It had been raining for more than a week, a steady, warmish, sickening
+drizzle, that had taken all the curl out of my spirits and left them
+hanging in dejected, stringy wisps. I couldn't help feeling how well the
+weather matched my state of mind as I drove homeward. The whole landscape
+was one gray blur, and the tall weeds that bordered the road on both
+sides wept unconsolably on each other's shoulders, their tears mingling
+in a stream down their stems. I could almost hear them sob. The muddy
+yellow road wound endlessly past empty, barren fields, and seemed to hold
+out no promise of ever arriving anywhere in particular. All my life I
+have hated that aimlessly winding road, just as I have always hated those
+empty, barren fields. They have always seemed so shiftless, so utterly
+unambitious. I can't help thinking that this corner of Arkansas was made
+out of the scraps that were left after everything else was finished. How
+father ever came to take up land here when he had the whole state to
+choose from is one of the seven things we will never know till the coming
+of the Cocqcigrues. It's as flat as a pancake, and, for the most part,
+treeless. The few trees there are seem to be ashamed to be caught growing
+in such a place, and make themselves as small as possible. The land is
+stony and barren and sterile, neither very good for farming or grazing.
+The only certain thing about the rainfall is that it is certain to come
+at the wrong time, and upset all your plans. "Principal rivers, there are
+none; principal mountains--I'm the only one," as Alice-in-Wonderland used
+to say. But father has always been the kind of man that gets the worst of
+every bargain.
+
+Now, you unvaryingly cheerful Winnebagos, go ahead and sniff
+contemptuously when you breathe the damp vapors rising from this epistle,
+and hear the pitiful moans issuing therefrom. "For shame, Katherine!" I
+can hear you saying, in superior tones, "to get low in your mind so soon!
+Why, you haven't come to the first turn in the Open Road, and you've gone
+lame already. Where is the Torch that you started out with so gaily
+flaring? Quenched completely by the first shower! Katherine Adams, you
+big baby, straighten up your face this minute and stop blubbering!"
+
+But oh, you round pegs in your nice smooth, round holes, you have never
+been a stranger in a familiar land! You have never known what it was to
+be out of tune with everything around you. Oh, why wasn't I built to
+admire vast stretches of nothing, content to dwell among untrodden ways
+and be a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love, and
+all that Wordsworth business? Why do crickets and grasshoppers and owls
+make me feel as though I'd lost my last friend, instead of impressing me
+with the sociability of Nature? Why don't I rejoice that I've got the
+whole road to myself, instead of wishing that it were jammed with
+automobiles and trolley cars, and swarming with people? Why did Fate set
+me down on a backwoods farm when my only desire in life is to dwell in a
+house by the side of the road where the circus parade of life is
+continually passing? Why am I not like the other people in this section,
+with whom ignorance is bliss, grammar an unknown quantity, and culture a
+thing to be sneered at?
+
+Although I can't see them, I know that somewhere to the north, just
+beyond the horizon, the mountains lift their great frowning heads, and
+ever since I can remember I have looked upon them as a fence which shut
+me out from the big bustling world, and over which I would climb some
+day. Just as Napoleon said, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy," so I thought,
+"Beyond the Ozarks lies my world."
+
+I don't believe I had my nose out of a book for half an hour at a time in
+those early days. I went without new clothes to buy them, and got up
+early and worked late to get my chores done so that I might have more
+time to read. When I was twelve years old I had learned all that the
+teacher in a little school at the cross roads could teach me, and then I
+went to the high school in the little town of Spencer, six miles away,
+traveling the distance twice every day. When there was a horse available
+I rode, if not, I walked. But whether riding or walking, I always had a
+book in my hand, and read as I went along. It often happened that, being
+deep in the fortunes of my story book friends, I did not notice when old
+Major ambled off the road in quest of a nibble of clover, and would
+sometimes come to with a start to find myself lying in the ditch. The
+neighbors thought my actions scandalous and pitied my father and mother
+because they had such a good-for-nothing daughter.
+
+All this time my father was getting poorer and poorer. He changed from
+farming to cotton raising and then made a failure of that, and finally,
+in despair, he turned to raising horses, not beautiful race horses like
+you read about in stories, but wiry little cow ponies that the cattlemen
+use. For some unaccountable reason he had good luck in this line for
+three years in succession, and a year or so after I had finished this
+little one-horse high school there was enough money for me to climb over
+my Ozark fence and go and play in the land of my dreams. One wonderful
+year, that surpassed in reality anything I had ever pictured in
+imagination, and then the sky fell, and here I am, inside the fence once
+more.
+
+Not that I am sorry I came back, no sirree! Father was so pleased and
+touched to think I gave up my college course and came home that he
+chirked up right away and started in from the beginning once more to pay
+the mortgage off the land and the stock, and mother is feeling well
+enough to be up almost all day now; but to-day I just couldn't help
+shedding a few perfectly good tears over what I might be doing instead of
+what I am.
+
+A flock of wild geese, headed south, flew above my head in a dark
+triangle, and honked derisively at me as they passed. "Not even a goose
+would stop off in this dismal country!" I exclaimed aloud. Then, simply
+wild for sympathy from someone, I slid off Sandhelo's back and stood
+there, ankle deep in the yellow mud, and put my arms around his neck.
+
+"Oh, Sandhelo," I croaked dismally, "you're all I have left of my
+wonderful year up north. You love me, don't you?"
+
+But Sandhelo looked unfeelingly over my shoulder at the rain splashing
+down into the road and yawned elaborately right in my face. There are
+times when Sandhelo shows no more feeling than Eeny-Meeny. Seeing there
+was no sympathy to be had from him, I climbed on his back again and rode
+grimly home, trying to resign myself to a life of school teaching at the
+cross roads, ending in an early death from boredom.
+
+Father was nowhere about when I rode into the stableyard, and the door
+into the stable was shut. I slid it back, with Sandhelo nosing at my arm
+all the while.
+
+"Oh, you're affectionate enough now that you want your dinner," I
+couldn't help saying a little spitefully. Then my heart melted toward
+him, and, with my arm around his neck, we walked in together. Inside of
+Sandhelo's stall I ran into something and jumped as if I had been shot.
+In the dusk I could make out the figure of a man sitting on the floor and
+leaning against the wall.
+
+"Is that you, Father?" I asked, while Sandhelo blinked in astonishment at
+this invasion of his premises. There was no answer from the man on the
+floor. Why I wasn't more excited I don't know, but I calmly took the
+lantern down from the hook and lit it and held it in front of me. The
+light showed the man in Sandhelo's stall to be sound asleep, with his
+hand leaned back against the wooden partition. He had a black beard and
+his face was all streaked with mud and dirt, and there was mud even in
+his matted hair. He had no hat on. His clothes were all covered with mud
+and one sleeve of his coat was torn partly out.
+
+Sandhelo put down his nose and sniffed inquiringly at the stranger's
+feet. Without ceremony I thrust the lantern right into the man's face.
+
+"Who are you and what are you doing here?" I said, loudly and firmly. The
+man stirred and opened his eyes, and then sat up suddenly, blinking at
+the light.
+
+"Who are you?" I repeated sternly. The man stared at me stupidly for an
+instant; then he passed his hand over his forehead and stumbled to his
+feet.
+
+"Who am I?" he repeated wildly; then his face screwed up into a frightful
+grimace and with a groan he crumpled up on the floor. Leaving Sandhelo
+still standing there gazing at him in mild astonishment, I ran out
+calling for father.
+
+Father came presently and took a long look at the man in the stall, and
+then, without asking any questions, he got a wet cloth and laid it on his
+head. That washed some of the mud off and showed a big bruise on his
+forehead over his left eye. Father called the man that helps with the
+horses.
+
+"Help me carry this man into the house," he said shortly.
+
+"But Father," I said, "you surely aren't going to carry that man into the
+house? All dirty like that!"
+
+Father gave me one look and I said no more. Together father and Jim
+Wiggin lifted the stranger from the floor and started toward the house
+with him, while I capered around in my excitement and finally ran on
+ahead to tell mother. They carried him into the kitchen and laid him down
+on the old lounge and tried to bring him around with smelling salts and
+things. But he just kept on talking and muttering to himself, and never
+opened his eyes.
+
+And that's what he's still doing, while I'm off in my room writing this.
+It was five o'clock when we brought him in, and now it's after ten and he
+hasn't come to his senses yet. There isn't a thing in his pockets to show
+who he is or where he came from.
+
+I feel so strange since I found that man there. I'm not a bit low in my
+mind any more, like I was this afternoon. I have a curious feeling as if
+I had passed a turn in the road and come upon something new and
+wonderful.
+
+Forget the lengthy moan I indulged in at the beginning of this letter,
+will you, and think of me as gay and chipper as ever.
+
+                            Yours in Wohelo,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                      Oct. 15, 19--.
+Darling Winnies:
+
+And to think, after all that fuss I made about not getting a letter from
+you that day, I didn't have time to open it for three whole days after it
+finally arrived! You remember where I left off the last time, with the
+strange man I had found in Sandhelo's stable out of his head on the
+kitchen lounge? Well, he kept on like that, lying with his eyes shut and
+occasionally saying a word or two that didn't make sense, all that night
+and all the next day. Then on Sunday he developed a high fever and began
+to rave. He shouted at the top of his voice until he was hoarse; always
+about somebody pursuing him and whom he was trying to run away from. Then
+he began to jump up and try to run outdoors, until we had to bar the
+door. It took all father and Jim Wiggin and I could do to keep him on the
+lounge. We had a pretty exciting time of it, I can tell you. Of course,
+all the uproar upset mother and she had another spell with her heart and
+took to her bed, and by Tuesday night things got so strenuous that I had
+to dismiss school for the rest of the week and keep all my ten fingers in
+the domestic pie.
+
+I don't know who rejoiced more over the unexpected lapse from lessons,
+the scholars or myself. I never saw a group of children who were so
+constitutionally opposed to learning as the twenty-two stony-faced
+specimens of "hoomanity" that I had to deal with in that little shanty of
+a school. They'd rather be ignorant than educated any day. I just can't
+make them do the homework I give them. Every day it's the same story.
+They haven't done their examples and they haven't learned their spelling;
+they haven't studied their geography. The only way I can get them to
+study their lessons is to keep them in after school and stand over them
+while they do it. Their only motto seems to be, "Pa and ma didn't have no
+education and they got along, so why should we bother?"
+
+The families from which these children come are what is known in this
+section as "Hard-uppers," people who are and have always been "hard up."
+Nearly everybody around here is a Hard-upper. If they weren't they
+wouldn't be here. The land is so poor that nobody will pay any price for
+it, so it has drifted into the hands of shiftless people who couldn't get
+along anywhere, and they work it in a backward, inefficient sort of way
+and make such a bare living that you couldn't call it a living at all.
+They live in little houses that aren't much more than cabins--some of
+them have only one or two rooms in them--and haven't one of the comforts
+that you girls think you absolutely couldn't live without. They have no
+books, no pictures, no magazines. It's no wonder the children are
+stony-faced when I try to shower blessings upon them in the form of
+spelling and grammar; they know they won't have a mite of use for them if
+they do learn them, so why take the trouble?
+
+"What a dreadful set of people!" I can hear you say disdainfully. "How
+can you stand it among such poor trash?"
+
+O my Beloveds, I have a sad admission to make. I am a Hard-upper
+myself! My father, while he is the dearest daddy in the world, never
+had a scrap of business ability; that's how he came to live in this
+made-out-of-the-scraps-after-every-thing-else-was-made corner of
+Arkansas. He never had any education either, though it wasn't because he
+didn't want it. He doesn't care a rap for reading; all he cares for is
+horses. We live in a shack, too, though it has four rooms and is much
+better than most around here. We never had any books or magazines,
+either, except the ones for which I sacrificed everything else I wanted
+to buy. But I wanted to learn,--oh, how I wanted to learn!--and that's
+where I differed altogether from the rest of the Hard-uppers. They're
+still wagging their heads about the way I used to walk along the road
+reading. The very first week I taught school this year I was taking
+Absalom Butts (mentioned in my former epistle) to task for speaking
+saucily to me, and thinking to impress him with the dignity of my
+position I said, "Do you know whom you're talking to?"
+
+And he answered back impudently, "Yer Bill Adamses good-for-nothing
+daughter, that's who you are!"
+
+You see what I'm up against? Those children hear their parents make such
+remarks about me and they haven't the slightest respect for me. Did you
+know that I only got this job of teaching because nobody else would take
+it? Absalom Butts' father, who is about the only man around here who
+isn't a Hard-upper, and is the most influential man in the community
+because he can talk the loudest, held out against me to the very end,
+declaring I hadn't enough sense to come in out of the rain. As he is
+president of the school board in this township--the whole thing is a
+farce, but the members are tremendously impressed with their own
+dignity--it pretty nearly ended up in your little Katherine not getting
+any school to teach this winter, but when one applicant after another
+came and saw and turned up her nose, it became a question of me or no
+schoolmarm, so they gave me the place, but with much misgiving. I had
+become very much discouraged over the whole business, for I really needed
+the money, and began to consider myself a regular idiot, but father said
+I needn't worry very much about being considered a good-for-nothing by
+Elijah Butts; his whole grudge against me rose from the fact that he had
+wanted to marry my mother when she was young and had never forgiven
+father for beating him to it. That cheered me up considerably, and I
+determined to swallow no slights from the family of Butts.
+
+Since then it's been nip and tuck between us. Young Absalom is a big,
+overgrown gawk of fourteen with no brain for anything but mischief. His
+chief aim in life just now is to think up something to annoy me. I ignore
+him as much as possible so as not to give him the satisfaction of knowing
+he can annoy me, but about every three days we have a regular pitched
+battle, and it keeps me worn out. His sister Clarissa hasn't enough brain
+for mischief, but her constant flow of tears is nearly as bad as his
+impudence.
+
+Taken all in all, you can guess that I didn't shed any tears about having
+to close the school that Tuesday to help take care of the sick man.
+Anything, even sitting on a delirious stranger, was a relief from the
+constant warfare of teaching school. It was in the midst of this mess
+that your letter came, and lay three whole days before I had time to open
+it.
+
+On Saturday the sick man stopped raving and struggling and lay perfectly
+motionless. Jim Wiggin looked at his white, sunken face, and remarked
+oracularly, "He's a goner."
+
+Even father shook his head and asked me to ride Sandhelo over to Spencer
+and fetch the doctor again. I went, feeling queer and shaky. Nobody had
+ever died in our house and the thought gave me a chill. I wished he had
+never come, because the business had upset mother so. Besides that, the
+man himself bothered me. Who was he, wandering around like that among
+strangers and dying in the house of a man he had never seen? How could we
+notify his family--if he had a family? I couldn't help thinking how
+dreadful it would be if my father were to be taken sick away from home
+like that, and we never knowing what had become of him. I was quite low
+in my mind again by the time I had come back with the doctor.
+
+But while I had been away a change came over the sick man. He still lay
+like dead with his eyes closed, but he seemed to be breathing
+differently. The doctor said he was asleep; the fever had left him. He
+wasn't going to die under a strange roof after all. When he wakened he
+was conscious, but the doctor wouldn't let us ask him any questions. He
+slept nearly all day Sunday and on Monday I went back to school. When I
+came home Monday night I had the surprise of my young life. When I looked
+over at the lounge to see how the sick man was to-day I saw, not a man,
+but a boy lying there. A white-faced boy with a sensitive, beautiful
+mouth, wan cheeks and great black eyes that seemed to be the biggest part
+of his face. My books clattered to the floor in my astonishment. Father
+came in just then and laughed at my amazed face.
+
+"Quite a different-looking bird, isn't he?" he said. "The doctor was in
+again to-day and shaved him. It does make quite a difference, now,
+doesn't it?" he finished.
+
+Difference! I should say it did! I had thought all the while that he was
+a man, because he wore a beard; it had never occurred to me that the hair
+had grown out on his face from neglect, and not because he wanted it
+there.
+
+"I suppose I must have looked frightful," said the boy in a weak voice,
+but with a smile of amusement in his eyes. Those were the first words I
+had heard him speak to anyone, and that was the first time he had had his
+eyes wide open and looked directly at me. For the life of me I couldn't
+stop staring at him. I couldn't get over how beautiful he was. He had
+been so repulsive before, with his hair all matted and his face
+discolored by bruises; now his hair was clipped short and was very soft
+and black and shiny. One small transparent hand lay on top of the
+blanket. He didn't look a day over eighteen.
+
+He lay there half smiling at me and suddenly for no reason at all I felt
+large and awkward and sloppy. Involuntarily my hand flew to the back of
+my belt to see if I was coming to pieces, and I stole a stealthy glance
+at my feet to see if the shoes I had on were mates. I was glad when he
+closed his eyes and I could slip out of the room unnoticed. I suppose
+mother wondered why I was so long getting supper ready that night. But
+the truth of the matter is I spent fifteen minutes hunting through my
+bureau drawers for that list of rules of neatness that Gladys made out
+for me last summer, and which I had never thought of once since coming
+home. I unearthed them at last and applied them carefully to my toilet
+before reappearing in the kitchen. My hair was very trying; it _would_
+hang down in my eyes until at last in desperation I tucked it under a
+cap. As a rule I loathe caps. Just as soon as this letter reaches you,
+Gladys, will you send me that recipe for hand lotion you told me you
+used? My hands are a fright, all red and rough. Don't wait until the
+letters from the other girls are ready, but send the recipe right on by
+return mail.
+
+After supper that night we talked to the man on the couch. At first he
+seemed very unwilling to tell anything about himself. We finally got from
+him that his name was Justice Sherman; that he was from Texas, where he
+had been working on a sheep ranch; that he had left there and gone up
+into Oklahoma and had worked at various places; that he had gradually
+worked his way into Arkansas; that he had fallen in with bad men who had
+attacked and robbed him and left him lying senseless in the road with his
+head cut open; that he had wandered around several days in the rain half
+out of his head, trying to get someone to take him in, but he looked so
+frightful that everyone turned him out and set the dogs on him, until
+finally he had stumbled over a stone and broken his ankle and dragged
+himself into our stable and crept into Sandhelo's stall. That's what had
+made him crumple up on the floor the day I found him when he tried to get
+up. He had fainted from the pain.
+
+We asked him if he wouldn't like us to write to his family or his friends
+and he answered wearily that he had no family and no friends in
+particular that he would care to notify. Then he closed his eyes and one
+corner of his mouth drew up as if with pain. Poor fellow, I suppose that
+ankle did hurt horribly.
+
+Now, you best and dearest of Winnebagos, let the dear Round Robin letter
+come chirping along just as soon as you can, and I'll promise not to let
+it lie three days this time before I read it.
+
+                             Lovingly your
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                          GLADYS TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                    Brownell College, Oct. 18, 19--.
+Darling Katherine:
+
+Well, we're settled at last, though it did seem at first as though we
+were going to spend all our college life wandering around with our
+belongings in our arms. We came a day late and found the room we had
+arranged for occupied by someone else. Through a mistake it had been
+assigned to us after it had been once assigned to these other two, so we
+had to relinquish our claim. The freshman dormitory was full to the eaves
+and we realized that there wasn't going to be any place for us. We made
+our roomless plight known and to make up for it we were told there was a
+vacant double in the sophomore dormitory that we might take provided no
+sophomores wanted it. We hadn't expected such an honor and sped like the
+wind after our belongings. The sophomore dormitory is right across from
+the freshman one; they are called Paradise and Purgatory, respectively.
+It sounded awfully funny to us at first to hear the girls asking each
+other where they were and to hear them answer, "I'm in Paradise," or,
+"I'm in Purgatory." We were overcome with joy when we discovered that
+Migwan roomed in Paradise. Our room was way up on the third floor and
+hers was down on second, but to be under the same roof with her was such
+a comfort that all our troubles seemed over for good. We just had our
+things pretty well straightened out and Hinpoha was nailing her shoebag
+to the closet door when the sky fell and we were informed that a couple
+of sophomores wanted our room, and, as there was now a vacancy in the
+freshman dormitory, would we kindly move? So we were thrown out of
+Paradise and landed in Purgatory after all, and, for the second time that
+day, we trailed across the campus with our arms full of personal
+property, strewing table covers and laundry bags in our wake. We didn't
+have time to straighten out before exams began and for two days we lived
+like shipwrecked sailors with the goods that had been saved from the
+wreck piled on the floor and when we wanted anything we had to rummage
+for half an hour before we found it. Even after we had survived exams we
+were half afraid to begin settling for fear we would be ordered to move
+once more. We couldn't quite believe that we were anchored at last.
+
+The first week went around very fast; we were so busy getting our classes
+straightened out and learning our way through the different buildings
+that we didn't have time to feel homesick. But by Saturday the first
+strangeness had worn off; we had stopped wandering into senior class
+rooms and professors' committee meetings, but still we hadn't had time to
+get very well acquainted. Saturday afternoon was perfect weather and most
+everybody in the house had gone off for a walk, but we had stayed at home
+to finish putting our room to rights. When everything was finally in
+place we sat down on the bed and looked at each other. Hinpoha's eyes
+suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"I want the other Winnebagos!" she declared. "I can't live without them.
+I want Sahwah and Nakwisi and Medmangi, and I want Katherine! Oh-h-h-h, I
+want Katherine! How will we ever get along without her here?"
+
+And we both sat there and wanted you so hard that it seemed as if the
+heavens must open up and drop you down on the bed beside us. Katherine,
+do you know that you have ruined our whole lives? Why, O why did you come
+to us only to go away again? You got us so in the habit of looking to you
+to tell us what to do next that now we aren't able to start a thing for
+ourselves. We knew that if you had been there with us that first week you
+would have had the whole house in an uproar and something wonderful would
+have been happening every minute. But for the life of us we couldn't
+think of a single thing to do for ourselves.
+
+We were still sitting there steeped in gloom when Migwan came in to see
+how we were getting on. She had some delicious milk chocolate with her
+and that cheered Hinpoha up quite a bit. It's going to be a heavenly
+comfort to have Migwan just ahead of us in college. She knows all the
+ropes and the teachers and the gossip about the upper classmen and tells
+us things that keep us from making the ridiculous mistakes so many of the
+freshmen make all the time.
+
+"But just think how _I_ felt here, all alone, last year," said Migwan.
+"Perhaps I didn't miss you girls, though! You were still altogether and
+had Nyoda, but here there wasn't a soul who had ever heard of the
+Winnebagos. Now it seems like old times again. Think of it, three whole
+Winnebagos living together almost under the same roof! Didn't we say that
+night when we had our last Council Fire with Nyoda that although we
+couldn't be together any more, we were still Winnebagos and were loyal
+friends and true, and that wherever two Winnebagos should meet, whether
+it was in the street, or on mid-ocean, or in a far country, right then
+and there would take place a Winnebago meeting? Why, we're having a
+Winnebago meeting this very minute!"
+
+"Let's keep on having meetings, as often as we can, just us three," said
+Hinpoha, "and talk over old times and have 'Counts.' We can call
+ourselves The Last of the Winnebagos, like the Last of the Mohicans, and
+our password will be 'Remember!' That means, 'Remember the old days!'"
+
+Migwan smiled a little mysteriously, but she agreed that it was a fine
+idea.
+
+We three sat down on the floor in a Wohelo triangle and repeated our
+Desire and promised to seek beauty in everything that came along, and to
+give service to all the other girls in college whenever we had the
+chance, and to pursue knowledge for all we were worth now that there was
+so much of it on every side of us, and to be trustworthy and obey all the
+rules to the smallest detail and never cheat at exams, and to glorify
+work until everybody noticed how well we did everything, and hold on to
+health by not sitting up late studying and eating horrible messes, and to
+be happy all the time and try to like every girl in college.
+
+"Let's clasp hands on it," said Hinpoha, and we did, and then stood up
+and sang "Wohelo for Aye" until the window rattled. (It's awfully loose
+and rattles at the slightest pretext.)
+
+We had just gotten to the last "Wohelo for Love" when all of a sudden a
+face appeared at the window. We were all so surprised we stopped short
+and the last syllable of "Wohelo" was chopped off as if somebody had
+taken a knife. Our room is on the third floor, and for anyone to look in
+at the window they would have to be suspended in the air. So when that
+head appeared without any warning we all stood petrified and stared
+open-mouthed. It was a girl's head with very black hair and very red
+lips. At first the face just looked at us; then when it saw our amazement
+it grinned from ear to ear in the widest grin I ever saw.
+
+"Did I scare you?" said the face in a voice so rich and deep that we
+jumped again. "No, I'm not Hamlet, thy father's ghost, I'm Agony, thy
+next door neighbor. I heard you singing 'Wohelo for Aye' and I just
+looked in to see if I could believe my ears."
+
+We all ran to the window and then we saw how easily the thing had been
+done. Our window is right up against the corner of our room and the
+window in the other room is right next to it, so that all the apparition
+had to do was lean out of her window and look into ours, which was open
+from the bottom.
+
+"Come on over!" we urged hospitably.
+
+The apparition withdrew from the window and appeared a moment later in
+the doorway, leading a second apparition.
+
+"I brought my better half along," said the deep, rich voice again, as the
+two girls came into the room.
+
+They looked so much alike that we knew at a glance they were sisters. The
+one who had looked in at the window did the introducing.
+
+"We're the Wing twins," she said, as if she took it for granted that we
+had heard about them already. "_She's_ Oh-Pshaw and I'm Agony."
+
+"Oh-Pshaw and Agony?" we repeated wonderingly, whereupon the twins burst
+out laughing.
+
+"Oh, those are not our real names," said Agony, "but we've been called
+that so long that it seems as if they were. Her name's Alta and mine's
+Agnes. I've been nicknamed Agony ever since I can remember, and Alta got
+the habit of saying 'Oh-Pshaw!' at everything until the girls at the
+boarding school where we went always called her that and the name stuck.
+You pronounce it this way, '_Oh_-Pshaw,' with the accent on the 'Oh.'"
+
+We were friends all in a minute. How in the world could you be stiff and
+formal with two girls whose names were Agony and _Oh_-Pshaw?
+
+"We heard you singing 'Wohelo for Aye,'" Agony explained, "and it made us
+so homesick we almost went up in smoke. We belonged to the corkingest
+group back home. It nearly killed us off to go away and leave them."
+
+Here _Oh_-Pshaw broke in and took up the tale. "When we heard that song
+coming from next door Agony squealed, 'Camp Fire Girls!' and began to
+dance a jig. She wouldn't wait until I got my hair done so we could come
+over and call; she just stretched her neck until it reached into your
+window. Oh, I'm so glad you're next door to us I could just pass away!"
+And _Oh_-Pshaw caught Agony around the neck and they both lost their
+balance on the foot of the bed and rolled over on the pillows.
+
+"I'm sorry you have such dandy nicknames," said Migwan. "If you didn't
+have them we could call you First Apparition and Second Apparition, like
+Macbeth, you know. But the ones you have are far superior to anything we
+could think up now."
+
+Then we told them about the Winnebagos and about you and Sahwah and the
+rest of them, and how we had formed THE LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS and meant
+to have meetings right along. Of course, we asked them to come and
+"Remember" their lost group with us, and they were perfectly wild about
+it.
+
+"Let's have our first meeting right now," proposed Agony, "and go on a
+long hike. It's a scrumptious day."
+
+We flew to get our hats and Hinpoha was in such a hurry that she knocked
+over the Japanese screen that stands gracefully across one corner of our
+room and that brought to light the pile of things that we just naturally
+couldn't fit into the room anywhere and had chucked behind the screen
+until we decided how to get rid of them. There was Hinpoha's desk lamp,
+the one with the light green shade with bunches of purple grapes on it--a
+perfect beauty, only there was no room for it after we'd decided to use
+mine with the two lamps in it; and an extra rug and a book rack and a
+Rookwood bowl and quantities of pictures. You see, we'd both brought
+along enough stuff to furnish a room twice the size of ours.
+
+"Whatever will we do with those things?" sighed Hinpoha in despair.
+
+"Can't you give them to somebody?" suggested Migwan. "That lamp and that
+vase are perfect beauties. I'd covet them myself if I didn't have more
+now than I know what to do with."
+
+"The very thing!" said Hinpoha. "Here we promised not a half hour ago to
+'Give Service' all the time, and yet we didn't think of sharing our
+possessions. To whom shall we give them?"
+
+"To Sally Prindle," said Agony and Oh-Pshaw in one breath.
+
+"Who's Sally Prindle?" asked Hinpoha and I, also in chorus.
+
+"She lives down at the other end of the hall in Purgatory," said Agony,
+"in that tiny little box of a room at the head of the stairs. She's
+working her way through college and waits on table for her board and does
+some of the upstairs work for her room, and she's awfully poor. She
+hasn't a thing in her room but the bare furniture--not a rug or a
+picture. She'd probably be crazy to get them."
+
+"Let's give them to her right away," said Hinpoha, beginning to gather
+things up in her arms. Hinpoha is just like a whirlwind when she gets
+enthusiastic about anything.
+
+"But how shall we give them to her?" I asked. "We don't know her, and she
+might feel offended if she thought we had noticed how bare her room was
+and pitied her. How shall we manage it, Migwan?"
+
+"Don't act as if you pitied her at all," replied Migwan. "Simply knock at
+her door and tell her you've got your room all furnished and there are
+some things left over and you're going up and down the corridor trying to
+find out if anybody has room to take care of them for you until the end
+of the year. Of course she has room to take them, so it will be very
+simple."
+
+"Oh, Migwan, what would we do without you?" cried Hinpoha, and nearly
+dropped the Rookwood bowl trying to hug her with her arms full. "You
+always know the right thing to do and say."
+
+Agony and Oh-Pshaw stopped into their room on the way up and came out
+with a leather pillow and an ivory clock to add to the collection. Their
+room wasn't too full, but they wanted to do something for Sally, too. We
+had to knock on Sally's door twice before she opened it and we were
+beginning to be afraid she wasn't at home. When she did come to the door
+she didn't ask us in; but just stood looking at us and our armful of
+things as if to ask what we wanted. She was a tall, stoop-shouldered girl
+with spectacles and a wrinkle running up and down on her forehead between
+her eyes. The room was just as bare as Agony had described; it looked
+like a cell.
+
+"We're making a tour of Purgatory trying to dispose of our surplus
+furniture," I said, trying to be offhand, "Have you any room to spare?"
+
+"No, I haven't," answered Sally with a snap. "You're the third bunch
+to-day that's tried to decorate my room for me. When I want any donations
+I'll ask for them." And she shut the door right in our faces.
+
+We backed away in such a hurry that Agony dropped the clock and it went
+rolling and bumping down the stairway.
+
+"Of all things!" said Agony. "I wish poor people wouldn't be so
+disagreeable about it. I'm sure I'd be tickled to death to use anybody's
+surplus to make up what I lacked. Well, we've tried to 'Give Service'
+anyway, and if it didn't work it wasn't our fault. I think there ought to
+be a law about 'Taking Service' as well as Giving. Now let's hurry up and
+go for our hike before the sun goes down."
+
+We went out and had the most glorious tramp over the hills and found a
+tiny little village that looks the same as it must have a hundred years
+ago, and then we came back and had hot chocolate in a darling little shop
+that was just jammed with students. Agony and Oh-Pshaw know just
+quantities of girls, and introduced us to dozens, and we went back to
+Purgatory too happy to think.
+
+"I told you so," said Migwan, as she came into the room with us for a
+minute to get a book.
+
+"What did you tell us?" asked Hinpoha.
+
+"I meant about us three trying to have meetings just by ourselves and
+trying to do exactly what we did when we were Winnebagos. It won't work.
+You'll keep on making new friends all the time that you'll love just as
+much as the old ones. Don't forget the old Winnebagos, but don't mourn
+because the old days have come to an end. There's more fun coming to you
+than you've ever had before in your lives, so be on the lookout for it
+every minute. 'Remember!'"
+
+Oh, Katherine, we just love college, and the only fly in the ointment is
+that you aren't here!
+
+                              Your loving
+                                                             Gladys.
+
+P. S. Medmangi writes that she has passed her exams and entered the
+Medical School. Sahwah is going to Business College and having the time
+of her life with shorthand. P.P.S. Hinpoha is dying of curiosity to hear
+more about the sick man. Please answer by return mail.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                       Nov. 1, 19--.
+Dearest Winnies:
+
+Well, Justice Sherman may be a sheep herder and a son of the pasture, but
+I hae me doots. I know a hawk from a handsaw if I was born and bred in
+the backwoods. I know it isn't polite to doubt people's word, and he
+seemed to be telling an absolutely straight story when he told how he
+beat his way across from Texas, but for all that there's some mystery
+about him. His manners betrayed him the first time he ever sat down to
+the table with us. Even though he limped badly and was still awfully
+wobbly, he stood behind my mother's chair and shoved it in for her and
+then hobbled over and did the same for me.
+
+You can see it, can't you? The table set in the kitchen--for our humble
+cot does not boast of a dining room--father and Jim Wiggin collarless and
+in their shirtsleeves, and the stranded sheep herder waiting upon mother
+and me as if we were queens. For no reason at all I suddenly became
+abashed. I felt my face flaming to the roots of my hair, and
+absentmindedly began to eat my soup with a fork, whereat Jim Wiggin set
+up a great thundering haw! haw! Jim had been a sheep herder before he
+came to take care of father's horses, and it struck me forcibly just then
+that there was a wide difference between him and the stranger within our
+gates.
+
+I said something to father about it that night when we were out in the
+stable together giving Sandhelo his nightly dole. Father rubbed his nose
+with the back of his hand, a sign that a thing is of no concern to him.
+
+"Don't you get to worryin' about the stranger's affairs," he advised
+mildly. "If he's got something he doesn't want to tell, you ain't got no
+business tryin' to find it out. Tend to your own affairs, I say, and
+leave others' alone. There ain't nobody goin' to be pestered with
+embarrassing questions while they're under my roof."
+
+So I promised not to ask any questions. Just about the time the
+stranger's foot was well enough to walk on, Jim Wiggin stepped on a rusty
+nail and laid himself up. Justice Sherman was a godsend just then because
+men were so hard to get, and father hired him to help with the horses
+until Jim was about again. Father begged me again at this time not to ask
+him anything about his past.
+
+"Just as soon as he thinks we're gettin' curious he'll up and leave," he
+said, "and that would put us in a bad way. Help is so scarce now I don't
+know where I _would_ get an extra man. Seems almost as though the hand of
+Providence had sent him to us."
+
+It was perfectly true. Since so many men had gone into the army it was
+next thing to impossible to get any help on the farms except
+good-for-nothing negroes that weren't worth their salt. It seemed,
+indeed, an act of Providence to cast an able man at our door just at this
+juncture. So I promised again not to bother the man with questions.
+
+Indeed, it bade fair to be an easy matter not to ask him any questions.
+Beyond a few polite words at meals he never said anything at all, and as
+he had moved his sleeping quarters to a small cabin away from the house I
+saw very little of him, and I suppose we never would have gotten any
+better acquainted if your letter hadn't come that Friday. Friday is the
+worst day of the week for me, because after five days of constant
+set-to-ing with Absalom Butts my philosophy is at its lowest ebb. This
+week was the worst because I had a visitation from the school board to
+see how I was getting on, and, of course, none of the pupils knew a thing
+and most of them acted as if the very devil of mischief had gotten into
+them. Elijah Butts gave me a solemn warning that I would have to keep
+better order if I wanted to stay in the school, and Absalom, who had been
+hanging around listening, made an impudent grimace at me and laughed in a
+taunting manner. If I hadn't needed the money so badly I would have
+thrown up the job right there.
+
+Then, on top of that, came your letter describing the supergorgeousness
+of your college rooms, and when I thought of the room I had planned to
+have at college this winter, adjoining yours, my heart turned to water
+within me and melancholy marked me for its own. I wept large and pearly
+tears which Niagara-ed over the end of my nose and sizzled on the hot
+stove, as I stood in the kitchen stirring a pudding for supper. Get the
+effect, do you? Me standing there with the spoon in one hand and your
+letter in the other, doing the Niobe act, quite oblivious to the fact
+that I was not the only person in the county. I was just in the act of
+swallowing a small rapid which had gotten side-tracked from the main
+channel and gone whirlpooling down my Sunday throat, when a voice behind
+me said, "Did you get bad news in your letter?"
+
+I jumped so I dropped the letter right into the pudding. I made a savage
+dab at my eyes with the corner of my apron and wheeled around furiously.
+There stood the Justice Sherman person looking at me with his solemn
+black eyes. I was ready to die with shame at being caught.
+
+"No, I didn't," I exploded, mopping my face vehemently with my apron, and
+thereby capping the climax. For while I had been reading your letter and
+absently stirring the pudding it had slopped over and run down the front
+of my apron, and, of course, I had to use just that part to wipe my face
+with. The pudding was huckleberry, and what it did to my features is
+beyond description. I caught one glimpse of myself in the mirror over the
+sink and then I sank down into a chair and just yelled. Justice Sherman
+doubled up against the door frame in a regular spasm of mirth, although
+he tried not to make much noise about it. Finally he bolted out of the
+door and came back with a basin of water from the pump, which he set down
+beside me.
+
+"Here," he said, "remove the marks of bloody carnage, before you scare
+the wolf from the door."
+
+So I scrubbed, wishing all the while that he would go away, and still
+furious for having made such a spectacle of myself. But he stayed around,
+and when I resembled a human being once more (if I ever could be said to
+resemble one), he came over and handed me the letter, which he had fished
+out of the pudding.
+
+"Here's the fatal missive," he said, "or would you rather leave it in the
+pudding?"
+
+"Throw it into the fire," I commanded.
+
+"That's the right way," he said approvingly. "I always burn bad news
+myself."
+
+"It wasn't bad news," I insisted.
+
+"Then why the tears?" he inquired curiously. "Tears, idle tears, I know
+not what they mean----"
+
+He was smiling, but somehow I had a feeling that he was trying to cheer
+me up and not making fun of me. I was so low in my mind that afternoon
+that anyone who acted in the least degree sympathetic was destined to
+fall a victim. Before I knew it I had told him of my shipwrecked hopes
+and how your letter had opened the flood gates of disappointment and
+nearly put out the kitchen fire.
+
+"College--you!" I heard him exclaim under his breath. He stared at me
+solemnly for a moment and then he exclaimed, "O tempora, O mores! What's
+to hinder?"
+
+"What's to hinder?" I repeated blankly.
+
+"Yes," he said, "having the room anyway."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"Why," he explained, "you have a room of your own, haven't you? Why don't
+you fix it up just the way you had planned to have your room in college?
+Then you can go there and study and make believe you're in college."
+
+I stared at him open-mouthed. "Make-believe has never been my long suit,"
+I said.
+
+"Come on," he urged. "I'll help you fix it up. If you have any more tears
+prepare to shed them now into the paint pot and dissolve the paint."
+
+Before I knew what had happened we had laid forcible hands on the bare
+little cell I had indifferently been inhabiting all these years and
+transformed it into the study of my dreams. We cut a window in the side
+that faces in the direction of the mountains and made a corking window
+seat out of a packing case, on which I piled cushions stuffed with
+thistle down. We papered the whole place with light yellow paper, tacked
+up my last year's school pennants and put up a book shelf. This last
+proved to be a delusion and a snare, because one end of it came down in
+the middle of the night not long afterward and all the books came
+tobogganing on top of me in bed. As a finishing touch, I brought out the
+snowshoes and painted paddle that were a relic of my Golden Age, and
+which I had never had the heart to unpack since I came home. When
+finished the effect was quite epic, though I suppose it would make
+Hinpoha's artistic eye water.
+
+Of course, it will never make up for not going to college, but it helped
+some, and in working at it I got very well acquainted with Justice
+Sherman all of a sudden. We had long talks about everything under the
+sun, and he continually bubbled over with funny sayings. He confided to
+me that he had never been so surprised in all his life as when I told him
+I wanted to go to college. You see, he had thought we were like the other
+poor whites in the neighborhood, and I was like the other girls he had
+seen. He didn't take any interest in me until I bowled him over with the
+statement that I had already passed my college entrance exams.
+
+All this time I never hinted that I suspected he was not the simple sheep
+herder he pretended to be. I had given father my word and, of course, had
+to keep it. But one afternoon the Fates had their fingers crossed, and
+Pandora like, I got my foot in it. I had driven Justice over to Spencer
+in the rattledy old cart with Sandhelo. On the way we talked of many
+things, and I came home surer than ever that he was no sheep herder. Once
+when the conversation lagged and in the silence Sandhelo's heels seemed
+to be beating out a tune as they clicked along, I remarked ruminatingly,
+"There's a line in Virgil that is supposed to imitate the sound of
+galloping horses."
+
+  "_Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit angula campam,_"
+
+quoted Justice promptly.
+
+So he was on quoting terms with Virgil! But I remembered my promise and
+made no remarks.
+
+A little later I was telling about the winter hike we had taken on
+snowshoes last year.
+
+"You ought to see the sport they have on snowshoes in Switzerland," he
+began with kindling eyes. Then he broke off suddenly and changed the
+subject.
+
+So Texas sheep herders learn their trade in Switzerland! But again I
+yanked on the curb rein of my curiosity. I apparently took no notice of
+his remark, for just then a negro stepped suddenly from behind the bushes
+along the road and startled Sandhelo so that he promptly became
+temperamental and sat up on his haunches to get a better look at the
+apparition, and the mess he made of the harness furnished us plenty of
+theme for conversation for the next ten minutes.
+
+"Lord, what an ape," remarked Justice, gazing after the departing form of
+the negro shambling along the road, "he looks like the things you see in
+nightmares."
+
+Accustomed as I was to seeing low-down niggers, this one struck me as
+being the worst specimen nature had ever produced. He had the features of
+a baboon, and the flapping rags of the grotesque garments he wore made
+him look like a wild creature.
+
+"Do you have many such intellectual-looking gentlemen around here?" asked
+Justice, twisting his neck around for a final look at the fellow. "I'd
+hate to meet that professor at the dark of the moon."
+
+"Oh, they're really not as bad as they look," I replied. "They look like
+apes, but they're quite harmless. They're shiftless to the last degree,
+but not violent. They're too lazy to do any mischief."
+
+"Just the same, I'd rather not get into an argument with that particular
+brother, if it's all the same to you," answered Justice. "He looks like
+mischief to me."
+
+"He _doesn't_ look like a prize entry in a beauty contest," I admitted.
+
+With all that talk about the negro Justice's remark about Switzerland
+went unheeded, but I didn't forget it just the same. I thought about it
+all the rest of the afternoon and it was as plain as the nose on your
+face that there was some mystery about Justice Sherman. A sheep herder
+who spouted Virgil at a touch, quoted continually from the classics, had
+refined manners and had traveled abroad, couldn't hide his light under a
+bushel very well. Another thing; he wasn't a Texan as he had led us to
+believe. He talked with the crisp, clear accent of the North, and the
+fuss he made about the negro in the road that afternoon betrayed the fact
+that he was no southerner. Nobody around here pays any attention to
+niggers, no matter how tattered they are. We're used to them, but
+northerners always make a fuss.
+
+The question bubbled up and down in my mind, keeping time to the bubbling
+of the soup on the stove; why was this educated and refined young man
+working for thirty dollars a month as a handy man around horses on a
+third-rate stock farm in this God-forsaken part of the country? Then a
+suspicion flashed into my mind and at the dreadful thought I stopped
+stirring with the upraised spoon frozen in mid-air. Then I gathered my
+wits together and started resolutely for the table. I had promised father
+I would never ask Justice Sherman anything about his past, but here was
+something that swept aside all personal obligations and promises. I found
+him with father in the stable working over a sick colt. I marched
+straight up to him and began without any preamble.
+
+"See here, Justice Sherman," I said, "are you hiding yourself to avoid
+military service? Are you a slacker?"
+
+Justice Sherman straightened up and looked at me with flashing eyes. "No,
+I'm not!" he shouted in a voice quite unlike his.
+
+I never saw anyone in such a rage. His face was as red as a beet and his
+hair actually stood on end. "I registered for the service," he went on
+hotly, "and wasn't called in the draft. I tried to enlist and they
+wouldn't take me. I was under weight and had a weak throat. If anyone
+thinks I'm a slacker, I'll----" Here he choked and had a violent coughing
+spell.
+
+I stared at him, dazed. I never thought he could get so angry. He looked
+at me with hostile, indignant eyes. Then he straightened up stiffly and
+walked out of the stable.
+
+"I won't stay here any longer," he exploded, still at the boiling point.
+"I won't be insulted."
+
+"I apologize," I said humbly. "I spoke in haste. Won't you please
+consider it unsaid?"
+
+No, he wouldn't consider it unsaid. He wouldn't listen to father's
+pathetic plea not to leave him without a helper. We suspected him of
+being a slacker and that finished it. He would leave immediately. Down
+the road he marched as fast as he could go without ever turning his head.
+
+A worm in the dust was much too exalted to describe the way I felt. With
+the best of intentions I had precipitated a calamity, taking away
+father's best helper at a critical time, to say nothing of my losing him
+as a companion. I was too disgusted with myself to live and chopped wood
+to relieve my feelings. After supper I hitched up Sandhelo and drove to
+Spencer to post a letter. I am not in the least sentimental--you know
+that--but all along the road I kept seeing things that reminded me of
+Justice Sherman and the fun we had had together. Now that he was gone the
+days ahead of me seemed suddenly very empty, and desolation laid a firm
+hand on my ankle.
+
+Also, I had an uncomfortable recollection that it was right along here we
+had met the horrid negro, and I became filled with fear that I would meet
+him again. The fear grew, and turned into absolute panic when I
+approached that same clump of bushes and in the dusk saw a figure rise
+from behind them and lurch toward the road. I pulled Sandhelo up sharply,
+thinking to turn around and flee in the opposite direction, but Sandhelo
+refused to be turned. When I pulled him up he sat back and mixed up the
+harness so he got the bit into his teeth, and then he jumped up and went
+straight on forward, with a squeal of mischief. When we were opposite the
+figure in the road Sandhelo stopped short and poked his nose forward just
+the way he used to do when Justice Sherman came into his stall.
+
+"Hello," said a voice in the darkness, and then I saw that the figure in
+the road was Justice Sherman. His bad ankle had given out on him and he
+had been sitting there on the ground waiting for some vehicle to come
+along and give him a lift to Spencer.
+
+"Get in," I said briefly, helping him up, and he got in beside me without
+a word. We drove to Spencer in silence and he made no move to get out
+when we got there. I mailed my letter and then turned and drove homeward.
+About half way home he spoke up and apologized for being so hasty, and
+wondered if father would take him back again. I reassured him heartily
+and we were on the old footing of intimacy by the time we reached home.
+
+We found father standing in front of the house talking to a negro whom we
+recognized as the one we had met in the road that afternoon. Father
+greeted Justice Sherman with joy and relief.
+
+"You pretty nearly came back too late," he said. "Here I was just hiring
+a man to take your place." Then he turned to the negro and said, "It's
+all off, Solomon. I don't need you. My own man has come back. You go
+along and get a job somewhere else."
+
+The negro shuffled off and I fancied that he looked rather resentful at
+being sent away.
+
+"Father," I said, when the creature was out of earshot, "you surely
+weren't going to hire that ape to work here?"
+
+"Why not?" answered father. "I have to have a man to help with the
+horses, and this fellow came up to the door and asked for work, so I
+promised him a job."
+
+"But he's such a terrible looking thing," I said.
+
+Father only laughed and dismissed the subject with a wave of his hands.
+"I wasn't hiring him for his looks," he answered. "He said he could
+handle horses and that was enough for me."
+
+So Justice Sherman came back to us and the subject of military service
+was never broached again.
+
+About a week after his return, and when Jim Wiggin was able to be about
+again, Justice Sherman walked into the kitchen with a mincing air quite
+unlike his ordinary free stride. He had been to Spencer for the mail.
+
+"Tread softly when you see me," he advised. "I'm a perfessor, I am."
+
+I looked up inquiringly from the potato I was paring.
+
+"Behold in me," he went on, "the entire faculty of the Spencer High
+School. I am instructor in Latin, Greek, mathematics, science, history,
+English and dramatics; also civics and economics."
+
+"You don't mean really?" I asked.
+
+"Really and truly, for sartain sure," he repeated. "The last faculty got
+drafted and left the school in a bad way. I heard about it down at the
+post-office this afternoon and went over and applied for the job. The
+hardened warriors that compose the school board fell for me to a man. I
+recited one line of Latin and they applauded to the echo; I recited a
+line of gibberish and told them it was Greek, and they wept with delight
+at the purity of my accent. Then they cautiously inquired if I was
+qualified to teach any other branches and I told them that I also
+included in my repertoire cooking, dressmaking and millinery. This last
+remark was intended to be facetious, but those solemn old birds took it
+seriously and forthwith broke into loud hosannas. I was somewhat
+mystified at the outbreak until I gathered from bits of conversation that
+the extravagant township of Spencer had intended to hire two high school
+teachers this year, as the last incumbent's accomplishments had been
+rather brief and fleeting, but what was the use, as one pious old hairpin
+by the name of Butts delicately put it, what was the use of paying two
+teachers when one feller could do the hull thing himself? Then he shook
+me feelingly by the hand and said he knowed I was a bargain the minute he
+laid eyes on me. O Tempora, O Mores! Papers were brought and shoved into
+my yielding hands, the writ duly executed, and I passed out of the door a
+fully fledged 'perfessor' with a six-months' contract. Smile on me,
+please, I'm a bargain!" And he danced a hornpipe in the middle of the
+floor until the dishes rattled in the cupboard.
+
+I stared at him speechless. He teach high school? And the things he
+mentioned as being able to teach! History, French, mathematics, physics,
+literature, philosophy, Latin, Greek! Quite a well-rounded sheep herder,
+this! The mystery about him deepened. It was clear now that he was a
+college graduate. Again I revised my estimate as to his age, and decided
+he must be about twenty-three or four. Why would he be willing to teach a
+farce of a high school like the one in Spencer?
+
+Then in the midst of my puzzling it came over me that I did not want him
+to leave us, and that I would miss him terribly. Of course, he would go
+to live in Spencer.
+
+"Are you going to board with any of the school board?" I asked jealously,
+that being what the last "faculty" had done.
+
+"Board with the Board?" he repeated. "Neat expression, that. Not that I
+know of. I haven't been requested to vacate my present quarters yet, or
+do I understand that you are even now serving notice?"
+
+A thrill of joy shot through me. Maybe he would still live in the little
+cabin on our farm.
+
+"I thought of course you would rather live near the school," I said.
+"It's six miles from here. Why don't you?"
+
+"'I would dwell with thee, merry grasshopper,'" he quoted. "That is, if I
+am kindly permitted to do so."
+
+And so we settled it. He is to ride with Sandhelo in the cart every day
+as far as my school, then drive on to Spencer, and stop for me on the way
+home. What fun it is going to be!
+
+                     Yours, _summa cum felicitate_,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+P. S. Sandhelo sends three large and loving hee-haws.
+
+
+
+
+                          SAHWAH TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                                      Nov. 10, 19--.
+Darling K:
+
+This big old town is like the Deserted Village since you and the other
+Winnies went away. For the first few weeks it was simply ghastly; there
+wasn't a tree or a telephone pole that didn't remind me of the good times
+we used to have. Do you realize that I am the sole survivor of our once
+large and lusty crew? Migwan and Hinpoha and Gladys are at Brownell;
+Veronica is in New York; Nakwisi has gone to California with her aunt;
+Medmangi is in town, but she is locked up in a nasty old hospital
+learning to be a doctor in double quick time so she can go abroad with
+the Red Cross. Nothing is nice the way it used to be. I like to go to
+Business College, of course, and there are lots of pleasant girls there,
+but they aren't my Winnies. I get invited to things, and I go and enjoy
+myself after a fashion, but the tang is gone. It's like ice cream with
+the cream left out.
+
+I went to the House of the Open Door one Saturday afternoon and poked
+around a bit, but I didn't stay very long; the loneliness seemed to grab
+hold of me with a bony hand. Everything was just the way we had left it
+the night of our last Ceremonial Meeting--do you realize that we never
+went out after that? There was the candle grease on the floor where
+Hinpoha's emotion had overcome her and made her hand wobble so she
+spilled the melted wax all out of her candlestick. There were the
+scattered bones of our Indian pottery dish that you knocked off the shelf
+making the gestures to your "Wotes for Wimmen" speech. There was the
+Indian bed all sagged down on one side where we had all sat on Nyoda at
+once.
+
+It all brought back last year so plainly that it seemed as if you must
+everyone come bouncing out of the corners presently. But you didn't come,
+and by and by I went down the ladder to the Sandwiches' Lodge. That was
+just as bad as our nook upstairs. The gym apparatus was there, just as it
+used to be, with the mat on the floor where they used to roll Slim, and
+beside it the wreck of a chair that Slim had sat down on too suddenly.
+
+Poor Slim! He tried to enlist in every branch of the service, but, of
+course, they wouldn't take him; he was too fat. He starved himself and
+drank vinegar and water for a week and then went the rounds again, hoping
+he had lost enough to make him eligible, and was horribly cut up when he
+found he had gained instead. He was quite inconsolable for a while and
+went off to college with the firm determination to trim himself down
+somehow. Captain has gone to Yale, so he can be a Yale graduate like his
+father and go along with him to the class reunions. Munson McKee has
+enlisted in the navy and the Bottomless Pitt in the Ambulance Corps. The
+rest of the Sandwiches have gone away to school, too.
+
+The boards creaked mournfully under my feet as I moved around, and it
+seemed to me that the old building was just as lonesome for you as I was.
+
+"You ought to be proud," I said aloud to the walls, "that you ever
+sheltered the Sandwich Club, because now you are going to be honored
+above all other barns," and I hung in the window the Service Flag with
+the two stars that I had brought with me. It looked very splendid; but it
+suddenly made the place seem strange and unfamiliar. Here was something
+that did not belong to the old days. It is so hard to realize that the
+boys who used to wrestle around here have gone to war.
+
+I went out and closed the door, but outside I lingered a minute to look
+sadly up at the little window in the end where the candle always used to
+burn on Ceremonial nights.
+
+"Good-bye, House of the Open Door," I said, "we've had lots of good times
+in you and nobody can ever take them away from us. We've got to stop
+playing now for awhile and Glorify Work. We're going to do our bit, and
+you must do yours, too, by standing up proudly through all winds and
+weather and showing your service flag. Some day we'll all come back to
+you, or else the Winnebago spirit will come back in somebody else, and
+you must be ready."
+
+I said good-bye to the House of the Open Door with the hand sign of fire
+and a military salute, and went away feeling a heavy sense of
+responsibility, because in all this big lonely city I was the only one
+left to uphold the honor of the Winnebagos.
+
+And hoop-la! I did it, too, all by myself. The week after I had paid the
+visit to the House of the Open Door someone called me on the telephone
+and wanted to know if this was Miss Sarah Brewster who belonged to the
+Winnebago Camp Fire Girls, and when I said yes it was the voice informed
+me that she was Mrs. Lewis, the new Chief Guardian for the city, and
+President of the Guardians' Association. She went on to say that she
+wanted to plan a patriotic parade for all the Camp Fire Girls in the city
+to take part in, and as part of the ceremony to present a large flag to
+the city. She knew what she wanted all right, but she wasn't sure that
+she could carry it out, and as she had seen the Winnebagos the time they
+took part in the Fourth of July pageant, she wanted to know if we would
+take hold and help her manage the thing. I started to tell her that the
+Winnebagos weren't here and couldn't help her; then I reflected that I,
+at least, was left and it was up to me to do what you all would have done
+if you had been here. So I said yes, I'd be glad to take hold and help
+make the parade a success.
+
+And, believe me, it was! Can you guess how many girls marched?
+_Twenty-three hundred!_ Glory! I didn't know there were so many girls in
+the whole world! The line stretched back until you couldn't see the end,
+and still they kept on coming. And who do you suppose led the parade?
+Why, _I_ did, of all people! And on a _horse_! Carrying the Stars and
+Stripes on a long staff that fitted into a contrivance on the saddle to
+hold it firm. Right in front of me marched the Second Regiment Band, and
+my horse pawed the ground in time to the music until I nearly burst with
+excitement. After me came the twenty girls, all Torch Bearers, who
+carried the big flag we were going to present to the city, and behind
+them came the floats and figures of the pageant.
+
+I must tell you about some of these, and a few of them you'll recognize,
+because they are our old stunts trimmed up to suit the occasion.
+
+GIVE SERVICE was the most impressive, because it is the most important
+just now. It was in twelve parts, showing all the different ways in which
+Camp Fire Girls could serve the nation in the great crisis. There was the
+Red Cross Float, showing the girls making surgical dressings and knitting
+socks and sweaters. Another showed them making clothes for themselves and
+for other members of the family to cut down the hiring of extra help; and
+similar floats carried out the same idea in regard to cooking, washing
+and ironing. Yes ma'am! Washing and ironing! You don't need to turn up
+your nose. One float was equipped with a complete modern household
+laundry and the girls on it had their sleeves rolled up to their elbows
+and were doing up fine waists and dresses in great shape, besides
+operating electric washing machines and mangles.
+
+One float was just packed full of good things which the girls had cooked
+without sugar, eggs or white flour, and with fruits and vegetables which
+they had canned and preserved themselves, while the fertile garden in
+which said fruits and vegetables had grown came trundling on behind, the
+girls armed with spades, hoes and rakes. I consumed two sleepless nights
+and several strenuous afternoons accomplishing that garden on wheels and
+I want you to know it was a work of art. The plants were all artificial,
+but they looked most lifelike, indeed.
+
+Besides those things we had groups of girls taking care of children so
+their mothers could go out and work; and teaching foreign girls how to
+take care of their own small brothers and sisters, so they'll grow up
+strong and healthy.
+
+There really seemed to be no end to our usefulness.
+
+Behind the wheeled portion of the parade came hundreds of girls on foot,
+carrying pennants that stretched clear across the street, with clever
+slogans on them like this:
+
+                     DON'T FORGET US, UNCLE SAMMY,
+                        WE'RE ALWAYS ON THE JOB
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+                     YOU'RE HERE BECAUSE WE'RE HERE
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+                    AND THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING!
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+                 WE ARE PROUD TO LABOR FOR OUR COUNTRY
+
+And the people! Oh, my stars! They lined the streets for thirty blocks,
+packed in solid from the store fronts to the curb. And the way they
+cheered! It made shivers of ecstasy chase up and down my spine, while the
+tears came to my eyes and a big lump formed in my throat. If you've never
+heard thousands of people cheering at you, you can't imagine how it
+feels.
+
+One time when the procession halted at a cross street I saw a fat old
+man, who I'm sure was a dignified banker, balancing himself on a fireplug
+so he could see better, and waving his hat like crazy. He finally got so
+enthusiastic that he fell off the fireplug and landed on his hands and
+knees in the gutter, where some Boy Scouts picked him up and dusted him
+off, still feebly waving his hat.
+
+Our line of march eventually brought us out at Lincoln Square, where the
+presentation of the flag was to take place. We stood in the shadow of the
+Lincoln Memorial monument, and who do you suppose presented the flag? Me
+again. In the name of all the Camp Fire Girls of the city, I
+ceremoniously presented it to the Mayor, who accepted it with a flowery
+speech that beat mine all hollow. Besides presenting the flag I was to
+help raise it. The pole was there already; it had seen many flag raisings
+in its long career and many flags had flapped themselves to shreds on its
+top. The thing I had to do was fasten our flag to the ropes and pull her
+up. In this I was to be assisted by a soldier brother of one of the girls
+who was home on furlough. He was to be standing there at the pole waiting
+for us, but when the time came he wasn't there. Where he was I hadn't the
+slightest idea; nor did I have any time to spend wondering. Mrs. Lewis
+had set her heart on having a man in soldier's uniform help raise the
+flag; it added so much to the spirit of the occasion. Just at this moment
+I saw a man in army uniform standing in the crowd at the foot of the
+monument, very close to me. Without a moment's hesitation I beckoned him
+imperatively to me. He came and I thrust the rope into his hands,
+whispering directions as to what he was to do. It all went without a
+hitch and the crowd never knew that he wasn't the soldier we had planned
+to have right from the start. We pulled evenly together and the flag
+slowly unfolded over our heads and went fluttering to the top, while the
+band crashed out the "Star Spangled Banner." It was glorious! If I had
+been thrilled through before, I was shaken to my very foundations now. I
+felt queer and dizzy, and felt myself making funny little gaspy noises in
+my throat. There was a great cheer from the crowd and the ceremonies were
+over. The parade marched on to the Armory, where we were to listen to an
+address by Major Blanchard of the --th Engineers.
+
+The girls had all filed in and found seats when Mrs. Lewis, who was to
+introduce Major Blanchard, came over to me where I was standing near the
+stage and said in a tragic tone, "Major Blanchard couldn't come; I've had
+a telegram. What on earth are we going to do? He was going to tell
+stories about camp life; the girls will be _so_ disappointed not to hear
+him."
+
+I rubbed my forehead, unable to think of anything that would meet the
+emergency. An ordinary speaker wouldn't fill the bill at all, I knew,
+when the girls all had their appetites whetted for a Major.
+
+"We might ask the band to give a concert, and all of us sing patriotic
+songs," I ventured finally.
+
+"I don't see anything else to do," said Mrs. Lewis, "but I'm _so_
+disappointed not to have the Major here. The girls are all crazy to hear
+about the camp."
+
+Just then I caught sight of a uniform outside of the open entrance way.
+
+"Wait a minute," I said, "there's the soldier who helped us raise the
+flag, standing outside the door. Maybe he'll come in and talk to the
+girls in place of the Major." I hurried out and buttonholed the soldier.
+He declined at first, but I wouldn't take no for an answer. I literally
+pulled him in and chased him up the aisle to the stage.
+
+"But I can't make a speech," he said in an agonized whisper, as we
+reached the steps of the stage, trying to pull back.
+
+"Don't try to," I answered cheerfully. "Speeches are horrid bores,
+anyway. Just tell them exactly what you do in camp; that's what they're
+crazy to hear about."
+
+Mrs. Lewis didn't tell the audience that the speaker was one I had
+kidnapped in a moment of desperation. She introduced him as a friend of
+the Major's, who had come to speak in his place. The applause when she
+introduced him was just as hearty as if he had been the Major himself.
+The fact that he was a soldier was enough for the girls.
+
+And he brought down the house! He wasn't an educated man, but he was very
+witty, and had the gift of telling things so they seemed real. He told
+little intimate details of camp life from the standpoint of the private
+as the Major never could have told them. He had us alternately laughing
+and crying over the little comedies and tragedies of barracks life. He
+imitated the voices and gestures of his comrades and mimicked the
+officers until you could see them as plainly as if they stood on the
+stage. He talked for an hour instead of the half hour the Major was
+scheduled to speak and when he stopped the air was full of clamorings for
+more. Private Kittredge had made more of a hit than Major Blanchard could
+have done.
+
+I never saw a person look so astonished or so pleased as he did at the
+ovation which followed his speech. He stood there a moment, looking down
+at the audience with a wistful smile, then he got fiery red and almost
+ran off the stage.
+
+"I don't know whether to be glad or sorry the Major's not coming,"
+whispered Mrs. Lewis to me under cover of the applause. "The Major's a
+very fine speaker, but he wouldn't have made such a _human_ speech. You
+certainly have a knack of picking out able people, Miss Brewster! You
+chose just the right girls for each part in the pageant."
+
+I didn't acknowledge this compliment as I should have, because I was
+wondering why our soldier man had looked that way when we applauded him.
+He would have slipped out of the side door when he came off the stage,
+but I stopped him and made him wait for the rest of the program. A
+national fraternity was holding a convention in town that week and
+members from all the great colleges were in attendance. As it happened,
+our Major is a member of that fraternity, and, as a mark of esteem for
+the Camp Fire Girls, he asked the fraternity glee club to sing for us at
+the close of our patriotic demonstration.
+
+The singers came frolicking in from some banquet they had been attending,
+in a very frisky mood, and sang one funny song after another until our
+sides ached from laughing. I stole a glance now and then at Private
+Kittredge, beside me, but he never noticed. He was drinking in the antics
+of those carefree college boys with envious, wistful eyes. At the end of
+their concert the singers turned and faced the great flag that hung down
+at the back of the stage and sang an old college song that we had heard
+sung before, but which had suddenly taken on a new, deep meaning. With
+their very souls in their voices they sang it:
+
+  "Red is for Harvard in that grand old flag,
+  Columbia can have her white and blue;
+  And dear old Yale will never fail
+  To stand by her color true;
+  Penn and Cornell amid the shot and shell
+  Were fighting for that torn and tattered rag,
+  And our college cheer will be
+  'My Country, 'tis of Thee,'
+  And Old Glory will be our college flag!"
+
+The effect was electrical. Everybody cheered until they were hoarse. I
+looked at Private Kittredge. His head was buried in his hands and the
+tears were trickling out between his fingers. I was too much embarrassed
+to say anything, and I just sat looking at him until, all of a sudden, he
+sat up, and reaching out his hand he caught hold of mine and squeezed it
+until it hurt.
+
+"I'm going back," he said brokenly.
+
+"Going back?" I repeated, bewildered. "Where?"
+
+"Back to camp," he replied. Then he began to speak in a low, husky voice.
+"I want to tell you something," he said. "I'm not what you think I am.
+I'm a deserter. That is, I would have been by tomorrow. My leave expires
+to-night. I wasn't going back. I didn't want to go into the army. I
+didn't want to fight for the country. I hated the United States. It had
+never given me a square deal. My father was killed in a factory when I
+was a baby and my mother never got a cent out of it. She wasn't strong
+and she worked herself to death trying to support herself and me. I grew
+up in an orphan asylum where everybody was down on me and made me do all
+the unpleasant jobs, and at twelve I was adrift in the world. I sold
+papers in the streets and managed to make a living, but one night I went
+out with a crowd of boys and some of the older ones knocked a man down
+and stole his money and the police caught the whole bunch and we were
+sent to the Reformatory. After that I had a hard time trying to make an
+honest living because people don't like to hire anyone that's been in the
+Reformatory. I never had any fun the way other boys did. I had to live in
+cheap boarding places because I didn't earn much and nobody that was
+decent seemed to care to associate with me. I was sick of living that way
+and wanted to go away to South America where no one would know about the
+Reformatory, and make a clean start. Then I was drafted. I hated army
+life, too. All the other fellows got mail and boxes from home and had a
+big fuss made over them and I didn't have a soul to write to me or send
+me things. I was given a good deal of kitchen duty to do and everybody
+looks down on that. I kept getting sorer and sorer all the time and at
+last I decided to desert. I got a three-days' leave and made up my mind
+that I wouldn't go back. I was just hanging around the street killing
+time this afternoon when I saw a crowd and stopped to see what the
+excitement was about. Then all of a sudden you looked at me and motioned
+me to come over and help you raise the flag. It was the first time I had
+ever touched the Stars and Stripes. When the folds fell around my
+shoulders before she went sailing up, something wakened in me that I had
+never felt before. I couldn't believe it was I, standing there raising
+the flag with all those people cheering. It intoxicated me and carried me
+along with the parade when it went to the armory. Then again, like the
+hand of fate, you came out and pulled me in and made me speak to the
+girls. I had never spoken before anyone in my life. I had never 'been in'
+anything. It made another man of me. All of a sudden I found I did love
+my country after all. I _did_ have something to fight for. I _did_ belong
+somewhere. It _did_ thrill me to see Old Glory fluttering out in the
+wind. That was my country's flag, _my_ flag. I was willing to die for it.
+I'm going back to camp to-night," he finished simply.
+
+I gripped his hands silently, too moved to speak.
+
+All the while we were talking there the crowd had been busy getting their
+things together and going out and nobody paid any attention to us sitting
+there in the shadow under the gallery. Now, however, I was aware of
+somebody approaching directly, and along came the Mayor, gracious and
+smiling, to shake hands with the speaker of the afternoon.
+
+"Those were rattling good stories you told," he said in his hearty way.
+"I say, won't you be a guest at a little dinner the frat brothers are
+giving this evening, and tell them to the boys? That's the kind of stuff
+everybody's interested in."
+
+And off went the man who had never had a chance, arm in arm with the
+Mayor, to be guest of honor at a dinner in the finest hotel in the city!
+
+Jiminy! Do you see what the Winnebagos have gone and done? They've saved
+a man from being a deserter! I've promised to write to him and get the
+rest of the girls to write and send him things, and I'll bet that he'll
+be loyal to the flag to the last gasp.
+
+Now aren't you glad you're a Winnebago?
+
+                          Your loving old pal,
+                                                             Sahwah.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                      Nov. 15, 19--.
+Dearest Winnebagos:
+
+You don't happen to know of anyone that would like to employ a good
+country schoolma'am for the rest of the term, do you? I'm fired; that is,
+I'll wager all my earthly possessions that I will be at the next session
+of the Board. The prophet hath spoken truly; and you can't make a
+silk-purse-carrying schoolmarm out of Katherine Adams.
+
+This morning I woke up with a glouch, which is a combination of a gloom
+and a grouch, and worse than either. It didn't improve it to have to go
+to school on such a crisp, cool, ten-mile-walk day and listen to Clarissa
+Butts stammer out a paragraph in the reader about vegetation around
+extinct volcanoes, and all the while trying to keep my eye on the rest of
+the pupils, who were not listening, but throwing spitballs at each other.
+The worst of it was I didn't blame them a bit for not listening. Why on
+earth can't they put something interesting into school readers? Even I,
+with my insatiable thirst for information, gagged on vegetation around
+extinct volcanoes. Clarissa's paragraph drew to a halting close and
+finally stopped with a rising inflection, regardless of my oft-repeated
+instructions how to behave in the presence of a period, and I had to go
+through the daily process of correction, which ended as usual with
+Clarissa in tears and me wondering why I was born.
+
+The next little girl took up the tale in a droning sing-song that was
+almost as bad as Clarissa's halting delivery, and fed the Glouch until he
+was twice his original size. The climax came when Absalom Butts, by some
+feat of legerdemain, pulled the bottom out of his desk and his books
+suddenly fell to the floor with a crash that shattered the nerves of the
+entire class. Absalom and some of the other boys snickered out loud; the
+girls looked at me with anxious expectancy.
+
+I sat up very straight. "Class attention!" I commanded, rapping with my
+ruler. "Close books and put them away," I ordered next.
+
+Books and papers made a fluttering disappearance, through which the
+long-drawn sniffs of Clarissa Butts were plainly audible.
+
+"Get your hats and form in line for dismissal," was the next order that
+fell on their startled ears.
+
+"She's going to send us home," came to my hearing in a sibilant whisper.
+Clarissa's sniffs became gurgling sobs as she took her place in the
+apprehensive line.
+
+"Forward march, and halt outside the door!" I drove them out like sheep
+before me and then I came out and banged the door shut with a vicious
+slam. Passing between the two files I divided the ranks into sheep and
+goats, left and right.
+
+"Class attention!" I called again. "Do you all see that dark spot over
+there?" said I, pointing to the dim line of trees that marked the
+beginning of the woods, some seven miles distant.
+
+"Yes, Miss Adams," came the wondering reply.
+
+"Well," I continued, "the left half of the line will take the road around
+Spencer way, and the right half will take the road around the other way,
+and the half that gets there last will have to give a show to amuse the
+winners. We're going to have a hike, and a picnic. You all have your
+lunch baskets, haven't you?"
+
+For a minute they stood dazed, looking at me as if they thought I had
+lost my senses. Clarissa stopped short in the middle of a sob to gape
+open-mouthed. Come to think of it, I don't believe she ever did finish
+that sob. I repeated my directions, and taking the youngest girl by the
+hand I started one half of the line down the road, calling over my
+shoulder to the other line that they might as well make up their stunts
+on the way, because they were going to get beaten. But after all it was
+our side that got there last, because we were mostly girls and I had to
+carry the littlest ones over some of the rough places.
+
+I sent the boys to gather wood and built up a big fire, and then I
+proceeded to initiate the crowd into some of the mysteries of camp
+cookery. I daubed a chicken with clay and baked it with the feathers on,
+like we used to do last summer on Ellen's Isle, and it would have been
+splendid if it hadn't been for one small oversight. I forgot to split the
+chicken open and take the insides out before I put the clay on.
+
+After dinner it was up to me to produce a show in obedience to my own
+mandate. None of the rest on my side could help me out, because not one
+of the blessed chicks had ever done a "stunt" in their lives. The only
+"prop" I had was a bright red tie, so I proceeded to do the stunt about
+the goat that ate the two red shirts right off the line--you remember the
+way Sahwah used to bring the house down with it? Well, I had just got to
+the part where "he heard the whistle; was in great pain----" and,
+accompanying the action to the music, was down on all fours giving a
+lifelike imitation of a goat tied to a railroad track, while the
+delighted boys and girls were doubled up in all stages of mirth, when I
+heard a sound that resembled the last gasp of a dying elephant. I jumped
+to my feet and whirled around, and there in the offing were
+anchored--anchored is the only expression that fits because they were
+literally rooted to the spot--the entire school board of Spencer
+township, plus two strange men plus Justice Sherman. The board members
+and the strangers stood with their jaws dropped down on their chests and
+their eyes popping out of their heads; Justice had his handkerchief over
+his mouth and was shaking from head to foot like a sapling in a high
+wind. I gave a gasp of dismay which resulted in further developments, for
+I had the whole red tie stuffed into my mouth with which to flag the
+train when the time came, and the minute I opened my mouth it billowed
+out in the breeze. That was the finishing touch. I might have explained
+away the quadruped attitude as a gymnastic pose, but it takes
+considerable of an artist to explain away a mouthful of red tie in a
+schoolmarm. Besides that, I was mud from head to foot, having slid about
+ten feet for the home plate in a baseball game we had before dinner, so
+that I presented a front elevation in natural clay effect, broken here
+and there with elderberries in bas-relief, which had adhered when the can
+was accidentally spilled over me.
+
+Being acutely conscious of all these facts in every corner of my anatomy
+did not add to my ease of manner, but I said as nonchalantly as I could,
+"How do you do, Mr. Butts? How do you do, gentlemen?" Then I added rather
+lamely, "Pleasant day, is it not?"
+
+Mr. Butts exploded into the same sort of snort as had interrupted me in
+time to prevent the goat from flagging the train.
+
+"Miss Adams," he said severely, when he had recovered his breath
+sufficiently to speak, "what does this mean? Why ain't you teaching
+school to-day? Here comes these here two fellers----" and he jerked his
+thumb in the direction of the two strangers--"from the new school board
+over to Sabot Junction, to visit our school, and I takes them over to the
+schoolhouse and finds it empty and no sign of you or the class. Fine
+doin's, them! These fellers had their trip for nothin' and they were
+pretty mad about it I can tell you, and so I thinks I'll drive them over
+to Kenridge to the schoolhouse there and here on the way I runs into you
+in the woods, acting like a lunytic. I always said Bill Adams's daughter
+was plumb crazy and now I'm sure of it."
+
+I stood aghast. How was I to explain to an irate school board that
+neither I nor the children had felt like going to school to-day and had
+decided to have a picnic instead, and that the "lunytic actin's" was
+Sahwah's famous stunt, enacted to add to the hilarity of the occasion? I
+threw an appealing glance at Justice Sherman, and he sobered up enough to
+speak.
+
+"You don't understand, Mr. Butts," he said hastily. "Miss Adams _is_
+teaching school to-day. She is teaching the children botany and it is
+sometimes necessary to go out into the woods and study right from Nature.
+I heard her say that she was going to take the children out the first
+fine day."
+
+This was outrageous fibbing, but nobly done in a good cause. It was of no
+avail, however, for Absalom Butts promptly called out importantly, "It
+ain't either no botany class; it's a picnic. She made us put our books
+away when we didn't want to and come out here." And he made an impudent
+grimace at me, accompanied with the usual taunting grin.
+
+Right here I had another surprise of my young life. No sooner had the
+craven Absalom turned state's evidence when there rose from the masses an
+unexpected champion. As Elijah Butts began to express his opinion of my
+"carryin's on" in no veiled terms, his daughter Clarissa, developing a
+hitherto undreamed of amount of spirit, suddenly threw her arms around my
+waist and stood there stamping her feet with anger.
+
+"She ain't a lunatic, she ain't a lunatic," she shrilled above her
+father's gruff tones, "she's nice and I love her!" After which astounding
+confession she melted into tears and stood there sobbing and hugging the
+breath out of me. To my greater astonishment all the other girls
+immediately followed suit and gathered around me with shielding caresses,
+turning defiant faces to the upbraiding school board members. The boys
+made themselves very inconspicuous in the rear, but I caught more than
+one glowering look cast in the direction of Absalom.
+
+Before this demonstration of affection, Mr. Butts paused in astonishment,
+and, having hesitated, was lost. He felt he was no longer cock of the
+walk, and in dignified silence led the way to the surrey standing in the
+road, with the rest of the school board members and the visitors stalking
+after. I watched them climb in and drive away, and then the reaction set
+in and I sat down on the ground and laughed until I cried, while the
+girls, not sure whether I was laughing or crying, alternately giggled
+convulsively and soothingly bade me "never mind." I sat up finally and
+shook the hair out of my eyes and then I discovered that Justice Sherman
+had not departed with the rest of the delegation, but was sitting on the
+ground not far away, still shaking with laughter and wiping his eyes on a
+red-bordered napkin that had strayed out of a lunch basket. A sudden
+suspicion seized me.
+
+"Justice," I cried severely, "did you do it?"
+
+"Did I do what?" he asked in a startled tone.
+
+"Find out I was off on a picnic and bring the Board down to visit me?"
+
+Justice threw out his hands in a gesture of denial. "'Thou canst not say
+I did it, never shake thy gory locks at me,'" he declaimed feelingly.
+"Where did they come from? They dropped, fair one, like the gentle rain
+from heaven, upon the place beneath. They came first to my humble
+dispensary of learning, anxious to show the visiting Solons what a
+bargain they had captured, and listened feelingly while I conducted a
+Latin lesson, which impressed them so much they invited me to come along
+while they gave you the 'once over.' You never saw such an expression in
+your life as there was on the face of Mr. Butts when he arrived at your
+place and found it empty. I will remember it to my dying day.
+
+"But what on earth _were_ you doing when we found you in the woods?" he
+finished in a mystified tone.
+
+Then I told him about Sahwah's goat that ate the two red shirts right off
+the line, and again he laughed until he was weak.
+
+"Some schoolma'am you, for visiting committees to make notes on!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"I'm discharged, of course," I remarked, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Oh, maybe not," said Justice soothingly, as we reached home, and he
+turned off to go to his cabin.
+
+"I don't care if I am," I cried savagely. "I hate that old Board so I
+wouldn't work for them another day." And I stalked into the house with my
+head in the air.
+
+But somehow, after I had eaten my supper and begun to write this letter,
+I began to feel differently. The way the girls stood up for me this
+afternoon changed my whole attitude toward school teaching. To find out
+that they actually loved me was the biggest surprise I had ever had in my
+life. I had hated them so thoroughly along with the school teaching that
+it had never occurred to me that they did not feel the same way toward
+me. I suddenly hated myself for my impatience with their stupidity. Of
+course they were stupid--how could they be otherwise, poor, pitiful,
+ill-clad, overworked creatures, coming from such homes as they did? I
+stopped despising them and was filled only with pity for the narrow,
+colorless lives they led. That afternoon when they had told me, shyly and
+wistfully, how much they enjoyed my teaching, I was filled with guilty
+pangs, because I knew just how much _I_ had enjoyed it. That impromptu
+picnic had quite won their hearts and broken down the barriers between
+us, and the trouble it had gotten me into crystallized their affection
+into expression. Now the ice was broken, and I would be able to get more
+out of them than ever before. The prospect of teaching began to have
+compensations.
+
+Then suddenly I remembered. I would be discharged after the next meeting
+of the Board. I would have no opportunity of getting better acquainted
+with my pupils and leading them in the pleasant paths of knowledge. Just
+when the drink began to taste sweet I had to go and upset the cup!
+
+And your Katherine, who had hated teaching the poor whites so fiercely
+all these months, buried her head on her arms and cried bitterly at the
+thought of having to give it up!
+
+                            Yours, in tears,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                          HINPOHA TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                    Brownell College, Nov. 25, 19--.
+
+Dearest Katherine:
+
+At first glance I don't suppose you will recognize this sweet little
+creature, but you ought to, seeing you are his own mother. It's the Pig
+you drew with your eyes shut in Glady's PIG BOOK last year. Gladys
+brought the PIG BOOK along with her and the other day we got it out and
+found your poor little Piggy with the mournful inscription under him,
+"Where is My Wandering Pig To-night?" He looked so sad and lonesome we
+knew he was simply pining away for you. His ink has faded perceptibly and
+he is just a shadow of his former emphatic self. Migwan looked at it and
+said, "What charade does it make you think of?"
+
+It was just as plain as the nose on your face, and we all shouted at
+once, "Pork-you-pine!"
+
+We couldn't bear to leave him there to die of grief and longing, so we
+transferred him tenderly to this letter and are sending him to his mumsey
+by Special Delivery. We hope he will pick up immediately upon arrival.
+
+We had Lamb's _Dissertation on Roast Pig_ in Literature the other day and
+were asked to comment upon it, and Agony wrote that she didn't think much
+of a dissertation on Pig that was written by a Lamb; she thought Bacon
+could have handled the subject much better!
+
+As ever, your Hinpoha.
+
+P. S. Here is Piggy's tail; we found it in a corner of the page after we
+had him transferred.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                       Dec. 3, 19--.
+Dear Winnies:
+
+Hurray! I'm not fired. Why, I wasn't I never will be able to figure out,
+but it's so. A week after the Picnic the Board sat, but not on me. For a
+while I lived in hourly expectation of forcible eviction, but nothing
+happened, and I heard from Justice, who stands high in the favor of
+Elijah Butts and gets inside information about school matters, that
+nothing was going to be done about it. If Justice had any further details
+he wouldn't divulge them.
+
+Justice is a queer chap. Although he talks nonsense incessantly, you can
+get very little information out of him. And the way he puts up with all
+kinds of inconveniences without complaint is wonderful to me. He must be
+accustomed to far different surroundings, and yet from his attitude you'd
+think his little cabin out beyond the stables was the one place on earth
+he'd select for an abode. He never even mentioned the fact that the roof
+leaked badly until I went out there to fetch him and discovered him on
+top patching it. Then I went inside to see what else could be improved,
+and the bare, tumble-down-ness of the place struck me forcibly. Light
+shone through chinks in the walls, the door sill was warped one way and
+the door another, and there was no sign of the pane that had once been in
+the window. It was simply a dilapidated cabin, and made no pretence of
+being anything else. How he could live in it was more than I could see.
+No light at night but a kerosene lamp, no furniture except what he
+himself had made from boards, boxes and logs; no carpet on the rough,
+rotting floor. Why did he choose to live in this cell when he might have
+taken rooms with any of the school board members over in Spencer?
+
+It was on this occasion that I saw the rough board table under the one
+window, strewn with pencils, compasses and sheets of paper covered with
+strange lines and figures.
+
+"What's this?" I asked curiously.
+
+"Nothing, that amounts to anything," replied Justice, with a queer, dry
+little laugh. "Once I was fool enough to believe that it did amount to
+something." He swept the papers together and threw them face downward on
+the table.
+
+"Tell me about it," I said coaxingly, scenting a secret, possibly a clue
+to his past.
+
+Justice stared out of the open door for a few moments, his shoulders
+slumped into a discouraged curve, his face moody and resentful. Then
+suddenly he threw back his head and squared his shoulders. "It's
+nothing," he said shortly. "Only, once I thought I had a brilliant idea,
+and tried to patent it. Then I found out I wasn't as smart as I thought I
+was, that's all."
+
+"What did you invent?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, just an old electrical device--you probably wouldn't understand the
+workings of it--to be used in connection with wireless apparatus. It was
+a thing for recording vibrations and by its use a deaf man could receive
+wireless messages. I worked four years perfecting it and then thought my
+fortune was made. But nobody would back me on it. They all laughed at the
+thing. I got so disgusted one day that I threw the thing into the sad
+sea. Four years' work went up at one splash! That was the end of my
+career as an inventor."
+
+Poor Justice! I sympathized with him so hard that I hardly knew what to
+say. I knew what that failure must have meant to his proud, sensitive
+soul. The first failure is always such a blow. It takes considerable
+experience in failing to be able to do it gracefully. I could see that he
+didn't want any voluble sympathy from me and that it was such a sore
+subject that he'd rather not talk about it. I didn't know what to say.
+Then my eye fell on the sheets on the table. "What are you inventing
+now?" I asked, to break the silence that was growing awkward.
+
+"Just working on bits of things," he replied, "to pass the time away. You
+can't experiment with wireless now, you know."
+
+The confidences Justice had made to me almost drove my errand out of my
+head. It was rather breathless, this having a new side of him turn up
+every little while. I returned to my original quest for information.
+
+"I came for expert advice," I remarked.
+
+Justice looked up inquiringly. "Shoot," he said.
+
+"Do you suppose," I inquired in a perplexed tone, "that they'd enjoy it
+just as much if the costumes have to be imaginary?"
+
+Justice's face suddenly became contorted. "They'd probably enjoy wearing,
+ah--er imaginary costumes if the weather is warm enough," he replied,
+carefully avoiding my eye.
+
+"Justice Sherman!" I exploded, laughing in spite of myself. "You know
+very well what I mean. I mean can we have a Ceremonial Meeting in blue
+calico and imagine it's Ceremonial costumes?"
+
+Justice scratched his head. "It depends upon how much imagination 'we'
+have," he remarked. "Now, for instance, I know someone not a hundred
+miles from here who can imagine herself in her college room when it's
+only make believe, and can do wonderful work in French and mathematics.
+She----"
+
+"That's enough from you," I interrupted. "The matter is settled. We'll
+have a Ceremonial Meeting. We'll pretend we've gone traveling and have
+left our Ceremonial dresses at home. We're a war-time group, anyhow, and
+ought to do without things."
+
+There now! The secret is out! Your poor stick of a Katherine is a real
+Camp Fire Guardian. I wasn't going to tell you at first, but I'm afraid I
+will have to come to you for advice very often. I have organized my girls
+into a group and they are entering upon the time of their young lives.
+Make the hand sign of fire when you meet us, and greet us with the
+countersign, for we be of the same kindred. Magic spell of Wohelo! By its
+power even the poor spirited Hard-uppers have become sisters of the
+incomparable Winnebagos. Wo-He-Lo for aye! We are the tribe of Wenonah,
+the Eldest Daughter, and our tepee is the schoolhouse.
+
+Of course, as Camp Fire Groups go, we are a very poor sister. We haven't
+any costumes, any headbands, any honor beads, or any Camp Fire adornments
+of any kind. I advanced the money to pay the dues, and that was all I
+could afford. There are so few ways of making money here and most of the
+families are so poor that I'm afraid we'll never have much to do with.
+But the girls are so taken up with the idea of Camp Fire that it's a joy
+to see them. In all their shiftless, drudging lives it had never once
+occurred to them that there was any fun to be gotten out of work. It's
+like opening up a new world to them. Do you know, I've discovered why
+they never did the homework I used to give to them. It's because they
+never had any time at home. There were always so many chores to do. Their
+people begrudged them the time that they had to be in school and wouldn't
+hear of any additional time being taken for lessons afterward.
+
+As soon as I heard that I changed the lessons around so they could do all
+their studying in school. Besides that, I looked some of the schoolbooks
+in the face and decided that they were hopelessly behind the times,
+Elijah Butts to the contrary. They were the same books that had been used
+in this section for twenty-five years.
+
+"What is the use," I said aloud to the spider weaving a web across my
+desk, "of teaching people antiquated geography and cheap, incorrect
+editions of history when the thing they need most is to learn how to cook
+and sew and wash and iron so as to make their homes livable? Why should
+they waste their precious time reading about things that happened a
+thousand years ago when they might be taking an active part in the
+stirring history that is being made every day in these times? Blind,
+stubborn, moth-eaten old fogies!" I exclaimed, shaking my fist in the
+direction of Spencer, where the Board sat.
+
+Right then and there I scrapped the time-honored curriculum and made out
+a truly Winnebago one. It kept the fundamentals, but in addition it
+included cooking, sewing, table setting, bed making, camp cookery,
+singing of popular songs, folk dancing, hiking and stunts. Yes sir,
+stunts! I teach them stunts as carefully as I teach them spelling and
+arithmetic. Can you imagine anyone who has never done a stunt in all
+their lives?
+
+We rigged up a cook stove inside the schoolhouse--if you'd ever see it!
+The stovepipe comes down every day at the most critical moment. Besides
+that we have a stone oven outside. Every single day is a picnic. As all
+of us have to bring our lunch we turned the noon hour into a cooking
+lesson, and two different girls act as hostesses each day. The boys bring
+the wood and do the rough work and are our guests at dinner. They all
+behave pretty well except Absalom Butts, who is given to practical jokes.
+But as the rest of the boys side in with me against him, he gets very
+little applause for his pains and very little help in his mischief. The
+noon dinners continue to be the chief attraction at the little school at
+the cross roads. Hardly anybody is ever absent now.
+
+I arranged the new schedule so that while I am teaching the girls the
+things which are of interest to them alone the boys have something else
+to do that appeals to them. I give them more advanced arithmetic, and
+have worked out a system of honor marks for those who do extra problems,
+with a prize promised at the end of the year. Then I got hold of an old
+copy of Dan Beard's _New Ideas for Boys_ and have turned them loose on
+that, letting them make anything they choose, and giving credit marks
+according to how well they accomplish it.
+
+You see what a job I have ahead of me as a Camp Fire Guardian? In order
+to teach my girls what they must know to win honors, I have had to turn
+the whole school system inside out, and then, because I couldn't bear to
+leave the boys out in the cold while the girls are having such a good
+time, I have to keep thinking up things for them to do, too. It stretches
+my ingenuity to the breaking point sometimes to get everything in, and
+keep all sides even.
+
+One afternoon each week I have the girls give to Red Cross work. Every
+Saturday I drive all the way over to Thomasville, where the nearest Red
+Cross headquarters branch is, for gauze to make surgical dressings,
+returning the finished ones the next week. Here's where dull-witted
+Clarissa Butts outshines all the brighter girls. She can make those
+dressings faster and better than any of us and her face is fairly radiant
+while she is working on them. I have made her inspector over the rest to
+see that there are no wrinkles and no loose threads, and she nearly
+bursts with importance. For once in her life she is head of the class.
+
+While they fold bandages I read to them about what is going on in the war
+and what the Red Cross is doing everywhere, and we have beautiful times.
+The worst trouble around here is getting up to date things to read. There
+isn't a library within fifty miles and the only books we have are the few
+I can manage to buy and those that Justice Sherman has. Would you mind
+sending out a magazine once in a while after you have finished reading
+it?
+
+We had our first ceremonial meeting last night in blue calico instead of
+ceremonial gowns, but it didn't make a mite of difference. We felt the
+magic spell of it just the same and promised with all our hearts to seek
+beauty and give service and all the other things in the Wood Gatherers'
+Desire. That is the wonderful thing about Camp Fire. It makes you have
+exactly the same feelings whether you learn it in a mansion or in a
+shack, in an exclusive girls' school or in a third-rate country
+schoolhouse. If Nyoda only could have seen us! Of all people to whom I
+had expected to pass on the Torch, this group of Arkansas Hard-Uppers
+would have been the very last to occur to me. Was this what she meant, I
+wonder?
+
+                Yours, trying hard to be a Torch Bearer,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                          HINPOHA TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                                      Dec. 15, 19--.
+Darling Katherine:
+
+There's no use talking, I can never be the same again. My life is
+wrecked--ruined--blighted; my heart is broken, my faith in Man shattered,
+but try as I like I can't forget him. His image is graven on my heart,
+and there it will be until I die. But for all that, I hate him--hate
+him--hate him! I don't want to be unpatriotic, but I do hope he gets
+killed in the very first battle he's in. Then at least _she_ won't have
+him! But a few short weeks ago I was a mere child, playing at life, a
+schoolgirl, carefree and heedless, with no other thought in the world
+beside winning the freshman basketball championship and surviving
+midyear's; to-day I am a woman, old in experience, having eaten the fruit
+of the tree of knowledge and found it bitter as gall. And I must bear it
+all alone, because if I told the girls here they would laugh at me, and
+some would be spiteful enough to be glad about it. But I have to tell
+somebody or explode, and I know you will neither laugh nor tell anybody,
+being a perfect Tombstone on secrets.
+
+It's really all Agony and Oh-Pshaw's fault anyway, for being born. Not
+that that actually had anything to do with it, but if they hadn't been
+born they wouldn't have had any birthday, and if they hadn't had any
+birthday they wouldn't have given that box party to the LAST OF THE
+WINNEBAGOS and I never would have met Captain Bannister.
+
+You will readily understand, Katherine, how I burn to serve my country at
+a time like this. There is nothing I would not do to save her from the
+clutches of the enemy. It is all very well to say that woman's part in
+the war is to knit socks and sweaters and fold bandages and conserve the
+Food Supply, for that is all that the average woman would be capable of
+doing anyhow, but as for me, I know that my part is to be a much more
+definite and a far nobler one. Of course, I do all the other things, too,
+along with the other Winnies and the whole college, for that matter;
+joined the Patriotic League, go to Red Cross two nights a week and go
+without sugar and wheat as much as possible. When I wrote and told Nyoda
+that I hadn't eaten one speck of candy for three months except what was
+given me and was sending the money I usually spent for it to the
+Belgians, she said I ought to have the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and
+that "greater love hath no man than this, that he give up the craving of
+his stomach for his country." You see, Nyoda understands perfectly what
+it means to have an awful candy hunger gnawing at your vitals like the
+vulture at the giant's liver and look the other way when you go past a
+window full of your favorite bon-bons. But somehow candy doesn't seem so
+satisfying when you know there are little Belgian and French children
+suffering from a much worse gnawing than candy hunger, and usually
+dropping the price of a box of bonbons into the Relief Fund stops the
+craving almost as much as the bonbons themselves would.
+
+But this is only doing what thousands of other girls all over the country
+are doing and there isn't any individual glory in it. What I long to do
+is carry the message that saves the army from destruction, or discover
+the spy at his nefarious work. If only the chance would come for me to do
+something like that I could die happy.
+
+Agony and Oh-Pshaw's birthday celebration was quite an event. We had
+luncheon first at the Golden Dragon, a wonderful new Chinese restaurant
+that was recently opened, and had chop suey and chow main and other funny
+things in a little stall lit up with a gorgeous blue and gold lantern. Of
+course, after that luncheon and the funny toasts we made to the long life
+and health of Agony and Oh-Pshaw, we felt pretty frolicsome, and by the
+time we got settled in our seats at the Opera House we were ready to
+start something. Our seats were in the first row of the balcony, center
+aisle, and very prominent. I had my knitting along as usual, intending to
+do a few rows between the acts. I always knit in public places; it sets a
+good example to other people. Besides, my new knitting bag is too sweet
+for anything.
+
+I had just got started knitting in the intermission between the first and
+second acts when the orchestra began to play "Over There," and Agony got
+an inspiration. "Let's all stand up," she whispered, "and see how many
+people will bite and stand up, too."
+
+So, stifling our giggles, we sprang promptly to our feet and stood
+stiffly at attention. In less than a minute more than half of the
+audience, not knowing why they should stand up for that piece, but
+blindly following our lead, gathered up their hats, wraps and programs in
+their arms and dutifully stood up. Then as soon as they were standing we
+sat down and laughed at the poor dupes, who sat down in a hurry when they
+saw us, looking terribly foolish. I haven't seen anything so funny in a
+long time.
+
+"Stop laughing," said Gladys, giving me a poke with her elbow. "You're
+shaking the seat so I'm getting seasick." But I couldn't stop.
+
+"Look out, Hinpoha, there goes your knitting," said Migwan. "Catch it,
+somebody!"
+
+But it was too late. When we stood up I had laid the sock and the ball of
+yarn on the broad, low rail in front of us, and now the ball had rolled
+over the edge and dropped down into the audience below, right into the
+lap of a young man who was sitting on the end seat. He looked up in great
+surprise and everybody laughed. They just _roared_! There I stood,
+leaning over the balcony, hanging on to the sock for dear life and trying
+to keep it from raveling, and there he stood down below holding onto the
+ball, and plainly puzzled what to do with it.
+
+"Throw down the sock, silly," whispered Agony, reaching over and pulling
+my sleeve. "Do you think he's going to throw up the ball?"
+
+I dropped the sock and the man caught it in his other hand and stood
+there laughing, as he started to wind up the yards and yards of yarn
+between the ball and the sock. When he had it wound up he brought it
+upstairs to me. I went out into the corridor to get it. Then for the
+first time I got a good look at the man. He was dressed in uniform and
+wore an officer's cap. He was very tall and slim, with black eyes and
+hair and a small black mustache.
+
+"Here, patriotic little knitting lady," he said, making a deep bow and
+handing me my knitting. I looked up into his handsome, smiling face, and
+little needle points began pricking in my spine. His eyes met mine, he
+smiled, blushed to the roots of his hair and looked away. All in one
+instant I knew. I had met my fate. This was my Man, my own. I felt faint
+and light-headed and all I could see was his black eyes shining like
+stars. His deep, thrilling voice still rang in my ears. With another low
+bow he turned to leave me.
+
+"Captain Bannister, at your service," he said.
+
+I went back to my seat with my head swimming. "Patriotic little knitting
+lady," I found myself whispering under my breath. The girls suddenly
+seemed awfully young and silly as they sat there giggling at me and at
+each other. My mind was above all such childish things; it was soaring up
+in the blue realms of true love. I was glad he was tall and thin. I think
+fat girls should marry thin men, don't you? And he was dark, too, just
+the right mate for redheaded me. And he was a Captain in the army! How
+the other girls would envy me! Some of them had friends who were
+lieutenants and were quite uppish about it, but none that I knew had a
+Captain.
+
+Then at another thought my heart stood still. Suppose he should be
+killed? I pictured myself in deep mourning, wearing on my breast the
+medal he had won for bravery, which with his dying breath he had asked
+his comrades to send to "my wife!" I couldn't help brushing away a tear
+then and was quite bewildered when Agony poked me and wanted to know if I
+wasn't ever going to make a move to go home. The show was over and the
+people were streaming out. I hadn't seen a bit of the last two acts.
+
+Down in the lobby I saw Him again. He was standing by the door talking to
+another man in uniform. How he stood out among all other men! He was one
+out of a thousand. My heart beat to suffocation and I couldn't raise my
+eyes. In a moment more I must pass him. I tried to look straight ahead,
+but something I couldn't resist drew my head around and I turned and
+looked straight into his eyes. He tilted back his head and gave me one
+long, thrilling glance, raised his hand to his cap, then blushed and
+looked down. Just then Gladys pulled at my sleeve and dragged me over to
+some girls we knew and we were swept out with the crowd to the sidewalk.
+
+I scarcely knew where I was going. My feet walked along between Gladys
+and Migwan, but my soul was in the clouds, listening to strains of
+heavenly music, while the others squabbled over ice cream flavors and who
+should stand treat after the show. Ice cream! Ye gods! Who could eat ice
+cream with their soul seething in love?
+
+From that hour when I had looked into Captain Bannister's eyes and read
+the truth in them, I was a changed being. I listened in silence to the
+idle chatter of the girls around me as we walked to and from classes.
+Their souls were wrapped up in their knitting, in their lessons, in their
+meals. Agony and Oh-Pshaw were trying to learn a new and difficult back
+dive and they talked of nothing else night and day. They were constantly
+at me to come and try it, too, but I sat loftily apart, hugging my
+delicious secret. As it says in the poem we learned in literature class:
+
+  "What were the garden bowers of Thebes to me?"
+
+Like Semele, I scorned the sports of mortals and thought only of my
+Beloved. I didn't envy her a bit because her Love was Jupiter. What was
+Jupiter compared to Captain Bannister?
+
+Twice I had seen him since that day in the theater--had spoken to him, in
+fact. He was stationed in the recruiting office and one day I happened to
+be walking past with old Professor Remie and he knew him and stopped and
+talked and introduced me. As if we needed any introduction! We chatted of
+commonplaces, but all the while our eyes told volumes. However, soul
+cannot speak to soul in a public recruiting station where curious eyes
+are looking on.
+
+I had an errand uptown every day after that. Only once did I see him as I
+passed the recruiting station, however. Then he was throwing out a
+Socialist who had tried to stop the recruiting and he didn't see me.
+
+But the next day there came a perfectly huge box of chocolates, addressed
+quaintly to "Miss Bradford, Somewhere in Purgatory." Inside the box was a
+card which read:
+
+  "The strand you dropped with careless art
+  Has wound itself around my heart."
+
+Underneath was written "Captain Bannister," in a bold, masculine hand.
+
+I buried the chocolates in the depths of my shirtwaist box where no
+profane eye could see them or profane tooth bite into them. I didn't mean
+to be selfish, but I just couldn't bear to pass _his_ chocolates around
+to the crowd and hear Agony's delighted squeal as she dove into them,
+
+"Come on, girls, have one on Hinpoha's latest crush!"
+
+For Agony has absolutely no understanding of affairs of the
+heart--everything is a "crush" to her.
+
+The chocolates were fine and I ate a great many of them, thinking of my
+Captain all the while, and wondering when I would see him again.
+
+"Hinpoha, what on earth is the matter with you?" said Gladys that night.
+"You didn't eat a bite of supper and you're as pale as a ghost. Have you
+upset your stomach again?"
+
+I drew myself up haughtily. The idea! To call this delicious turmoil in
+my bosom an upset stomach! I was glad I looked pale. I am usually as red
+as a beet. It was more in keeping with the way I felt to be pale.
+
+"I am not myself," I replied loftily, "but it's not my stomach."
+
+"Go to bed, honey," said Gladys, "and I'll bring you a glass of hot
+water."
+
+I curled up in bed with Captain Bannister's card in my hand under the
+pillow. I was so happy I felt dizzy. Gladys came back with the hot water
+and made me drink it in spite of my protests, and, strange to say, I felt
+much calmer after it.
+
+Needless to say, I couldn't pin my mind down on my lessons. I did such
+queer things that people began to notice it. For instance, mild old
+Professor Remie, the chemistry teacher, handed back my paper one day
+after he had given us a written lesson on the Atomic Theory, and inquired
+in a puzzled tone if I had meant just what I wrote. I glanced at it and
+blushed furiously when I realized that I had written down some lines that
+had been running through my head all day:
+
+  "Why do I fearfully cling to thee, Maidenhood?
+  'Tis but a pearl to be cast in thy waves, O Love!"
+
+Then one day the word went around that He was coming to make a speech in
+the college chapel. How my heart fluttered! I could hardly sit still in
+the seat when he came out on the platform. It seemed as if everyone could
+hear what my heart was saying. Soon that deep voice of his was filling
+the room, thrilling me with unearthly things. Again and again his eyes
+sought mine, full of joyous recognition, of love and longing. I smiled
+reassuringly, trying to telegraph the message, "Be patient, all will be
+well."
+
+To myself I was singing, "O Captain, my Captain!"
+
+Unknown to himself, I had seen him before he came into chapel. I was
+stooping down in the shadow of the gymnasium steps, tying my shoestring,
+when he came along the walk and was met by Dr. Thorn, our President. They
+stood there and talked a minute and I heard Captain Bannister say that he
+was going to Washington that afternoon on the five o'clock train and that
+he was going directly from the college to the station. He carried a small
+black handbag, which Dr. Thorn offered to relieve him of, but he said no,
+he didn't want to leave it out of his hand even for a minute, there were
+valuable papers in it.
+
+When he came out on the platform I noticed that he had the bag with him.
+He set it down on the table while he talked and never got very far away
+from it. I looked at that bag with deep interest. What was in it?
+Something terribly important, I knew. I thrilled with pride that my
+Captain should have such great things to look after, and longed to be of
+service to him.
+
+His speech came to an end all too soon for me, who could have gone on
+listening for a week, and he went out before the rest of us were
+dismissed. No chance to speak to me or give me one word of farewell for
+the brief separation; only one long, lingering look between us that left
+me shaken to the soul. Now I knew what the Poet meant when he spoke of
+"the troth of glance and glance."
+
+I wandered around by myself after he had gone. I didn't desire to speak
+to any of the girls or have them speak to me. I just wanted to be by
+myself. Roaming thus I came to the little rustic summerhouse in the park
+behind the college buildings, and stopped in to rest a moment. It was a
+lovely mild day, not a bit like winter, and not too cold to sit in a
+summerhouse and dream. I didn't sit down, though. For on the bark-covered
+bench I spied something that brought my heart up into my mouth. It was
+Captain Bannister's bag. No doubt about it. There was his name on a card
+tied to the handle. How came it here? They must have shown him around the
+grounds after his speech and in some way he had put the bag down in here
+and then gone off and forgotten it. How dreadful he would feel when he
+found it out!
+
+My mind was made up in a minute. Here was a real chance to "Give
+Service." If I hurried I could get down to the station and catch him
+before he got on the train. I made sure from the watchman that he had
+left the college grounds. I looked at my wrist watch. It was quarter to
+five. Without a moment's hesitation I picked up the bag and ran out to
+the street. I caught a car right away and sank down in a seat breathless,
+but easy in my mind, because the station was only a ten minutes' ride in
+the car.
+
+Then, of course, something had to happen. A sand wagon was in the
+cartrack ahead of us and the motorman jingled his bell so furiously that
+the driver got excited and pulled the lever that dumped the whole load of
+sand on the car track.
+
+I jumped out of the car and looked wildly up and down the road to see if
+there was a taxi in sight. There wasn't; nothing but a motor truck from
+the glue factory. There was something covered with canvas in the back of
+it, and I knew instinctively that it was a dead horse. Did I hesitate a
+second? Not I. For the sake of my Captain and my country I would have
+endured anything. I hailed the driver. "I'll give you a dollar if you'll
+take me to the station," I panted.
+
+The driver laughed out loud. "This is _some_ depoe hack," he said, "but
+if _you_ can stand it I guess _I_ can."
+
+With that he gave me a sidewise glance that was meant to be admiring, I
+suppose, but I froze him with a look and climbed gravely up beside him.
+
+"It is very important that I be there in time for the five o'clock
+train," I remarked by way of explanation.
+
+"You ain't running away from school, are you?" inquired the driver
+genially.
+
+"I am _not_," I replied frigidly, and looked loftily past him for the
+remainder of the five minutes' ride to the station.
+
+I flung the man the dollar and was out of the truck before he had time to
+say a word, and raced into the long waiting room of the station. I could
+have shouted with relief when I saw on the blackboard the notice that the
+five o'clock train for Washington was forty minutes late. I was in time!
+
+But where was Captain Bannister? Nowhere in sight. I walked up and down
+the length of the waiting room several times, growing more nervous every
+minute. Suppose that he had discovered that he had left the bag behind
+and gone back after it only to find it gone? The thought made my blood
+run cold. Would he come down to the train at all without the bag? Would
+he not go back and search for it, alarming the whole college? And all the
+while I had it safe with me! What should I do? Should I go back and run
+the risk of missing him, or stay and see if he came? One thing I could
+do. I could telephone back to the college and find out if he had returned
+for it.
+
+I had just gotten inside the telephone booth and was ringing up the
+number when there was a commotion in the upper end of the waiting room
+and a large party of people entered, men and women and soldiers and young
+girls, laughing and shrieking and pelting somebody with rice and old
+shoes. Soon they came past the booth and I caught a glimpse of the bride
+and groom. The telephone receiver fell out of my hand and my heart
+stopped beating. For there, in the midst of that crowd, laughing and
+dodging the showers of rice, and hanging for dear life to the arm of a
+pretty young girl in a traveling suit, was Captain Bannister, my Captain!
+I shrank back into the depths of the telephone booth and struggled to
+swallow the lump in my throat. Bits of talk floated in through the closed
+door.
+
+"Thought you'd do it up quietly this morning and then sneak out this
+afternoon without anybody finding it out," I heard a voice shout, as a
+fresh shower of rice flew through the air.
+
+"Went out and made a speech this afternoon, too, just as unconcerned as
+if it wasn't his wedding day," said another voice. "Pretty sly, Captain.
+They ought to put you in the diplomatic service. You'd be an ornament."
+
+I crouched miserably in the telephone booth, trying to collect my
+scattered thoughts. My Captain was married this morning! How I hated that
+pretty girl clinging to him and laughing as the showers of rice fell
+around her!
+
+Then all of a sudden my hand touched the bag on the floor. The papers! In
+the excitement of his wedding day he had forgotten them! Well, even if he
+had, I hadn't. I would still serve my country if it did nearly kill me to
+go out there and face Captain Bannister. I shut my eyes and prayed for
+strength. It would have been so easy to slip out and throw the bag over
+the bridge into the river, and get Captain Bannister into a bad
+predicament. But I did not waver in my duty. Opening the door of the
+booth softly, I crept out. Resolutely I approached the crowd and walked
+right up to Captain Bannister.
+
+"Here are the papers, Captain Bannister," I said in a voice I tried to
+make coldly sarcastic, as is fitting when talking to a man who has let
+his wedding make him forget his country's business.
+
+Captain Bannister whirled around and faced me with a look of astonishment
+that changed to annoyance when he saw the bag. He did not offer to take
+it from my outstretched hand. He could not look into my eyes. He stood
+there, his face getting redder every minute, while the people stared
+curiously. At last he pulled himself together and took the bag. "Thank
+you," he said in a flat voice.
+
+A dozen hands pulled the bag away from him. "Let's see the papers,
+Banny," called several voices. "Are they the plans of your wedding
+journey or your new home?"
+
+He made a desperate effort to regain possession of the bag, but they kept
+it away from him and opened it. Then such a roar of laughter went up as I
+have never heard. Everybody was laughing but the bride, and she looked
+like a thundercloud. Soon the things from the bag were being handed
+around and I saw what they were. They were a girl's ballet dress, very
+flimsy and very short and very much bespangled; a pair of light blue silk
+stockings and a pair of high-heeled dancing slippers.
+
+Standing on the edge of the crowd I heard one man explain to another,
+between snorts of laughter, how Captain Bannister had taken part in a
+show that the soldiers had given a week before and had worn that ballet
+dress. His bride-to-be had been at the show, and being a very
+straight-laced sort of a person had been very much shocked at the men
+dressed as girls. She didn't know that Captain Bannister had been one of
+them, and he didn't intend that she should find out. Some of his friends
+knew this and for a joke they got hold of the handbag in which he had
+packed his clothes for his wedding journey and hid them away, putting in
+the ballet dress instead. He found it out on the way out to the college,
+and conceived the brilliant idea of leaving it there. He figured that a
+suit like that found in a girls' college would cause no commotion;
+nothing like what would happen if his bride should find it among his
+things. But of all things--here the man who was telling all this nearly
+turned inside out--somebody sees him leave the bag behind and chases
+after him with it!
+
+I fled without ever looking behind. My heart was broken, my life wrecked,
+my hopes shattered. My Captain, my Man, whose eyes had told me the secret
+of his love, was pledged to another! If I hadn't known it beyond any
+doubt, I wouldn't have believed such perfidy possible. And the "valuable
+papers" he was carrying around were nothing but a girl's dancing dress!
+For this I had raced to catch the train, for this I had ridden on a truck
+with a dead horse! No doubt he had lied to Dr. Thorn about the bag,
+because he was afraid he would find out what really was in it.
+
+Righteous anger drowned my heartbroken tears. With head high I wandered
+down to the swimming pool in the gym and prepared to go in.
+
+"Oh, Hinpoha, come and watch me do the new back dive," called Agony. She
+mounted the diving platform and went off badly, striking the water with
+the flat of her back and making a splash like a house falling into the
+water. She righted herself and swam around lazily.
+
+"Hinpoha," she said suddenly, popping her head out of the water like a
+devil fish, "what did you ever do with them all? I expected to get at
+least one."
+
+"What did I do with what?" I asked in bewilderment.
+
+"Chocolates, sweet cherub," said Agony, kicking the water into foam with
+her feet. "I sent you five pounds."
+
+"_You_ sent them?" I echoed blankly.
+
+"Yes, dearest child, I sent them, and it took the last of my birthday
+check. Who did you think sent them?" And with a malicious grin she sank
+down under the surface of the water.
+
+So it had been Agony who had sent the chocolates, and not Captain
+Bannister! I might have known---- Oh, what a fool I had been!
+
+"What did you do with them all?" came Agony's teasing voice from the
+other end of the pool, where she had risen to take the air.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to know?" I said mysteriously.
+
+Agony looked at me gravely for a minute. "Didn't I hear Gladys putting
+you to bed that night and going off for hot water?" she murmured
+dreamily. "Seems to me I have a faint, far off recollection." She made
+little snorting noises, plainly in imitation of a pig, and sank below the
+surface again.
+
+I was filled with a blind fury at Agony. I wanted to jump on her and
+choke her. I had been standing on the diving board and on the spur of the
+moment I went off backwards. I had only one thought in my mind; to reach
+Agony and duck her as she deserved. There was a great shout as I went
+off, followed by a round of applause.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, coming up and blinking stupidly at the knot of
+watchers gathered around the pool.
+
+"The Hawaiian dive!" they cried. "You did it perfectly. Do it again."
+
+Agony came up out of the pool and watched enviously. For four weeks she
+had been practising that dive and hadn't mastered it yet. I hadn't ever
+hoped to learn it. And here I had done it the very first time! They made
+me do it again and again, and clapped until the ceiling echoed as I got
+the somersault in every time. It was glorious. I forgave Agony for
+fooling me about the Captain; I even forgave the Captain for the time
+being. _He_ could go off and get married if he wanted to; _I_ could do
+the Hawaiian back dive!
+
+"How did you ever do it?" asked Agony enviously, as we dressed together,
+"somersault and all? Do you really think there's any chance of my ever
+doing it?"
+
+"Sure, you'll do it some day," I replied out of the fullness of my
+wisdom,--"if you get mad enough."
+
+                          Your broken-hearted,
+                                                            Hinpoha.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                      Dec. 28, 19--.
+Dearest and Best of Winnies:
+
+Oh, you angels without wings, how am I ever going to thank you? How on
+earth did you manage to do it all? Such a Christmas present!
+
+When I saw that array of boxes in the express office at Spencer all
+addressed to me I said to the agent, "There's some mistake. Those can't
+possibly be all mine."
+
+"You're the only Katherine Adams in these parts, aren't you?" said the
+agent, eyeing that imposing pile with unconcealed curiosity.
+
+I admitted that I was, as far as I knew.
+
+"Then they're yours," said the agent, and mine they proved to be.
+
+Altogether there was a wagonload.
+
+"What on earth?" said father and Justice when I drove up to the house.
+"Have you gone into the trucking business?"
+
+"Christmas presents, Father!" I shouted. "All Christmas presents. I've
+got the whole of Santa Claus's load. Quick, bring me a hammer and an ax
+and a jimmy!"
+
+Oh, girls, when I saw what was in those first three boxes I just sat down
+on the floor and wept for joy. Only the Winnebagos could have thought of
+sending me the House of the Open Door. There were the Indian beds and
+Hinpoha's bearskin and all the Navajo blankets and the pottery, just as I
+had seen it last in the Open Door Lodge, big as life and twice as
+natural. And the note from Sahwah that came along with them was a piece
+of Sahwah herself.
+
+  "The things are lonesome," she wrote, "and pining for someone to love
+  them and use them. I am sending them to your new Camp Fire because I
+  know your girls will love them as they deserve to be loved. The ghosts
+  of all the good times we had in the House of the Open Door are hovering
+  around the things, so anyone that gets them can't help falling under
+  the old spell and learning how to squeeze the most fun out of every
+  minute.
+
+  "The gymnasium apparatus is the Sandwiches' Christmas present. It was
+  Slim's and the Captain's idea to send it out to you for your girls and
+  boys to use.
+
+  "The House of the Open Door is being turned into Red Cross work rooms
+  for Camp Fire Girls and we need every inch of space for the work
+  tables. Even our beloved Lodge is Giving Service."
+
+Gladys Evans, your father is an _angel_! He doesn't need to wait until he
+gets to heaven for his halo, it's visible a mile off, this minute! To
+think of sending me a graphophone and a hundred records! I simply can't
+tell you what that is going to mean to my school. I won't be able to
+_drive_ the boys and girls away now!
+
+And your mother! That lantern machine and the slides showing the Red
+Cross work and all the other splendid things is worth its weight in gold.
+
+Oh, my dears! _Where_ did you ever find time to make those twelve
+ceremonial dresses?
+
+  "FROM THE LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS TO THE FIRST OF THE WENONAHS. LET BIG
+  SISTER WINNIE SEE THAT LITTLE SISSY WEENIE IS PROPERLY CLOTHED."
+
+I'll bet anything your friend Agony wrote that. I have a feeling that she
+and I are kindred spirits.
+
+Won't my girls revel in those beads and looms, though?
+
+BOOKS! Four whole cases of them! What on earth have you done now?
+
+                         "THE WINNEBAGO LIBRARY
+   PASSED ON BY THOSE WHO KNOW AND LOVE GOOD BOOKS TO THOSE WHO WILL
+                        SOON KNOW AND LOVE THEM"
+
+How did you do it? Asked a hundred girls to give one book apiece? You
+don't mean to say that there are a hundred girls interested in us poor
+backwoods folks out here in Spencer? I can't believe it! Oh, we'll work
+and work and _work_, to prove ourselves worthy of it all!
+
+And oh, all those little personal pretties just for me! Hinpoha, _where_
+did you find that darling pen-holder with the parrot's head on the end,
+and Gladys, who told you that I broke my handglass and was pining for a
+white ivory one?
+
+And even a lump of sugar for Sandhelo and a bow for Piggy's tail! I
+admire the artist who drew that bow.
+
+The last box bore Nyoda's return address. What do you suppose was in it?
+Her chafing dish! The very one she used to have in her room, that I used
+to admire so much. Dear Nyoda! She knew I would rather have that than
+anything else.
+
+O my dears, there never _was_ such a Christmas! There never _will_ be
+such a Christmas! Nobody ever had such friends before. If I live to be a
+thousand years old I'll never be able to return one-tenth of your
+kindness.
+
+                      Yours, swimming in ecstasy,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                          GLADYS TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                                     March 25, 19--.
+Dearest Katherine:
+
+Listen, my beloved, while I sing you a song of Migwan. She has awakened
+at last to find herself famous, and the rest of us, by reason of
+reflected glory, found ourselves looked upon as different from all other
+animals, and wonderfully popular and run after by five o'clock in the
+afternoon, like Old Man Kangaroo. And, all precepts upon precepts to the
+contrary, it wasn't conscientiously applying herself to her task that
+turned the trick, but deliberate shirking. After all, though, it was
+mostly a matter of chance, because if it hadn't rained so that night last
+October, Migwan would have gone to the library as she should have, and
+the world would have lost a priceless contribution to Indian lore.
+
+It happened thusly. One of Migwan's cronies in the sophomore class has a
+weak throat and a condition in Indian History. On the night I have
+mentioned she trickled tearfully into Migwan's room and confided that she
+simply had to have an Indian legend to read in class the following day or
+be marked zero. She had had all the week in which to look one up in the
+library, but, according to immemorial custom, she had left it for the
+last night. Now it was raining pitchforks and she didn't dare go out,
+because she got a terrible attack of quinsy every time there was an east
+wind. Migwan, like the angel she is, promptly offered to go over and hunt
+one up for her.
+
+"What kind of an Indian legend?" she inquired.
+
+"Oh, any kind," replied Harriet carelessly, "so long as it's _Indian_.
+We're studying the Soul of the Savage as revealed by legend, or something
+like that. Slip it under my door when you come back with it. I'm going to
+bed and coddle my throat. Be sure you don't get one that's too long," she
+called back over her shoulder, "remember there are twenty in the class to
+help reveal the Savage Soul."
+
+Harriet ambled placidly back to her room and Migwan began hunting through
+her closet for her raincoat and rubbers. She didn't find them, because
+she had lent them to somebody the week before and couldn't remember whom
+she lent them to. She looked out of the window at the torrents coming
+down and decided that her little rocking chair by the lamp held out more
+attraction than a trip to the library. But she didn't have the heart to
+disappoint Harriet by not getting her an Indian legend to read in class
+the next day, so she sat down and manufactured one, which is as easy as
+rolling off a log for Migwan. Harriet would never know the difference,
+and neither would the teacher, off hand, and a made-up legend would save
+the day for Harriet as well as a genuine one. The chances were she
+wouldn't be called upon to read it anyway. You never are, you know, when
+you've broken your neck to be ready. Migwan slipped it under Harriet's
+door and then forgot all about it.
+
+Several weeks later, when the _Monthly Morterboard_ came out, there was
+Migwan's Indian legend, big as life. It had obviously been used to fill
+up space and was not credited to the literary talent of the college; but
+to Joseph Latoka, or "Standing Pine," the Penobscot Indian who had
+collected the legends of his tribe into a book, which was in the college
+library and which was our authority on things Indian. Migwan laughed to
+herself over it, but never gave away the fact that she had written it.
+She discovered in a roundabout way that the Literary Editor of the
+_Morterboard_ had been in despair over lack of material when the October
+number was due, and told her tale of woe to Miss Percival, one of the
+teachers, and asked her if she had any essays fit to print. Miss Percival
+replied that she hadn't had a decent essay this semester, but a girl in
+one of her classes had brought in a rather remarkable Indian legend
+several days before, which might serve to cast into the breach. The
+_Morterboard_ editor promptly hunted up Harriet and demanded the legend.
+Harriet still had it among her goods and chattels, and gave it to her
+readily, saying that it was one of Joseph Latoka's _Legends of the
+Penobscot Indians_, which she honestly believed to be the fact. The
+_Morterboard_ editor took her word for it and used the legend to fill up
+the chinks in the October issue.
+
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+It was not long after this that Very Seldom paid his annual visit to
+Brownell. His name really wasn't Very Seldom; it was Jeremiah Selden, but
+everybody referred to him as Jerry, and it wasn't long before "Jerry
+Selden" became "Very Seldom." He used to be Professor of Sociology at
+Brownell, but he had to give up lecturing because he lost his voice. He
+was a sad little man with a plaintive droop to his white mustache and
+only a whisper of a voice. He had lost his whole family in some kind of a
+railroad accident and always went around with such a homeless air that
+everybody felt sorry for him. His hobby was Indian History, Indian
+Legends and Indian Relics. After he gave up teaching sociology he took to
+writing books, dry old essays and that sort of thing. Nobody ever read
+them, and he didn't make much out of them, but he kept plodding along,
+always hoping that he would make a hit the next time.
+
+Once every year he came back to Brownell to spend Sunday, to keep alive
+the memories of his former life, he used to explain sentimentally. Miss
+Allison, his successor as professor of sociology, and who has him beat
+forty miles for teaching, always entertained him at tea on the occasion
+of his visit, and used to ask him stacks of questions, jollying him along
+and making him believe she was in doubt about a lot of things she knew
+better than he did. Having his opinion consulted that way made him feel
+quite cheerful and important, and his visit to Brownell always put new
+life into him.
+
+It happened that one Sunday afternoon Migwan went to Miss Allison's room
+to ask her about something and ran into Very Seldom paying his annual
+visit. Miss Allison herself wasn't there. She had been called out of town
+the night before and had turned over the job of entertaining Very Seldom
+to her room-mate, Miss Lee. Miss Lee taught mathematics and didn't care a
+rap about sociology, and still less about Indians. Miss Lee is very fond
+of Migwan, and invited her to stay to tea. Migwan is forever getting
+asked to tea by the faculty; it's because she always gets her hair parted
+so straight in the middle, and never upsets her teacup.
+
+Migwan had heard about Very Seldom, and was just as anxious to help cheer
+him up as anybody, but this time he didn't need any cheering. He was
+positively radiant. He was talking about his latest book and was nearly
+bursting with enthusiasm.
+
+It seems that all his life he had been having an argument with another
+Indian History shark as to whether, before the coming of the white man to
+this continent, the eastern Indians had ever lived on, or visited the
+western plains. He maintained that they had, while his friend insisted
+that they hadn't. Just recently he had read, in a magazine published by
+the Indian Society of North America, a hitherto unpublished legend of
+Joseph Latoka's, a curious legend of the White Buffalo. To his mind this
+proved beyond a doubt that the Penobscot Indians had, at some time or
+other, lived on or visited the Great Plains, and had seen the Buffalo. It
+was the only Penobscot legend that mentioned the buffalo as an object of
+worship. He had immediately written a monograph on the subject which was
+even then in the hands of the publisher. It was a great point to have
+discovered. Fame would come to him at last. Very Seldom's air of
+desolation had vanished; his hour of triumph had come.
+
+It was at this point that Migwan, the expert tea drinker, suddenly upset
+her cup all over Miss Allison's cherished Mexican drawnwork lunchcloth.
+That foolish legend that she had manufactured to save herself a trip to
+the library in the rain had been taken as authentic and had been copied
+from the _Morterboard_ into other magazines! At the time she wrote it she
+was in too much of a hurry to pay attention to any such trifles as the
+difference between Eastern and Plains Indians. Anyway, she hadn't _said_
+anywhere that they were Penobscot Indians, it was Harriet who had said so
+to the _Morterboard_ editor.
+
+Several times during the evening she tried to tell poor Very Seldom that
+the Legend of the White Buffalo, which proved his point so conclusively,
+was not a legend at all, but her own composition, but each time the words
+choked her. The little ex-Professor's satisfaction was so great and his
+happiness so supreme that she didn't have the heart to blot it out. The
+secret was hers. Everybody in college believed that legend to have come
+from the collection of Joseph Latoka. All the evening she debated with
+herself whether or not she should tell, or let the fake legend go down on
+record. In the end the professor's happiness won the day and she decided
+not to mar his almost childish glee in his discovery.
+
+"What does it matter, after all?" she thought. "About three-fourths of
+the things that are written about Indians aren't true. Nobody will read
+his old monograph anyway, so no harm will be done. If it gives him so
+much pleasure to think he's discovered something, why spoil it all?" The
+whole matter seemed so trivial to Migwan that it wasn't worth fussing
+about. Just what difference did it make to the world, especially at this
+time, whether the eastern Indians of the United States had ever visited
+the western plains or not? It seemed about as important as whether the
+Fourth Emperor of the Ming Dynasty had carrots for dinner or parsnips. So
+she went home without revealing the origin of the Legend of the White
+Buffalo.
+
+She thought the incident was decently interred, and had forgotten all
+about it, when--pop! out came Jack-in-the-box once more. Along in March
+came the celebrated lecturer on Indian costumes, Dr. Burnett. Handbills
+announcing his lecture were distributed all over town a week before his
+coming. The public was to be admitted and half the proceeds were to go to
+the library fund. Migwan picked up one of the handbills and glanced
+casually at the subject of the lecture. Then her hair nearly turned
+green. It was "The Legend of the White Buffalo," based on the book of the
+late Professor Jeremiah Selden!
+
+The first fact that struck Migwan was that Very Seldom was dead, which
+came as a shock of surprise. Poor Very Seldom! He had found a home at
+last. But before he went he had had his inning and had died happy that he
+had contributed an important link to the chains of Indian History.
+
+Then Migwan realized what a horrible mess she had started by writing that
+legend and keeping still about it. If anybody ever found out about it
+now, Dr. Burnett's reputation would be ruined.
+
+An hour before the lecture was to begin found Migwan sitting in the
+parlor of the hotel waiting for Dr. Burnett to come down in answer to the
+note she sent up with a bellboy. He came presently, a long-haired, Van
+Dyke-y sort of man, who smiled genially at her and inquired affably what
+he could do for the charming miss.
+
+"If you please," said Migwan breathlessly, "could you give some other
+lecture just as well?"
+
+"Could I give some other lecture just as well?" repeated Dr. Burnett in
+perplexity.
+
+"Yes," Migwan went on desperately, trying to get it over with quickly,
+"could you? You see, the Legend of the White Buffalo isn't a legend at
+all."
+
+"The Legend of the White Buffalo _isn't_ a legend!" repeated Dr. Burnett
+again, looking at Migwan as if he thought she was not in her right mind.
+"Pray, what is it?"
+
+"It's--it's a fake," said Migwan.
+
+"A fake!" exclaimed Dr. Burnett, in astonishment. "And how do you know it
+is a fake?"
+
+"Because I wrote it myself," said Migwan, trying to break the news as
+gently as possible, "because it was simply pouring, and Harriet had a
+sore throat."
+
+"You wrote it yourself because it was simply pouring and Harriet had a
+sore throat?" repeated Dr. Burnett, now acting as if he were sure she was
+out of her mind.
+
+Then Migwan explained.
+
+"But, my dear," said Dr. Burnett, "you _couldn't_ have written that
+legend. No white man could have invented it. It is the very breath and
+spirit of the Indian. In it the Soul of the Savage stands revealed."
+
+"But I _did_," insisted Migwan, and finally succeeded in convincing him
+that she was telling the truth.
+
+Dr. Burnett usually spent from one to three months preparing a new
+lecture. He prepared one that night in an hour that knocked the shine out
+of all his previous ones. His speech entitled, "What Chance Has a Man
+When a Woman Takes a Hand" brought down the house. He told the story of
+the fake legend, and the audience was alternately laughing at the neat
+way Migwan had taken everybody in and weeping at the way she wouldn't
+spoil poor Very Seldom's pleasure.
+
+Migwan was the heroine of the hour. The whole college sought her
+acquaintance forthwith. Of course, they found out all about the
+Winnebagos, and how Migwan came to know so much about Indian lore, and
+Hinpoha and I, being Winnebagos, too, came in for our share of the glory.
+Our humble apartment is filled to overflowing all day long with girls who
+want to make Migwan's acquaintance and casually drop in on us in the hope
+of meeting her in our chamber. It is great to be fellow-Winnebago with a
+celebrity.
+
+But I haven't told you all yet. The day after the lecture Dr. Burnett had
+a solemn conference with that portion of the English Department which was
+so fortunate to have Migwan in its classes, after which Migwan was called
+in. She went with a kind of scary feeling because she thought Dr. Burnett
+might be going to have her arrested for perpetrating the fake, but
+instead of that she was informed that she showed such budding talent in
+composition and had such a positive genius for portraying the soul of the
+Indian that he wanted her to work with him in his research work after she
+graduated from college. She is to make a grand tour with him among the
+real Indians on the reservations and get them to tell tales of the old
+days as they remember them from the legends of their fathers and then she
+is to write them down to be published in a book.
+
+Just imagine it! There is Migwan's future all cut out for her with a
+cookie cutter, all because she was too lazy to go across the campus in
+the rain and get a real legend for a sick friend. Isn't life queer?
+
+                            Famously yours,
+                                                             Gladys.
+
+P. S. O Katherine, _mon amie_, why aren't you here? But from the tone of
+your last letters it seems that you have become reconciled to your lonely
+lot. So the "mysterious him" that came to you from out the Vast is
+teaching you French and History and reading Literature with you!
+Katherine Adams, you sly puss, you'll be better educated yet than we!
+
+
+
+
+                          SAHWAH TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                                      April 4, 19--.
+Dearest K:
+
+You don't need to think you're the only one having adventures with your
+work. Your little old Sahwah is a sure enough grown up young lady now, a
+real wage-earner, making her little track along the Open Road, and
+frequently stepping into mud holes and falling flat on her face. I'm
+"Miss Brewster" now, in a tailored suit and plain shirtwaist, ready to
+conquer the world with a notebook and typewriter. I finished my course at
+the business college early in February, and one day while I was in the
+last stages of completion as a stenographer and nearly ready to have a
+shipping tag pasted on me in the shape of a graduation certificate, I was
+summoned into the private office of Mr. Barrett, the head of the school.
+
+I had a chill when the office girl brought me the message. There were
+only two or three things you were ever sent to Mr. Barrett for. One was
+failure to pay your tuition; another was doing so poorly in your work
+that you were a disgrace instead of a credit to the school; another was
+for "skipping school." A number of the girls were in the habit of cutting
+classes after lunch several days in the week and either going to the
+matinee or running around town with boys from the school. Many complaints
+about this had come to Mr. Barrett from the teachers, until he got so
+that he sent for everyone who skipped and read them a stiff lecture. He
+is a very stern, austere man, and the whole school stands in dread of
+him.
+
+I went over my list of sins when I was summoned to the office. My tuition
+was paid up until the end; there was no trouble there. It wouldn't be my
+lessons either; for, while I was far from being the eighth wonder of the
+world on the typewriter, I still had managed to stay in the "A" division
+since the first. But--here my hair began to stand on end--I had "skipped
+school" the afternoon before. Slim had come home from college to attend
+the funeral of his grandfather, and had called me up and invited me to go
+automobiling with him while he was waiting for his train to go back, and
+you can guess what happened to Duty. I just naturally skipped school and
+went with him. It was the first and only time I had skipped in my whole
+career, but I was evidently going to get my trimmings for it. I went into
+the office with a sinking heart, for up until this time I had managed to
+keep in Mr. Barrett's good graces, and I did pride myself quite a bit on
+my unreproved state. But I made up my mind to take it like a good
+sport--I had danced and now I would pay the piper.
+
+Having gone into the office in such a state of mind, I wasn't prepared
+for the shock when Mr. Barrett looked up from his desk and greeted me
+with a (for him) extremely amiable smile.
+
+"Sit down, Miss Brewster," he said pleasantly, pulling up a chair for me
+beside his own.
+
+I sat down. It was time, for my knees were giving away under me.
+
+"Miss Brewster," Mr. Barrett began affably, "I have here"--and he picked
+up a paper on which he had made some notations--"a call for a
+stenographer which is a little out of the ordinary line." He paused to
+let that sink in.
+
+"Yes, sir," I murmured respectfully. My heart began to beat freely again.
+He wasn't going to lecture me about skipping school!
+
+"Mrs. Osgood Harper," continued Mr. Barrett crisply, "telephoned me this
+morning personally, and asked if I had a young lady whom I could send her
+every day from nine until one to attend to her personal correspondence.
+She is very particular about the kind of person she wants; it must be
+someone who is refined and educated, as well as a good stenographer, for
+a good deal of her work will be social correspondence. She also intimated
+that the girl must be--er, reasonably good looking."
+
+He paused a second time and again I said meekly, "Yes, sir." There didn't
+seem to be anything else to say.
+
+"I have carefully considered all the girls in the finishing class,"
+continued Mr. Barrett, "and you seem to be the only one I could consider
+for the position. I know Mrs. Harper and know that in some ways she will
+be hard to work for. But the pay she offers is generous; better than you
+could do as a beginner in a commercial house, and the hours are
+excellent, nine to one, leaving your afternoons free. Besides that, there
+will be the advantage to yourself of coming in contact with such people
+as the Harpers, and the pleasure of working in such beautiful
+surroundings. You are a girl who will appreciate such things. You know
+who the Harpers are, of course?"
+
+I had never heard of them, but I was quite willing to be enlightened. The
+Harpers, it seemed, were in the first boatload of settlers that landed on
+our town site; they had since accumulated such a fortune that it made
+Pike's Peak look like an ant hill; and no matter what string Mrs. Harper
+harped on, people were sure to sit still and listen. Now she desired a
+personal stenographer of maidenly form, and I, Sahwah the Sunfish, had
+been measured by the awe-inspiring Mr. Barrett and found fit.
+
+My feelings as I came out of the office were far different from those
+with which I went in. I entered with a guilty droop; I came out with my
+head in the air. I hadn't dreamed of getting such a position to start
+with. I had pictured myself as beginning at the bottom in some big office
+and slowly working to the top. But to begin my career by doing the
+private work of Mrs. Osgood Harper! It seemed like some fairy tale. I
+tried to think of something to say to Mr. Barrett to thank him for having
+recommended me for the position, but the shock had sent my wits
+skylarking, and the only thing that came into my head was that song that
+we used to sing:
+
+  "Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick upon me?"
+
+and that, of course, was impossible as a noble sentiment.
+
+The next morning I set out on my Joyous Venture. The Osgood Harpers lived
+on the Heights in a great colonial house set up high on a hill and
+approached by long, winding walks. It was more than a mile from the
+street-car, but I enjoyed the walk through those beautiful estates. I
+couldn't have served a tennis ball in any direction without hitting a
+millionaire.
+
+Mrs. Harper was a stout and tremendously impressive lady about forty
+years old. She had steely blue eyes that looked right through me until I
+began to have horrible fears that there was something wrong with my
+appearance and she would presently say that I would not do at all. But
+she didn't; all she said was, "So you are Miss Brewster, are you?" and
+motioned me to sit down at a writing table.
+
+She had received me in a cozy little sitting room which opened out of her
+bedroom, and it seemed that this was to be my office. She started right
+in to lay out my work for me and I didn't have much time to look around
+at the beautiful furnishings. The work was far different from anything we
+had had in school, but very interesting, and I took to it from the start.
+Mrs. Harper is chairman of countless committees, and secretary of several
+societies, and there were quantities of notices to send out to committee
+members, and letters to write to business men soliciting subscriptions to
+various funds and things like that, all to be written on heavy linen
+paper of finest quality, bearing the Harper monogram in embossed gold in
+the upper left-hand corner.
+
+I worked away with a will and the morning hours flew. I would have worked
+right on past one o'clock without knowing it if there hadn't been an
+interruption. Shortly after noon the door opened and a girl of about
+seventeen walked in. She was extremely pretty; that is, at first glance
+she was. She was very fair, with bright pink cheeks and big blue eyes.
+Her yellow hair was plastered down over her forehead in an exaggerated
+style, and monstrous pearl earrings dangled from her ears. She had
+evidently just come in from outdoors, for she wore an all mink coat and
+held a mink cap in her hand. Without a glance in my direction she began
+chatting to Mrs. Harper in a thin, nasal, high-pitched voice. I dropped
+my eyes and went on with my work. In a minute I could feel her staring at
+me.
+
+"Ethel," said Mrs. Harper, as soon as she could get the floor, "this is
+Miss Brewster, my stenographer. Miss Brewster, my daughter Ethel."
+
+I acknowledged the introduction pleasantly; Miss Ethel favored me with
+another stare, murmured something in an indistinct tone and then
+immediately turned her back on me and went on talking to her mother.
+Right then and there my admiration for the "first families" got a
+setback; I didn't admire Ethel Harper's manners, not a little bit. She
+had "snob" written all over her features. I could see that she classed me
+with the servants and as such she didn't trouble herself to be polite to
+me.
+
+"A lot there is to be gained by associating with _her_," I said to
+myself. "I'll be just as cool and dignified as possible when _she's_
+around. She won't get another chance to snub me."
+
+But in spite of her I was enthusiastic about the position and could
+hardly wait until I got there the next day. Mrs. Harper went out shortly
+after I arrived and I worked alone. Ethel Harper came home from school at
+noon and went through the room on the way to her mother's, but I rattled
+away on the typewriter and never looked up. She came out soon and went
+into her own room, which was on the other side. In about fifteen minutes
+I heard her call me.
+
+"Miss Brewster!" I stopped typing.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Come here," she called, and her voice sounded impatient.
+
+I stepped across the hall into her room. She was standing in front of the
+mirror putting on a ruffled taffeta dress, which she was struggling to
+adjust.
+
+"Hook me up!" she commanded, without the formality of saying "Please."
+
+I had it on the end of my tongue to tell her that I was a stenographer,
+not a lady's maid, but I remembered "Give Service" in time, and hooked
+her up without a word. She never even said "Thank you!" She just sat down
+at her dressing table and began pencilling her eyebrows. Evidently it
+must have been the maid's day out, for she called me in again later to
+pin her collar.
+
+"Have I got too much color on my face?" she asked languidly, dabbing away
+at her cheeks with some red stuff out of a box in front of her. Then she
+put carmine on her lips, a sort of whitewash on her nose and forehead and
+finished it with some pencilled shadows under her eyes. All I could think
+of was Eeny-Meeny, the time we gave her that coat of war paint.
+
+"What's that?" asked milady while I was fastening her collar, poking her
+finger at my Torch Bearer's pin.
+
+"It's a Camp Fire pin," I replied.
+
+"What's Camp Fire?" she demanded idly.
+
+I explained briefly what Camp Fire was.
+
+"Gee," said Ethel elegantly, "none of that for mine!" And she picked up
+her eyebrow pencil again and did a little more frescoing.
+
+I went back to my work in disgust. I was so disappointed in Ethel Harper.
+I had expected that the daughter of such a fine family would be a real
+lady in every sense of the word--cultured, genuine, thoroughbred; and she
+had turned out to be nothing but a cheap imitation--slangy, ill-bred,
+snobbish, overdressed and made up like an actress. Beyond her pretty,
+baby doll face there was nothing to her. There wasn't an ounce of brains
+in her poor flat head.
+
+And yet, she was tremendously popular in her own snobbish set, as I could
+gather from conversations around me, and by the invitations she was
+constantly receiving to festivities. Although she was not formally out in
+society, I knew that she went out to dances with men very often, when her
+mother thought that she was spending the night with girl friends. I found
+that out from telephone conversations Ethel carried on when her mother
+was out of the way. It was plain to be seen that Ethel had only one
+ambition in the world, and that was to have a good time, regardless of
+how she got it.
+
+It wasn't any of my business, of course, but I couldn't help wondering
+what Mrs. Harper would do if she knew about some of Ethel's little
+excursions. Mrs. Harper had a flinty sort of nature and you only had to
+look into those cold eyes of hers to know that it would go hard with
+anyone who had displeased her. One morning I had a good chance to see her
+when she was roused. A Cloisonne locket belonging to Mrs. Harper had
+disappeared from her jewel box and she had accused her maid, Clarice, of
+taking it. Clarice, frightened out of her wits, was tearfully protesting
+her innocence, but Mrs. Harper towered over her like a fury, threatening
+to hand her over to the police. Ethel, sitting in a rocking chair
+polishing her finger nails, listened indifferently. I felt embarrassed to
+witness this painful scene and stood irresolute, unable to decide whether
+to go out or stay, when Mrs. Harper turned to me and said, "Make out a
+check for Clarice's wages for the month and deduct twenty-five dollars
+from it, the value of the locket she stole. Then insert an advertisement
+in the papers for a new maid."
+
+Clarice, with a fresh burst of grief, declared again that she knew
+nothing about the locket, and begged not to be sent away with a black
+character, because she had a paralyzed sister to support, but Mrs. Harper
+was unmoved. Out went Clarice, bag and baggage, crying as she went and
+still declaring her innocence.
+
+"These maids will steal you blind, if you give them a chance," said Mrs.
+Harper, still bristling with anger.
+
+"I never did like Clarice," remarked Ethel with a yawn.
+
+The next day Mrs. Harper went out during the morning and Ethel called me
+to help her pack her visiting bag. She was going to spend the week-end
+with a girl friend. No new maid had come to take Clarice's place as yet,
+so Ethel took advantage of my not having much work to do for her mother
+that morning to press me into service.
+
+"I can't find my wrist watch," she said as I came in. "I don't know
+whether I put it in the bag or not, and I haven't time to look. Will you
+look through the bag while I finish dressing?"
+
+I pawed carefully through the bag, and brought to light, not the wrist
+watch, but the Cloisonne locket, which Mrs. Harper had accused Clarice of
+taking.
+
+"Why, Ethel," I said delightedly, "here is your mother's locket! Clarice
+didn't steal it after all. It was down in your bag."
+
+"I know it was," said Ethel coolly. "I put it there."
+
+"_You_ put it there?" I echoed. "Did you find it, then?"
+
+Ethel laughed disagreeably. "I had it all the while," she said. "I'm
+going to a dance to-night that mamma doesn't know anything about, and
+I've set my heart on wearing that locket. Mamma will never let me wear
+it; it was brought to her from Paris by an old friend that's dead now,
+and she's afraid I'll lose it. So I just took it out of her jewel box the
+other day and made her believe Clarice took it."
+
+"Ethel!" I exclaimed in horror. "How could you? How could you sit there
+and hear your mother accuse poor Clarice of taking it?"
+
+Ethel shrugged her shoulders. "I never did like Clarice," she said. "She
+was an impertinent piece. It served her right. Put the locket back in the
+bag. I've got to start in a minute."
+
+But I didn't budge. I stood looking at her until she looked the other
+way. With all her millions and all her fine connections, I despised Ethel
+Harper as if she had been a crawling worm. I didn't want to get mixed up
+in anything that wasn't my business, but I had no intention of letting
+poor Clarice remain under a cloud.
+
+"I'm not going to put it back in the bag," I replied firmly. "I'm going
+to take it right back to your mother when she comes home. She must know
+that it isn't stolen so she can make things right with Clarice."
+
+"Don't you dare tell mamma," said Ethel furiously. "She'll kill me if she
+knows I've got it. Give it to me, I say." She tried to snatch it out of
+my hand, but I kept hold of it. "Give it to me, you impertinent little
+stenographer, you!" she shrieked.
+
+It was getting disgraceful. I tried to save a shred of dignity. I laid
+the locket on the dresser and faced Ethel steadily. I still had a vivid
+memory of Clarice's distressed face as she went out that day.
+
+"You have done Clarice a wrong," I said firmly, "and it must be righted.
+I'll give you your choice. Either you take the locket back to your mother
+or I'll tell her where it is."
+
+Ethel changed her tactics and tried to bribe me. "I'll give you a dozen
+pairs of silk stockings if you don't say anything to mamma about it and
+let her go on thinking it's stolen, so I can wear it whenever I please,"
+she offered.
+
+I longed to choke her. "Don't you try to bribe me, Ethel Harper," I said
+severely. "I've got a code of honor, even if I am a poor stenographer,
+which is more than you have, with all your millions."
+
+"Some more of your Campfire stuff," she said sneeringly.
+
+"You bet it is 'Campfire stuff,'" I replied hotly. "You see that little
+pin? One of things it says is 'Be trustworthy.' If I let Clarice be
+unjustly accused I wouldn't be worthy of that pin. Remember! Either you
+tell your mother or I do." And I started for the door.
+
+Ethel changed her tune again and began to cry. "Everybody is so horrid to
+me," she sobbed. "Mamma will never let me go anywhere I want to go or
+wear what I want to wear, and the servants won't do what I tell them.
+Even my mother's stenographer bosses me around! I wish I was dead!"
+
+But I was firm in my championship of Clarice. "You'll have to tell," I
+repeated. "I see your mother coming in now."
+
+Ethel began to look frightened. "I'll not tell her I took it, she'd kill
+me," she whined. "I'll tell her I just found it and she can take back
+what she said to Clarice."
+
+I looked her steadily in the eyes. She flushed and looked down.
+
+"I suppose you'll go and tell anyway, you old tattletale," she said
+savagely. "I'll get even with you for this, see if I don't!" She ran out
+of the room and I didn't see her again for several days.
+
+However, I knew the locket had gone back where it belonged, because Mrs.
+Harper had me send Clarice a check for twenty-five dollars, with the
+brief statement that the locket had been found. Right there was where I
+lost some of my regard for Mrs. Harper. She never apologized to Clarice
+for accusing her wrongfully; never offered to do anything to make it up
+to her. She just sent that cold little note and the check. A real
+thoroughbred would have acknowledged herself to be in the wrong, but Mrs.
+Harper couldn't bring herself to apologize to a servant. The affair blew
+over and I never heard Clarice mentioned again.
+
+I grew to like my work more and more, as the days went by, and gradually
+learned to handle quite a bit of it myself. Mrs. Harper was very busy;
+she did a great deal of Red Cross and other war work, besides keeping up
+in all her clubs, and she got into the habit of telling me what to say to
+people and letting me write the letters myself. Early in March she went
+out of town to a convention and left me with a great many letters to
+write to various people, telling me to sign her name for her. I took very
+great pains with all those letters so as to be sure to say the right
+things to the right people, and I felt satisfied when the week was out
+that I had done myself credit.
+
+Accordingly, it struck me like a thunderbolt when, several days after her
+return, Mrs. Harper came to me, blazing with anger, and demanded to know
+what I meant by writing such letters in her absence. Startled, I asked
+her what she referred to.
+
+"You wrote Mr. Samuel Butler that if he didn't hurry and pay up his
+subscription to the Red Cross Mr. Harper would pay it for him and take it
+out of his next bill," said Mrs. Harper furiously. "Mr. Butler is
+insulted and has withdrawn his subscription of ten thousand dollars to
+the Perkins Settlement House, which I am trying so hard to establish.
+Whatever possessed you to write such a letter?"
+
+"I never wrote a letter like that," I replied with spirit. "I wrote Mr.
+Butler a very polite, respectful reminder that his pledge was due this
+month; I never mentioned Mr. Harper or anything about paying it and
+taking the amount out of any bill."
+
+I was completely at sea.
+
+"You _did_ write that letter!" declared Mrs. Harper angrily. "How dare
+you deny it? Mr. Butler showed it to me. It was written on this very
+stationery, on this typewriter with the green ribbon, and signed with my
+name in the way you sign it. You wrote it to be funny, I suppose. Well, I
+can tell you that I can't have anything like that. I won't have any
+further need for your services."
+
+She was so positive I had written it that I began to have an awful
+feeling that I might have written it in my sleep. You know what strange
+things I do in my sleep sometimes. But all the while I knew who had done
+it. Ethel Harper had sworn to get even with me for making her tell her
+mother about the locket. She had written that letter in place of the one
+I had written. I remembered that one day while Mrs. Harper was away I had
+been called downstairs and kept talking for over an hour to one of Mrs.
+Harper's committee members who had undertaken to distribute some
+literature and came for instructions. During that time Ethel would have
+had plenty of chance to read through my mail upstairs.
+
+I started to tell Mrs. Harper that I suspected someone else of writing
+it, intending to lead gently up to the subject of Ethel, but Mrs. Harper
+scoffed at the idea.
+
+"There isn't anyone else in the house who can run the typewriter," she
+said flatly.
+
+This was untrue. Ethel could run it; she had done so several times when I
+was there. But what was the use of accusing Ethel when her mother
+wouldn't believe it anyway? I realized the hopelessness of trying to
+convince Mrs. Harper of something she didn't want to believe.
+
+"And further," continued Mrs. Harper, "I have found that you have not
+been attending strictly to business. Ethel tells me that you often go
+over to her room when she is there and stand and talk to her instead of
+giving your time to my work."
+
+"Little snake-in-the-grass!" I thought vengefully. I had never gone to
+her room unless she had called me to do something.
+
+I made up my mind I wouldn't stay there another minute. I didn't have to
+work for such people. I drew myself up stiffly. "If you believe such
+things, Mrs. Harper," I said icily, "there can be no business relations
+between us. I shall not even take the trouble to prove the truth about
+that letter. I shall go immediately." And go I did. I knew Mr. Barrett
+would be very much put out over the affair, because he seemed to think
+Mrs. Harper had done his school an honor by hiring one of his pupils, but
+what was I to do? Stay there and be the scapegoat for all Ethel's sins.
+Not while I had feet to walk away on.
+
+As I went down the steps I met Ethel coming up. She looked at me with a
+meaning expression and a triumphant smile. She had kept her word and
+gotten even with me.
+
+I felt badly over it, of course, for who can lose a good position and not
+be cut up about it? I suppose I must have looked pretty doleful for a
+couple of days, because I met Mrs. Anderson, that friend of Nyoda's, who
+used to lend us so many "props" for our Winnebago performances, on the
+street and she asked me right away what was the matter.
+
+"You're lonesome for those friends of yours," she went on, without giving
+me a chance to answer. "I'm lonesome, too," she went on. "My husband has
+been in Washington all winter. Come out and spend a few days with me. You
+used to be pretty good company, if I remember rightly."
+
+She persuaded me and I went. You remember the Anderson place out on the
+East Shore, don't you? We were all out there once last year. Perfect duck
+of a house all made of soft gray shingles and seven acres of garden and
+woods around it. I tramped all over the place through the March mud,
+looking for signs of spring, and had a perfectly glorious time.
+
+"There's one sign of spring, over there," said Mrs. Anderson, who was
+with me on one of my tramps.
+
+"Where?" I asked, looking around.
+
+"Young man's fancy," said Mrs. Anderson with a laugh of tolerant
+amusement, "lightly turning to thoughts of love. Look up on the barn
+there."
+
+I looked where she pointed, and saw a boy of about eighteen standing on
+the roof of the barn gazing off into space through a field glass. He had
+a white flag tied to his right wrist, which he was waving over his head,
+like the soldiers do when they signal.
+
+"Who is he and what is he doing?" I asked.
+
+"That's Peter, the boy who helps around the stable," replied Mrs.
+Anderson. "He's sending messages to his lady love. A certain combination
+of flourishes means 'I love you,' and another means 'Meet me to-night,'
+and so on. He told John, my chauffeur, about it, and John told me."
+
+"How silly!" said I, with a laugh for poor lovesick Peter. "Who is the
+object of his affection?"
+
+"Some servant girl from the next estate," replied Mrs. Anderson. "They
+carry on their affair through field glasses and with signals. They think
+they are having a thrilling romance."
+
+"Disgusting!" said I. "How could any girl make such a fool of herself
+where everybody can see her!"
+
+Mrs. Anderson laughed indulgently, but I could feel her scorn underneath
+it. "Some girls will sell every scrap of dignity they have for what they
+consider a good time, my dear," she said, laying her hand on my arm in a
+motherly way.
+
+We left Romeo on the barn flourishing out his messages in the late March
+sunshine and wandered over to the next estate. There was a new litter of
+prize bull pups over there and Mrs. Anderson had promised that I should
+see them before I went home. A creek divided the two estates, which we
+crossed on a little foot bridge. The path led along beside the creek for
+a while until the little stream widened out into a beautiful pond, big
+enough for boating. A pier had been built at one side of the pond,
+running out into the water. Someone was standing out on the end of the
+pier, and as we came up we saw that we had discovered the other half of
+the romance. A girl, with a field glass held to her eyes and a white flag
+tied around her right wrist, was signalling in the direction of the
+Anderson barn, the roof of which was visible in the distance, beyond Mrs.
+Anderson's apple orchard.
+
+Something about the girl was familiar, even in the distance, and as we
+came near I recognized the mink coat that I had seen many times lately.
+There was no doubt about it. The girl on the end of the pier was Ethel
+Harper. I stood still, too much disgusted to speak. Ethel Harper, the
+daughter of one of the "first" families, with the best social position in
+the city, her mother prominent in all great uplift movements, carrying on
+a vulgar flirtation with Mrs. Anderson's stable boy! So this was the
+great romance she had been hinting about at various times! Randall--that
+was the name of the girl she was intimate with; this was the Randall
+place. She had been coming here so often for the sake of the boy next
+door. Did she know he was an ignorant servant? I doubted it. Anything in
+men's clothes set her silly head awhirl. I wished her haughty mother
+could have seen her then.
+
+Mrs. Anderson suddenly laughed out loud and at that Ethel turned around
+and saw us. She gave a great start as she recognized me, took a step
+backward and fell off the end of the pier into the pond, disappearing
+with a shriek into the deep water.
+
+I slipped out of my coat, threw off my shoes and went in after her. The
+water was so icy I could hardly swim at first. When I did get hold of her
+it was a battle royal to get her back to the pier. She was so weighted
+down by the fur coat and she struggled so fiercely that several times I
+thought we were both going down. Mrs. Anderson threw us a plank and with
+its help I finally got her to the pier.
+
+"Now run for your life!" I ordered, my own teeth chattering in my head.
+"Drop that wet coat and I'll race you to the house." She didn't move
+nearly fast enough to avoid a chill and I took hold of her hand and
+pulled her along.
+
+Up in a cosy bedroom in the Randall's house we sat up, some hours later,
+wrapped in blankets, and looked at each other gravely. Mrs. Anderson had
+been in and talked with Ethel like a big sister about the cheapness of
+carrying on flirtations with strange boys. Ethel had seen her little
+affair in its true light, robbed of all romance, and shame had taken hold
+of her. Mrs. Anderson explained how the gallant Romeo had seen his Juliet
+fall into the pond and had fled basely in the other direction for fear he
+would be blamed, making no effort to rescue her, and she might have been
+drowned if I hadn't fished her out.
+
+Ethel had been frightened out of her wits when she fell into the water;
+she was still suffering from the shock. She flushed hotly as she caught
+my glance, and cast down her eyes.
+
+"Thank you, Miss Brewster, for saving my life," she said rather
+shame-facedly. Then she went on in a low tone, "I want to tell you
+something. I wrote that letter to Mr. Butler,--the one that made mamma so
+angry."
+
+"I know," I answered gravely.
+
+"You knew, and you jumped into the water after me anyway?" she said in a
+tone of unbelief. "Why, you might have let me drown as easy as not."
+
+"O no, I mightn't," I answered. "That isn't the way a Camp Fire Girl gets
+even."
+
+Ethel was silent a long while. Then she said, "Will you come back to our
+house after I have told mother the whole thing? She misses you a lot,
+says she never had anyone do her work so well as you did it, and she has
+been in a terrible temper ever since you left."
+
+"I don't know," I answered slowly. I had been very deeply hurt and my
+foolish pride was still on its hind legs.
+
+"Will you please come?" pleaded Ethel, slipping out of her chair and
+putting her arms around me. "We can have such good times after your work
+hours. Please, for my sake, I want you. You're the most wonderful girl
+I've ever met!"
+
+Old Mr. Pride and I had a final round and we came out with me sitting on
+his head. "I'll come back," I said, slipping my arm around Ethel.
+
+So you see, Katherine, adventure isn't dead, not by any means, even if
+you do have to take it along with your bread and butter.
+
+Loads of love from your stenographic friend, Sadie Shorthander, once upon
+a time your
+
+                                                             Sahwah.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                      April 8, 19--.
+Dearest Winnies:
+
+Daggers and dirks! Did I say it was dull out here? Deluded mortal! For
+the past week it's been so strenuous that I have seriously considered
+moving to Bedlam for a rest. If I'm not gray by the time I'm thirty it'll
+be because I'm bald.
+
+As Mistress of Ceremonies your humble servant is a rather watery success.
+You know from sad experience my fatal fondness for trying new and
+startling experiments and also my genius for leaving the most important
+things undone. Remember the time I was Lemonade Committee when we climbed
+Windy Hill and I carefully provided water and sugar and spoons and
+glasses, and no lemons? And the time I hid the unwashed dishes in the
+oven at Aunt Anna's and then went home with Gladys and forgot all about
+them, and Aunt Anna nearly had spasms because she thought her silverware
+had been stolen? And the time we went to Ellen's Isle and I mislaid the
+vital portion of my traveling suit half an hour before the train started
+and had to go in a borrowed suit that didn't fit? Every time little
+Katherine was given something to do she either forgot to do it
+altogether, or else did it in such a way as to make herself ridiculous.
+
+The memory of all those things rose up and oppressed me after I had
+undertaken to stage a Patriotic Pageant for the township of Spencer. I
+was so afraid I would do something that would turn it into a farce that I
+began to have nightmares the minute I sank to weary slumber. It was a
+daring idea, this patriotic pageant. Since history began there had never
+been a pageant, patriotic or otherwise, in this section. Most of the
+folks had never seen a circus, or a show, or a parade; so there was
+nobody to give me any help except Justice. I myself would never have
+thought of tackling it, but no sooner had my Camp Fire Girls gotten
+absorbed in Red Cross work, and been thrilled by reading accounts of what
+Camp Fire Girls were doing in other sections, than they begged me to get
+up a pageant. I had my misgivings, but, being a Winnebago, I couldn't
+back out. A pageant it should be, if it cost my head. (It pretty nearly
+did, but not in the way I had feared.)
+
+Justice Sherman hailed the plan with delight.
+
+"Go to it," he encouraged. "I'm with you to the bitter end. I've never
+done it before but I'll never begin any younger.
+
+  "'There is a tide in the affairs of schoolma'ams,
+  That, taken at the flood, leads on to Pageants.'
+
+"Lead on MacDuff! Trot out the order of events."
+
+At Justice's suggestion I summed up all the possibilities.
+
+"There isn't much to work with," I said thoughtfully, having counted up
+all my assets on the fingers of one hand. "Just ten Camp Fire Girls,
+about as many boys, one trick mule, and--you."
+
+"So glad I know, right at the outset, just where I come in," said Justice
+politely, "after the mule."
+
+"Sandhelo's got his red, white and blue pompom that the girls sent him
+for Christmas," I went on, ignoring Justice's gibe. "We could make red,
+white and blue harness for him, too."
+
+"If only he doesn't get temperamental!" said Justice fervently.
+
+"The girls could wear their Red Cross caps and aprons in one part of it,"
+I continued, "and flags draped on them when they act out 'The Spirit of
+Columbia.' One of the girls can wear her Ceremonial gown and be the
+Spirit of Nature that comes to tell the others the secret of the soil
+that will help them win the war. Oh, ideas are coming to me faster than
+flies to molasses."
+
+"Would you advise me to wear my Ceremonial gown or my Red Cross apron and
+cap?" asked Justice soberly. "I could braid my hair in two pig-tails--"
+
+"Oh, Justice!" I interrupted, "if you only had a soldier's uniform!"
+Then, as I saw Justice wince and the laughter die out of his eyes, I
+stopped abruptly and changed the subject. It was an awfully sore point
+with him that he had been rejected for the army.
+
+"We'll have a flag raising, of course, and tableaux," I rushed on. "Would
+you put the flag on the schoolhouse, or set up a pole in the ground?"
+
+"I think on the schoolhouse," said Justice, with a return of interest.
+"That's where it belongs."
+
+Justice and I held more conferences in the next day or so than the King
+and his Prime Minister. Lessons in the little schoolhouse were abandoned
+while we drilled and rehearsed for the pageant. Justice and I put
+together and bought the flag.
+
+"Who's going to raise it?" asked Justice, shaking the beautiful bright
+starry folds out of the package.
+
+I considered.
+
+"I think the pupil that has the best record in school should raise it,"
+suggested Justice.
+
+"I think," I said slowly, "I'll let Absalom Butts raise it."
+
+"Absalom Butts!" exclaimed Justice incredulously. "The laziest, meanest,
+most mischievous boy in school! I wouldn't let him be in the pageant, if
+I had my way, let alone raise the flag."
+
+"Exactly," I said calmly. "You're just like the rest of them. That's the
+whole trouble with Absalom Butts. He's been used to harsh measures all
+his life. His father has cuffed him about ever since he can remember.
+Everybody considers him a bad boy and a terror to snakes and all that and
+now he acts the part thoroughly. He's so homely that nobody will ever be
+attracted to him by his looks, and such a poor scholar that he will never
+make a name for himself at his lessons, and the only way he can make
+himself prominent is through his pranks. He's too old to be in school
+with the rest of the children; he should be with boys of his own age. His
+father makes him stay there because he is too obstinate to admit that he
+will never get out by the graduation route, and Absalom takes out his
+spite on the teacher. I can read him like a book. I've tried fighting him
+to a finish on every point and it hasn't worked. He's still ready to
+break out at a moment's notice. Now I'm going to change my tactics. I'm
+going to appoint him, as the oldest pupil, to be my special aid in the
+pageant, and help work out the details. I'm going to honor him by letting
+him raise the flag. We'll see how that will change his mind about playing
+pranks to spoil the pageant."
+
+"It won't work," said Justice gloomily. "Absalom Butts is Absalom Butts,
+the son of Elijah Butts; and a chip off the old block. The old man has a
+mean, crafty disposition, and he probably was just like Absalom when he
+was young. Absalom is going to do something to spoil that pageant, I see
+it in his eye. You watch."
+
+"It's worth trying, anyhow," I said determinedly.
+
+"It won't work," reiterated Justice. "You can't change human nature."
+
+"It worked once," I said, and I told him about the Dalrymple twins, Antha
+and Anthony, last summer on Ellen's Isle.
+
+"So you turned little Cry-baby into a lion of bravery and Sir Boastful
+into a modest violet!" said Justice, in a tone of incredulity.
+
+"Yes, and if you'd ever seen them at the beginning of the summer you
+wouldn't have held any high hopes of changing human nature, either," I
+remarked, a little nettled at Justice's tone.
+
+Justice started to reply, but was seized with a violent fit of coughing
+that left him leaning weakly against the door. I looked at him in some
+alarm. I knew it was throat trouble that had kept him out of the army,
+but it hadn't seemed to be anything to worry about--just a dry, hacking
+cough from time to time. Now, standing out there in the brilliant
+sunshine, he looked very white and haggard.
+
+"You're all tired out, you've been working too hard," I said, remembering
+how he had been putting in time after school hours working in Elijah
+Butts' cotton storehouse, because it was impossible to get enough men to
+handle the cotton. Then, by drilling my boys and girls by the hour in
+military marching and running countless errands for me--poor Justice was
+in danger of being sacrificed on the altar of my ambition.
+
+"I'm a selfish thing!" I said vehemently.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Justice, holding up his head and beginning to fold up
+the flag. "I got choked with dust, that's all." Manlike, he hated to
+display any sign of physical weakness before a girl. I decided to say no
+more about it, but I knew he needed rest.
+
+"Sit down a minute," I said artfully, sinking down on the doorsill, "and
+keep me 'mused. I'm tired to death. Tell me all the news in the
+Metropolis of Spencer."
+
+Justice fell into the trap. He sat down beside me and launched into a
+lively imitation of Elijah Butts convincing the school board that the old
+school books were better than the new ones some venturous soul had
+suggested.
+
+"If he only knew how you took him off behind his back, he wouldn't
+confide in you so trustingly," said I.
+
+"That's what comes of being a bargain," replied Justice loftily. "Great
+ones linger in my presence, anxious to breathe the same air. The Board
+coddles me like a rare bit of old china and proudly exhibits me to
+visitors.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he added, "I hear there's a stranger in town."
+
+I looked up with interest. "Fine or superfine?" I asked.
+
+"Superfine," replied Justice.
+
+"Where from?" I inquired.
+
+"Like Shelley's immortal soul," replied Justice solemnly, "she cometh
+from afar. She cometh to study Rural School Conditions--sent out by some
+Commission or other. She's likely to visit your school. Thought I'd tell
+you ahead of time so you'd manage to be on the premises when the
+delegation arrived. She might object to hunting through the woods for
+you." Here we were both overcome with laughter at the remembrance of the
+last "visitation" of the school board.
+
+"I can't figure out yet why I wasn't fired," said I, flicking a sociable
+spider off my lap with the stem of a leaf. "I would have been willing to
+bet my eyebrows on it that night. What made them change their minds, I
+wonder?"
+
+"Maybe it was because they hated to lose the bargain," answered Justice,
+half to himself.
+
+"Hated to lose what bargain?" I asked innocently. Then suddenly I
+understood.
+
+"Justice Sherman!" I exclaimed, starting up. "Did you threaten to leave
+if they discharged me?"
+
+Justice turned crimson and became reticent. "Well, I don't know as I
+threatened them exactly," he replied in a soothing drawl. "I don't look
+very threatening, now, do I?"
+
+"Oh, Justice," was all I could say, for at the thought of what he had
+done for me I was stricken dumb.
+
+Verily the power of the Bargain was great in the land!
+
+The pageant grew under our hands until it assumed really respectable
+proportions. The girls and boys were wild about it and drilled tirelessly
+by the hour.
+
+"I wish we had a better parade ground," sighed Justice regretfully,
+squinting at the small level plot of ground in front of the schoolhouse
+that was worn bare of grass. "We haven't room to make a really effective
+showing with our drill. If only the old schoolhouse wasn't in the way we
+could use the space that's behind it and on both sides of it."
+
+It was then that I had one of my old-time, wild inspirations. "Move the
+schoolhouse back," I said calmly.
+
+Justice shouted. "Why not roll up the road and set it down on the other
+side of field?" he suggested.
+
+"I don't see why we couldn't move the schoolhouse back," I repeated. "Why
+not, if it's in the way? It's no ornament, anyway."
+
+Half-amused, half-serious, Justice looked first at me and then at the
+little one-story shack that went by the name of schoolhouse.
+
+"By Jove! we can do it!" he exclaimed suddenly. "It'll be no trick at
+all. Just get her up on rollers and hitch Sandhelo to the pulley rope and
+let him wind her up. Just like that. An' zay say ze French have no sense
+of ze delicasse!"
+
+"What will the Board say?" I inquired, half fearfully.
+
+"We won't ask the Board," replied Justice calmly. "Move first, ask for
+orders afterwards, that's the way the great generals win battles.
+Remember how General Sherman cut the wires between him and Washington
+when he started out on his famous march to the sea, so that no
+short-sighted one could wire him to change his plans? Well, we're out to
+make this pageant a success, and we aren't going to risk it by stopping
+to ask too much permission. We'll move the schoolhouse first and ask
+permission afterward. By that time it'll be too late; the pageant is
+to-morrow."
+
+And we did move it. If you had ever seen us! It wasn't such a job as you
+might think. I suppose the word "schoolhouse" conjures up in your mind
+the brick and granite pile that is Washington High--imagine moving that
+out of the way to make room for a military drill! 'Vantage number one for
+our school. We also have our points of superiority, it seems.
+
+The old shack looked vastly better where we finally let it rest. There
+was a clump of bushes alongside that hid some of its battered boards
+beautifully. The parade ground seemed about three times as big as it had
+been before.
+
+"That's more like it," said Justice approvingly. "Now we can turn around
+without stubbing our toes against the schoolhouse."
+
+"What will Mr. Butts say?" I asked, beginning to have cold chills.
+
+"Just wait until that gets between the wind and his nobility!" chuckled
+Justice. "Never mind, I'll take all the blame."
+
+Nevertheless, when the crisis came, and Elijah Butts came driving up on
+the afternoon of the great occasion, I was there to face the music alone,
+Justice being nowhere in sight.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Butts arrived in state, bringing with them a strange lady,
+who I figured out must be the one Justice had told me about, the one who,
+like Shelley's immortal soul, had come from afar and was sent by a
+Commission to study rural school conditions.
+
+I glanced wildly about to see if Justice were not hovering protectingly
+near, but there was no sign of him. However, I knew my duties as hostess.
+Nonchalantly I strolled over to the road to welcome the newcomers. Elijah
+Butts had just finished tying his horse and, bristling with importance,
+had turned to help the Commission Lady out of the rig.
+
+"Ah-h, Miss Fairlee," he said in smooth tones, "this is--ah--Miss Adams,
+our teacher at the Corners school."
+
+Then he suddenly jumped half out of his boots and stared over my shoulder
+as if he had seen a ghost. "Where's that schoolhouse?" he demanded, in a
+voice which seemed to indicate he thought I had it in my pocket.
+
+"It's right over there," I said calmly, pointing toward the bushes.
+
+Elijah Butts' eyes followed my fingers in a fascinated way; he could
+hardly believe his senses. "How did it get there?" he demanded.
+
+"We moved it back," I replied casually. "It was in the way of the
+maneuvers."
+
+Elijah Butts sputtered, choked, and was speechless.
+
+But Miss Fairlee, the Commission lady, laughed until she had to grip the
+side of the buggy for support. "It's the funniest thing I ever heard,"
+she gasped. "I've heard of the Mountain coming to Mahomet, but I never
+heard of the Mountain getting out of the road for Mahomet. Oh, Mr. Butts,
+I think the West is delightful. You people are _so_ original and
+forceful!"
+
+That took the wind out of Mr. Butts' sails. What could he do after that
+neat little speech but take the compliment to himself and pass the matter
+off lightly?
+
+The pageant was a wonderful success in spite of my misgivings. I didn't
+forget to hand the torch to Columbia at the right moment and I didn't
+forget to bring the brown stockings for little Lizzie Cooper, who was the
+Spirit of Nature, and I made fire with the bow and drill without any
+mishap. But one thing was a dreadful disappointment to me. Absalom Butts
+was not there, and I had no chance to work out my experiment on him.
+Where he was I couldn't imagine. I had taken Clarissa home with me the
+night before to help me finish some things and she hadn't seen him since
+he went home from school; Mr. Butts also said he didn't know. He added,
+in a voice loud enough for Miss Fairlee to hear, that he would lick the
+tar out of him for not being in the patriotic pageant.
+
+No one knew that I had picked Absalom in my mind to raise the flag. There
+had been much speculation about who was to have this honor and in order
+to keep everybody happy I said I would not announce this until the moment
+came. Then I planned to make a speech and award the honor to Absalom,
+thus singling him out for something besides punishment for once in his
+life. I had had him helping me for several days, and given him certain
+definite things to do on the great occasion and was much disappointed
+that he didn't come to do them. Justice's warning came back and I had an
+uneasy feeling that he was in hiding somewhere, plotting mischief.
+
+I had a real inspiration, though, in regard to the flag raising. In a
+flowery speech I called upon Mr. Elijah Butts, the "President of the
+School Board and the most influential man in Spencer Township," to
+perform that rite. He swelled up until he almost burst, like the frog in
+the fable, as he stood there, conscious of Miss Fairlee's eye on him,
+with his great hairy hand on the pulley rope. Round the corner of the
+schoolhouse and hidden from view by the bush, I caught Justice Sherman's
+eye and he applauded silently with his two forefingers, meaning to say
+that it was a master stroke on my part. Then he dropped his eye
+decorously and started the singing of the National Anthem.
+
+The pageant ended up in a picnic supper eaten on the erstwhile parade
+ground, and then the people began to go home through the softly falling
+dusk. Miss Fairlee came to me and complimented me on the success of the
+pageant and asked to take some notes for future use; and Elijah Butts was
+quite cordial as he departed. I've discovered something to-day; if you
+want to win a person's undying affection, single him out as the most
+important member of the bunch. He'll fall for it every time. You note
+that I am talking about male persons, now.
+
+"Well, the show's over," said Justice, when the last of the audience had
+departed. "Now the actors can take it easy. Come on, let's get Sandhelo
+and go for a ride."
+
+We climbed into the little cart, still covered with its pageant finery,
+and drove slowly down the dusty road, discussing the events of the day.
+
+"O Justice," said I, "did you ever see anything so touching as the pride
+some of those poor women took in their boys and girls? They fairly
+glowed, some of them. And did you see that one poor woman who tried to
+fix herself up for the occasion? She had nothing to wear but her faded
+old blue calico dress, but she had pinned a bunch of roses on the front
+of it to make herself look festive."
+
+"We've started something, I think," said Justice thoughtfully. "We've
+taught the people how to get together and have a good time, and they like
+it. They'll be doing it again."
+
+"I hope so," I replied. Then I added, "I wonder where Absalom was?"
+
+"You see, your scheme didn't work after all," said Justice, in an
+I-told-you-so tone of voice. "Absalom wasn't impressed with the honor of
+being your right-hand man. He took the occasion to play hookey. It's a
+wonder he didn't try to play some trick on the rest of us; but I suppose
+he didn't dare, with his father there. He's afraid to draw a crooked
+breath when the old man's around."
+
+"I'm disappointed," I said pensively, leaning my head back and letting
+the cool wind blow the hair away from my face. It had been a strenuous
+day and I was tired out. The strain of being afraid every minute that I
+would do something ridiculous or had left something undone that was of
+vital importance had nearly turned my hair grey. Now that it was all over
+without mishap, the people had enjoyed it and my Camp Fire girls had
+covered themselves with glory, I relaxed into a delicious tranquillity
+and gave myself over to enjoyment of the quiet drive in the sweet evening
+air.
+
+"Why so deucedly pensive?" inquired Justice, after we had jogged along
+for some minutes in silence.
+
+"Just thanking whatever gods there be that I didn't make a holy show of
+myself somehow," I replied lazily. "Isn't this evening peaceful, though?
+Who would ever think that down around the other side of this sweet
+smelling earth men are killing each other like flies, and the night is
+hideous with the din of warfare?"
+
+Above us the big white stars twinkled serenely, approvingly; all nature
+seemed in tune with my placid mood. Justice fell under the spell of it,
+too, and leaned back in silent enjoyment.
+
+What was that sudden glare that shone out against the sky, over to the
+south? That red, lurid glare that dimmed the glory of the stars and threw
+buildings and barns into black relief?
+
+"The cotton storehouse!" exclaimed Justice in a horrified voice. "Hurry!"
+
+For once Sandhelo responded to my urging without argument, and we soon
+arrived on the scene of the blaze. Elijah Butts' plantation is about
+three miles from Spencer, and no water but the well and the cistern.
+"This is going to be a nice mess," said Justice, jumping out of the car
+and charging into the throng of gaping negroes who stood around watching
+the spectacle. The family of Butts had not returned from the pageant yet,
+having taken Miss Fairlee for a drive in the opposite direction. A few
+neighbors had gathered, but they stood there, gaping like the negroes and
+not lifting a hand to save the cotton.
+
+"Here you, get busy!" shouted Justice, taking command like a general.
+Under his direction a bucket brigade was formed to check the flames as
+much as possible and keep the surrounding sheds from taking fire. "Go
+through the barn and bring out the horses and cows, if there are any
+there," he called to me.
+
+I obeyed, and brought out one poor trembling bossy, the only livestock I
+found. Then Justice turned the command of the bucket brigade over to me
+and started in with one or two helpers to remove the cotton from the end
+of the storehouse that was not yet ablaze. He worked like a Trojan, his
+face blackened with smoke until it was hard to tell him from the negroes,
+the remains of his pageant costume hanging about him in tatters.
+
+"Somebody started this fire on purpose," he panted as he paused beside me
+a moment to clear his lungs of smoke. "There's been oil poured on the
+cotton!"
+
+Just at that moment the Butts family returned, driving into the yard at a
+gallop. Mr. Butts' wrath and excitement knew no bounds and he was hardly
+able to help effectively; he ran around for all the world like a chicken
+with its head off. Assistance came swiftly as people began to arrive from
+far and near, attracted by the blaze, but if it hadn't been for Justice's
+timely taking hold of the situation not a bit of the cotton would have
+been saved, and the house, barn and sheds would have gone up, too.
+
+Conjectures began to fly thick and fast on all sides as to how the fire
+had started, and a whisper began going the rounds that soon became an
+open accusation. One of the negroes that works for Mr. Butts swore he saw
+Absalom going into the storehouse that afternoon. My heart skipped a
+beat. He had not been at the celebration. Was this where he had been and
+what he had done the while? Elijah Butts was stamping up and down in such
+a fury as I had never seen.
+
+"He couldn't get out!" he shouted hoarsely to the group that stood around
+him. "He's locked in the woodshed, I locked him in there myself, and
+there isn't even a window he could get out of!"
+
+I started at his words. So that was where Absalom had been that
+afternoon. He hadn't deliberately disappointed me, then. But--Elijah
+Butts hadn't said that afternoon that he had locked Absalom up at home.
+He had pretended to be much mystified over the non-appearance of his son.
+Why had he done so? The answer came in a flash of intuition. Elijah Butts
+had probably had a set-to with Absalom over some private affair and had
+locked him up as punishment, but he didn't want Miss Fairlee to know that
+he had kept him out of the patriotic pageant and so he had denied any
+knowledge of Absalom's whereabouts. "The old hypocrite!" I said to myself
+scornfully.
+
+"Your woodshed's wide open," said someone from the crowd. "We were in
+there looking for a bucket. The door was open and there wasn't nobody in
+it."
+
+"He got out!" shouted Elijah Butts in still greater fury. "He got out and
+set fire to the cotton to spite me! Wait until I catch him! Wait till I
+get my hands on him!" He stamped up and down, shouting threats against
+his son, awful to listen to.
+
+"I thought he'd drive that boy to turn against him yet," said Justice,
+drawing me away to a quiet spot, and mopping his black forehead with a
+damp handkerchief. "I can't say but that it served him right. After all,
+Absalom is a chip off the old block. That's his idea of getting even. He
+didn't stop to think that it was the government's loss as well as his
+father's. Well, it's all over but the shouting; we might as well go
+home."
+
+We drove home in silence. Justice was tuckered out, I could see that, and
+I began to worry for fear his strenuous efforts would lay him up. I was
+still too much excited to feel tired. That would come later. All my
+energy was concentrated into disappointment over Absalom Butts. I
+couldn't believe that he was really as bad as this. I didn't want to
+believe he had done it, and yet it seemed all too true. Why had he run
+away if he hadn't? I shook my head. It was beyond me.
+
+Silently we drove into the yard and unhitched Sandhelo.
+
+"Good night," said Justice, starting off in the direction of his cabin.
+
+"Good night," I replied absently. I did not go right into the house. I
+was wide awake and knew I could not go to sleep for some time. Instead I
+sat in the doorway and blinked at the moon, like a touseled-haired owl.
+It was after midnight and everything was still, even the wind. Out of the
+corner of my eye I watched Justice wearily plodding along to his sleeping
+quarters, saw him open the screen door and vanish from sight within.
+Then, borne clearly on the night air, I heard an exclamation come from
+his lips, then a frightened cry. I sped down the path like the wind to
+the little cabin. A lamp flared out in the darkness just as I reached it
+and by its light I saw Justice bending over something in a corner.
+
+"What's the matter?" I called through the screen door.
+
+Justice turned around with a start. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he said. "Come
+in here."
+
+I went in. There, crouched in a corner on the floor, was Absalom Butts,
+his eyes blinking in the sudden light, his face like a scared rabbit's.
+It was he who had cried out, not Justice.
+
+"What's the trouble, Absalom," said I, trying to speak in a natural tone
+of voice, "can't you find your way home?"
+
+"Dassent go home," replied Absalom.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Pa'll kill me."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Because I ran away."
+
+"So you've run away, have you?" said I. "Why?"
+
+"Because pa licked me and locked me in the woodshed and wouldn't let me
+come to the doin's this afternoon, and I just wouldn't stand it, so I got
+out and cut."
+
+"When did you get out?" I asked, leaning forward a trifle.
+
+"This afternoon," replied Absalom. "I thought first I'd come to the
+doin's anyhow and help you with those things I'd promised, but I was
+scared to come with pa there, so I went the other way. I walked and
+walked and walked, till I was tired out and most starved, because I
+hadn't brought anything along to eat, and I didn't know where I was
+headed for, anyway, and then I came along here and saw this shack and
+came in and sat down to rest. I must a fell asleep."
+
+"You didn't do it, then?" said I, eagerly.
+
+"Do what?" Absalom's tone was plainly bewildered.
+
+"Set fire to your father's cotton storehouse."
+
+"Whee-e-e-e-e!" Absalom's whistle of astonishment was clearly genuine. "I
+should say not!"
+
+"Do you know who did?" asked Justice, watching him keenly.
+
+"_Did_ somebody?" asked Absalom innocently.
+
+"I should say they did," said Justice, puzzled in his turn. "Are you sure
+you don't know anything about it?"
+
+Absalom shook his head vigorously. "I don't know anything about it," he
+said straightforwardly.
+
+"I was sure you didn't do it," I said triumphantly. "I had a feeling in
+my bones."
+
+"How does it happen that you weren't at the fire?" asked Justice
+wonderingly. "You must have seen the glare in the sky. People came for
+miles around. Didn't you see it?"
+
+Absalom shook his head. "I must a slept through it," he said simply, and
+followed it with such a large sigh of regret for what he had missed that
+Justice and I both had to smile.
+
+"Well, there's one thing about it," said Justice, "and that is, if you
+_didn't_ set fire to it, you'd better streak it for home about as fast as
+you can and clear yourself up. Everybody thinks you did it and your
+running away made it look suspicious. Besides, one of your father's men
+says he saw you coming out of the storehouse this afternoon. By the way,
+what _were_ you doing in there?"
+
+Absalom met his gaze unwaveringly. "Me? Why, I went in there to get my
+knife, that I'd left in there yesterday. I couldn't go away without my
+knife, could I?" He pulled it from his pocket and gazed on it fondly,--an
+ugly old "toad stabber."
+
+"See here, you weren't smoking any cigarettes in there, and dropped a
+lighted stub, perhaps?" asked Justice.
+
+"No," replied Absalom, "I wasn't smokin' to-day. I do sometimes, though,"
+he admitted.
+
+"Well, you don't seem to be the villain, after all," said Justice, "and
+I'm mighty glad to hear it. So will a lot of people be. Things looked
+pretty bad for you this afternoon, Absalom."
+
+"Honest?" asked Absalom. "Do folks really think I set fire to it? What
+did pa say?"
+
+Justice laughed. "What he isn't going to do to you when he catches you
+won't be worth doing," he said.
+
+Absalom began to look apprehensive. "I'm afraid to go back," he said.
+
+"What are you afraid of, if you didn't do it?" asked Justice.
+
+"Pa wouldn't believe me," said Absalom nervously.
+
+"Oh, I guess he'll believe you all right," I said soothingly.
+
+"You go with me," begged Absalom, eyeing us both beseechingly. "He'll
+believe you. He never believes me."
+
+"Maybe we had better," said I. "He can stay here with you the rest of the
+night and we'll drive over the first thing in the morning."
+
+The next morning bright and early found us again on the scene of the
+fire. Early as we were, we found Elijah Butts poking in the ashes of his
+cotton crop with a wrathful countenance. When he saw us coming he strode
+to meet us and without a word laid hold of Absalom's collar. His
+expression was like that of a fox who has caught his goose after many
+hours of waiting.
+
+"I've got you, you rascal," he sputtered, shaking Absalom until his teeth
+chattered. "Where did you find him?" he demanded of Justice.
+
+"In my bunk," replied Justice, laying a hand on Mr. Butts' arm and trying
+to separate him from his son. "He had been there all evening, and knew
+nothing about the fire. He didn't do it."
+
+"Didn't do it!" shouted Mr. Butts. "Don't tell me he didn't do it. Of
+course he did it! Who else did?"
+
+We weren't prepared to answer.
+
+"I'm sure Absalom didn't do it, Mr. Butts," said Justice earnestly. "I'd
+stake a whole lot on it."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't, you can better believe!" answered Mr. Butts. "He did
+it, and I'm going to take it out of him." He began to march Absalom off
+toward the house, urging him along with a box on the ear that nearly
+felled him to the ground.
+
+Justice did it so quickly that I never will be able to tell just what it
+was, but in a minute there stood Elijah Butts rubbing his wrist and
+wearing the most surprised look I ever saw on the face of a man, and
+there sat Absalom on the ground half a dozen yards away.
+
+"Beat it back to our shack, Absalom," called Justice. "I guess the
+climate's a little too hot around here for you just yet."
+
+Absalom needed no second bidding. He sped down the road away from his
+paternal mansion as if the whole German army was after him.
+
+"When you can treat your son like a human being he'll come back," said
+Justice to Mr. Butts.
+
+"He don't need to come back," said Mr. Butts sourly, but with fury
+carefully toned down. Justice's use of an uncanny Japanese wrestling
+trick to wrench Absalom out of his vise-like grasp had created a vast
+respect in him. He wasn't quite sure what Justice was going to do next,
+and eyed him warily for a possible attack in the rear. "He don't need to
+come back," he mumbled stubbornly, "until he either says he did it and
+takes what's coming to him, or finds out who did do it." Growling to
+himself he went toward the house and we drove off to overtake Absalom.
+
+"Daggers and dirks!" exclaimed Justice. "Old Butts sure is some knotty
+piece of timber to drive screws into!"
+
+It was a rather dejected trio that Sandhelo, frisking in the morning air,
+carried back to the house. Justice, I could see, was trying to figure out
+by calculus the probable result of having jiu-jitsu-ed the president of
+the school board; I was sorry for Absalom and Absalom was sorry for
+himself. Once I caught him looking at me pleadingly.
+
+"_You_ don't think I done it?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Not for a minute!" I answered heartily, smiling into his eyes.
+
+He looked down, in a shame-faced way, and then he suddenly put his arm
+around my neck. "I'm sorry I treated you so horrid," he murmured. Think
+of it! Absalom, the bully, the one-time bane of my existence, the fly in
+the ointment, riding down the road with his arm around my neck, and me
+standing up for him against the world! Don't things turn out queerly,
+though? Who would ever have thought it possible, six months ago?
+
+Absalom and I had quite a few long talks in the days that followed. He
+confided to me his hatred of lessons and his ambition to raise horses.
+Father let him help him as much as he liked, and promised him a job on
+the place any time he wanted it. Absalom seemed utterly transformed. He
+fooled around the horses day and night and showed a knack of handling
+them that proved beyond a doubt that he had chosen his profession wisely.
+I did not insist upon his going to school and was glad I hadn't; for in a
+day or two came the "visitation" of the Board, bringing Miss Fairlee to
+see my school.
+
+She was absolutely enchanted with the way we conducted things; gasped
+with astonishment at the graphophone and the lantern slides; exclaimed in
+wonder at the library; listened approvingly to the reading lesson, which
+was from one of the current magazines; partook generously of our dinner,
+cooked and served in the most approved style, and laughed heartily at the
+stunts we did afterward by way of entertainment. I took a naughty
+satisfaction in showing off my changed curriculum for her approval and
+watching the effect it had on the august Board members. None of them knew
+exactly what I had been doing all this time, and their amazement was
+immense. Mr. Butts did not come with the board this time, so I was spared
+the embarrassment of meeting him. Without him the rest of the Board were
+like sheep that had gotten separated from the bell-wether; they didn't
+know which direction to head into until Miss Fairlee expressed her
+unqualified approval of my methods; then they all endorsed it
+emphatically.
+
+"I wish I were a pupil again, so I could have you for a teacher!" said
+Miss Fairlee when school was out, and I considered that the highest
+compliment I had ever received. I immediately invited her to attend our
+Ceremonial Meeting that night and she accepted the invitation eagerly. We
+held it on the old parade ground in front of the school. In honor of our
+guest we acted out the pretty Indian legend of Kir-a-wa and the
+Blackbirds and when we came to the place where we rush out looking for
+the two crows we found two real ones sitting on the fence, only, instead
+of attacking us as the ones did in the legend, these two applauded
+vigorously. They were Justice and Absalom, come with Sandhelo and the
+cart to take me home, or rather what was left of me after the blackbirds
+had picked me to pieces.
+
+"Another day gone without mishap!" I said, as Justice slid back the
+stable door and I walked in with my arm around Sandhelo's neck. "Sandhelo
+will have to have a lump of sugar and an extra soft bed to celebrate.
+Come on, Sandy, let me tuck you in."
+
+But Sandhelo would not enter his stall. He stuck his head in, sniffed the
+air, and then, with a squeal that always heralds an outbreak of
+temperament, he rose on his hind legs and began to dance.
+
+"Whatever has gotten into him?" I began, tugging at his tail, which was
+the nearest thing I could get my hand onto, when suddenly a wild shriek
+rose up from under our very feet and in the dimness of the stall we saw
+something roll over and crouch in a corner.
+
+"Quick, the lantern!" said Justice.
+
+But we couldn't find it.
+
+Then from the depths of the stall there came a voice, crying in terrified
+tones, "Don' take me, mister Debble; don' take me, mister Debble, I done
+it, I done it; I set fiah to 'at ole cotton to get even with old Mister
+Butts fer settin' de dawgs on me; I done it, I done it; go 'way, Mister
+Debble, don' take me, I'll tell dem; only don' take me, Mister Debble!"
+
+Justice and Absalom and I stood frozen to the spot, listening to this
+remarkable outcry. Then Justice raised the lantern, which he just spied
+on the floor, and lighting it held it in the stall. By its flickering
+rays we saw a negro crouching in the corner, whose rolling eyes and
+trembling limbs showed him to be beside himself with fright.
+
+"Glory!" exclaimed Justice. "It's the same old bird we saw in the road
+that day, the one I said looked like mischief!"
+
+Here Sandhelo, nosing me aside, looked inquisitively over my shoulder and
+the darky immediately went into another spasm of fright, covering his
+face with his hands and imploring "Mister Debble" not to take him this
+time.
+
+"Whee-e-e-e-!" said Justice, whistling in his astonishment. "He's the one
+that fired the cotton and now he thinks Sandhelo is the devil coming
+after him!"
+
+"Mercy, what an awful creature!" said I, shuddering and looking the other
+way. "If Sandhelo gets a good look at him I'm afraid he'll return the
+compliment about taking him for His Satanic Nibs."
+
+"There's only one way you can keep him from getting you," said Justice to
+the darky gravely. "That's by going to Mr. Butts and telling him yourself
+that you did it. Otherwise, it's good-bye, Solomon."
+
+Here Sandhelo, as if he understood what was going on, suddenly snapped at
+the black legs stretched out across his stall.
+
+"I'll tell him, I'll tell him!" shuddered Solomon, and with a prolonged
+howl of terror he fled from the stable and down the road in the direction
+of the Butts plantation.
+
+"He'll tell him all right," chuckled Justice. "He'll face a dozen Elijah
+Buttses, before he lets the devil get him. Poor Sandhelo! Rather rough on
+him, though, to have his name used as a terror to evil doers!"
+
+Talk about nothing ever happening around here! O you darling Winnebagos,
+with your ladylike advantages, and your mildly eventful lives, you don't
+know what real excitement is!
+
+                      Worn out, but happily yours,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                          GLADYS TO KATHERINE
+
+
+                                                     April 10, 19--.
+Dearest old K:
+
+The Winnebagos have scored again, although it did take us nearly all year
+to make this particular basket. I know that if you had been here, you old
+miracle worker, you would have found the way before the first month had
+passed, but, not having your gift for seeing right through people's
+starched shirtwaists and straight into their hearts, we had to wait for
+chance to show us the way. And it turned out the way it usually does for
+the Winnebagos--we stooped to pick up a common little stone and found a
+pearl of great price. Of course, now there are lots of people who would
+like to be the setting for that pearl, but she belongs to the Winnebagos
+by right of discovery and we mean to keep her for our very own. For,
+after all, who but the Winnebagos could have discovered Sally Prindle,
+when up to that very week, day, hour and minute she hadn't even
+discovered herself? The chances are that she never would have, either,
+and what a shame it would have been!
+
+You remember my telling about Sally Prindle long ago, the time we tried
+to fix up her room for her and she wouldn't let us? Of course she hurt
+our feelings, because we hadn't been trying to patronize her and didn't
+deserve to be snubbed, but we got over it in a day or two and saw her
+side of it. It probably _was_ annoying to have three separate delegations
+take notice of your poverty in one day, and there was no telling how
+tactless the first two had been. At the second meeting of the LAST OF THE
+WINNEBAGOS, held on and around Oh-Pshaw's bed, we formally decided, with
+much speechifying by Agony and Oh-Pshaw, that Sally would be the special
+object of our Give Service Pledge. We would make her feel that we didn't
+care a rap whether she was poor or not; that it was she herself we cared
+about. We would ask her to share all our good times and would drop in to
+see her often, as good neighbors should, and would finally bring her
+around to the point where she would begin to Seek Beauty for herself, see
+that her bare room was too ugly for any good use, and gladly share our
+overflow with us. Oh, we planned great things that night!
+
+"Let's go over and call on her right away," suggested Hinpoha, who was
+fired with enthusiasm at the plan and couldn't wait to begin the program
+of Give Service.
+
+Off we went down the hall, filled with virtuous enthusiasm. Sally was at
+home because we could see the light shining through the transom.
+
+"Wait a minute, don't knock," whispered Agony with a giggle. "I know a
+lot more Epic way." She pulled a candy kiss from her pocket, scribbled an
+absurd note on a piece of paper about weary travelers waiting at the
+gate, tied it to the kiss and threw it through the transom.
+
+We heard it strike the floor and heard Sally rise from a creaking chair
+and pick it up. Giggling, we waited for her to come and let us in. In a
+minute her footsteps came toward the door and with comradely smiles we
+stepped forward. The door was opened a very small crack, and out flew the
+kiss, much faster than it had gone in. It just missed Hinpoha's nose by a
+hair's breadth and fell on the floor with a spiteful thud. Then the door
+slammed emphatically. We looked at each other in consternation.
+
+"Whee-e-e-e-e-!" said Agony in a long-drawn whistle.
+
+"Horrid--old--thing!" said Hinpoha, picking up the kiss from the floor
+and holding it up for us to see that the note had never been opened.
+Feeling both foolish and hurt we trailed back home and sadly gave up the
+idea of Giving Service to Sally Prindle.
+
+"Let her alone, she isn't worth worrying about," said Hinpoha, beginning
+to be just as cross as she had been enthusiastic before. "She hasn't a
+spark of sociability in her."
+
+"There are Hermit Souls----" began Oh-Pshaw, and Agony cut in with
+
+  "Twinkle, twinkle, little Sal,
+  How we'd like to be your pal,
+  But you hold your nose so high
+  You don't see us passing by."
+
+That ended Sally Prindle as far as the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS were
+concerned. But I had an uncomfortable feeling all the time that if Nyoda
+had been there she would have managed to become friendly with Sally in
+some way, and that we had failed to "warm the heart" of this "lonely
+mortal" who "stood without our open portal." Sally haunted me. How any
+girl could live and not be friendly with the people she saw every day was
+more than I could understand. She just grubbed away at her lessons, paid
+no attention to what went on around her, snubbed any girl who tried to
+make advances and lived a life of lofty detachment. She was a good
+student and invariably recited correctly when called upon, but beyond
+that none of the teachers could get a particle of warmth out of her, not
+even fascinating Miss Allison, who has all her classes worshipping at her
+feet.
+
+Sally worried me for a while; then she moved out of Purgatory and took a
+room with some private family in town and as I hardly ever saw her any
+more I forgot her after a time. Life is so _very_ full here, Katherine
+dear, that you can't bother much about any one person.
+
+Of course, the big thought that runs through everything this year, all
+our work and all our play, is the War and what we can do to help. At the
+beginning of the year Brownell pledged herself to raise five thousand
+dollars for the Red Cross by various activities; this was outside of the
+personal subscription fund. A big Christmas bazaar and several benefit
+performances brought the total close to four thousand, but the last
+thousand proved to be a sticker. Various committees were called to
+discuss ways and means of raising the money, but they never could agree
+on anything for the whole college to do together, and finally abandoned
+the quest for a bright idea and decided to let everybody raise money in
+any way they could think of and put it all together to make up the total.
+The Board of Trustees offered a silver loving cup to the individual,
+club, sorority, group or clique of any kind that raised the largest
+amount inside of a month.
+
+The day that was announced there was a hastily called meeting of the LAST
+OF THE WINNEBAGOS.
+
+"We're going to win that loving cup," declared Hinpoha in a tone of
+finality. "This is our chance to show what we're made of. Up until now
+we've been doing little easy 'Give Services.' At last we're up against
+something big. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
+their party. The WINNEBAGOS have never fallen down on anything yet that
+they undertook and they're not going to now. We're going to win that
+contest. Won't Nyoda be proud of us?"
+
+We cheered until the windows rattled and then Migwan brought us to earth
+with a thud. "How are we going to do it?" she asked soberly. We all fell
+silent and donned our thinking caps. Minutes passed but nobody sprouted a
+bright idea. Suggestion after suggestion was made, only to be turned down
+flat.
+
+"We might give a circus," suggested Hinpoha rather doubtfully. "Remember
+the circus we gave at home last year?"
+
+"There have been nine circuses of various kinds already this year,"
+wet-blanketed Agony. "You couldn't hire anybody to attend another."
+
+"Masquerade as seeresses and give select parlor readings of people's
+futures," suggested Oh-Pshaw. "We could charge five dollars for a
+reading."
+
+"Been done already," said Migwan. "Anyway, the faculty have forbidden it.
+The girls that did it last year scandalized a prominent Trustee's wife by
+telling her that her daughter was going to elope with an Italian count
+before the month was out. The daughter had married a minister the week
+before, only the girls didn't know it, and the Trustee's wife got so
+excited she sat down on a two-hundred-dollar Satsuma vase and smashed it
+and tried to sue the seeresses for damages. Then, of course, she found
+out they were students and the faculty put an end to parlor seeresses."
+
+That's the way it went. Not a plan was suggested but what turned out to
+be old stuff or not practicable.
+
+"Oh, for an idea!" groaned Agony, beating her white brow with the palm of
+her hand.
+
+"We might go round with a hand organ," suggested Oh-Pshaw in desperation.
+"Gladys could be the monkey and pass around a tin cup."
+
+"Thanks, I wouldn't think of aspiring to such an honor," I replied
+modestly.
+
+"What we want," said Migwan decidedly, "is a fad--something that will
+take the college by storm and separate them from their cash. I remember
+last year some of the seniors started the fad of taking impressions of
+the palm of your hand on paper smoked with camphor gum and sending them
+away to have the lines read by some noted palmist, and they made oceans
+of money at twenty-five cents an impression."
+
+We talked possible fads until we were green in the face, but nobody got
+an inspiration and we finally adjourned with our heads in a whirl.
+
+The next day I went into a deserted classroom for a book I had left
+behind and found Sally Prindle with her head down on one of the desks,
+crying. By that time I had forgotten how disagreeable she had been to us
+and hastened over to see what was the matter.
+
+"What's the trouble, Sally?" I asked, laying my hand on her shoulder.
+
+Sally started up and tried to wipe the tears away hastily. "Nothing," she
+answered in a flat voice.
+
+"There is too something," I said determinedly, and sat down on the desk
+in front of her.
+
+She looked at me sort of defiantly for a minute and then she broke down
+altogether. Between sobs she told me that she wasn't going to be able to
+come back to college next year because she hadn't won the big Andrews
+prize in mathematics she had counted confidently on winning, and she had
+worked so hard for it that she had neglected her other work, and the
+first thing she knew she had a condition in Latin. Besides, she was sick
+and couldn't do the hard work she had been doing outside to pay her
+board.
+
+I never saw anyone so broken up over anything. I wouldn't have expected
+her to care whether she came back to college or not; I couldn't see what
+fun she had ever gotten out of it, but I suppose in her own queer way she
+must have enjoyed it. I tried to comfort her by telling her that the way
+would probably be found somehow if she took it up with the right people,
+but Sally wasn't the kind of girl that took comfort easily. Life was
+terribly serious to her. She felt disgraced because she hadn't won the
+prize and was sure nobody would want to lend her money to finish her
+course. I left her at last with my heart aching because of the uneven way
+things are distributed in this world.
+
+Our room was a mess when I got back. Our floor was entertaining the floor
+below that night and Hinpoha was in the show. She was standing in the
+middle of the room draping my dresser scarf around her shoulders for a
+fichu, while Agony was piling her hair high on her head for her and
+Oh-Pshaw was pinning on a train made of bath towels.
+
+"Have you a blue velvet band?" Hinpoha demanded thickly, as I entered,
+through the pins she was holding in her mouth.
+
+"No, I haven't," I replied, retiring to a corner to escape the sweeping
+strokes of the hair brush in Agony's hand.
+
+"Why haven't you?" lamented Hinpoha. "I just _have_ to have one."
+
+"What for?" I asked.
+
+"To put around my neck, of course," explained Hinpoha impatiently. "It's
+absolutely necessary to finish off this costume. Go out and scrape one up
+somewhere, Gladys, there's a dear."
+
+I obediently made the rounds, but nowhere did I find the desired blue
+band. Not even a ribbon of the right shade was forthcoming.
+
+"Paint one on," suggested Agony, with an inspiration born of despair.
+"Then you'll surely have it the right shade."
+
+"The paint box is in the bottom dresser drawer," said Hinpoha, warming to
+the plan at once. "Hurry up, Agony."
+
+"Oh, I'll not have time to do it," said Agony, moving toward the door.
+"I've got just fifteen minutes left to sew the ruffle back on the bottom
+of my white dress to wear in chapel to-morrow when we sing for the
+bishop, and it's really more important for the country's cause that I
+have a white dress to wear to-morrow than that you have a blue band
+around your neck to-night. My green and purple plaid silk would look
+chaste and retiring among the spotless white of the choir, now, wouldn't
+it?" And swinging her hairbrush she went out. Oh-Pshaw had already
+disappeared.
+
+"Here, Gladys," said Hinpoha, holding out the box to me, "mix the
+turquoise with a little ultramarine."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, 'Poha, but I can't stop," said I. "I've an interview
+with Miss Allison in five minutes. Get somebody else, dear."
+
+"Everybody's rushed to death," grumbled Hinpoha.
+
+I went off to keep my appointment and Hinpoha took up her watch for a
+passer-by whom she could bully into painting a blue band on her neck.
+Being part of the surprise for the guests she couldn't very well go out
+and risk being seen; she just had to stay in the room and wait for
+someone from our floor to come along. For a long while nobody came, and
+then, when she was about ready to give up, she did hear footsteps coming
+down the corridor. It was dark by that time and she couldn't see who it
+was, but she pounced out like a cat on a mouse and dragged the girl into
+her room.
+
+"Paint a blue band on my neck, quick!" she commanded, thrusting out the
+paint box and switching on the light.
+
+Then she saw who it was. It was Sally Prindle. Hinpoha was a little taken
+aback, but she had about exhausted her patience waiting for someone to
+come by and help her.
+
+"Will you, please?" she pleaded, holding out the paints enticingly.
+
+"What is it?" asked Sally dully, looking at Hinpoha in that crazy costume
+as if she thought she was not in her right mind.
+
+Hinpoha explained the urgent and immediate need of a blue band of a
+certain shade on her neck.
+
+"But I never painted anything before," objected Sally.
+
+"You'll never learn any younger," said Hinpoha, jubilant that Sally
+hadn't walked out with her nose in the air. "Here, take the brush, I'll
+show you what to mix; see, this and this and this."
+
+Under Hinpoha's direction Sally painted the blue band and then regarded
+her handiwork with critical eyes.
+
+"Thanks, that's fine," said Hinpoha, holding out her hand for the paints.
+
+"It needs something more," said Sally slowly, squinting at Hinpoha's
+neck. "Do you mind if I use any more paint?"
+
+"Go as far as you like," said Hinpoha, surprised into flippancy, "let
+your conscience be your guide!"
+
+Sally made swift dabs at the little color squares, her face all puckered
+up in a deep frown of concentration.
+
+"Now, how do you like it?" she asked anxiously, after a few minutes,
+leading Hinpoha to the mirror.
+
+Hinpoha says she screamed right out when she looked, she was so surprised
+and delighted. For on the front of the band Sally had painted the most
+wonderful ornament. It was an enormous ruby, set in a gold frame, the
+design of which simply took your breath away. How she ever did it with
+the colors in Hinpoha's box is beyond us.
+
+"Oh, wonderful!" raved Hinpoha, hugging Sally in her extravagant way. "I
+can't wait until the girls see it. Won't I make a sensation, though! Come
+to the party, won't you please, Sally? We'd love to have you."
+
+Sally shook her head and prepared to depart. "I have to go," she said
+with a return to her old brusque manner. "I have another engagement."
+
+But Hinpoha saw the wistful look that came into her face and she knew
+that Sally's "other engagement" was waiting on table in the boarding
+house where she lived.
+
+Hinpoha's painted jewelry created a sensation all right. Cries of
+admiration rose on every side, and the fact that the stony-faced Sally
+Prindle had done it only added to the sensation. Who would ever have
+suspected that the most inartistic-looking girl in the whole college had
+such a talent up her sleeve?
+
+Two days later there was another excited meeting of the LAST OF THE
+WINNEBAGOS.
+
+"Our fortune's made!" shrieked Agony joyfully, dancing around the room
+and waving a Japanese umbrella over her head.
+
+"Why? How?" we all cried.
+
+"The fad! The fad!" shouted Agony.
+
+"What fad?" I asked. "Do stop capering, Agony, and put down that umbrella
+before you break the lamp shade. We've smashed three already this year."
+
+"Don't you see," continued Agony, breathless, dropping down on the bed
+and fanning herself with the handle of the umbrella. "Hinpoha's started a
+fad with that painted jewelry--blessings on that fool notion of hers of
+painting a band on her neck, anyway! Half a dozen girls came to classes
+this morning with bands painted on their necks and ornaments in front
+that they'd gotten Sally to paint for them. In another day the whole
+college will be after her to paint ornaments on their necks. Don't you
+see what I mean? We've got to join forces with Sally, set up in business
+for the Benefit of the Red Cross--and the cup is ours. Whoop-la! Oh,
+girls, don't you _see_!"
+
+We saw, all right. Inside of two minutes Sally was voted a member of the
+LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS and in a few hours business was in full swing.
+Sally, of course, was the star of the cast, but the rest of us worked
+just as hard as press agents. We placarded the whole college with posters
+announcing that Mme. Sallie Prindle, the distinguished painter of
+jewelry, would create, for the benefit of the Red Cross, any combination
+of precious stones desired by the paintee--charges twenty-five cents and
+up. Students were urged to show their patriotism by appearing in
+classroom adorned with one of the masterpieces of the above-mentioned
+Prindle.
+
+It was a success from the word go. The fad spread like wildfire, and
+Sally spent all her waking hours that were not actually taken up with
+recitations painting jewelry on fair necks and arms. Lessons were almost
+forgotten in the fascinating business of admiring designs and comparing
+effects, and many were the wails because the wonderful things had to be
+washed off all too soon. We had offered our room as studio because
+Sally's was too far away from the center of things, and most of the time
+it was so crowded with eager customers that we couldn't get in ourselves.
+Prices rose as business increased, and the candy box we were using for a
+bank showed signs of collapsing.
+
+The next week the juniors gave a dance and they all ordered dog collars
+for the occasion. Everybody else had to stand aside. Prices for these
+were to be one dollar and up, according to how elaborate they were. How
+Sally ever got them all on without fainting in her tracks will always be
+a mystery. She did a lot of them the night before and then the girls
+wound their necks with gauze bandages to keep them clean. Miss Allison,
+who dropped in during the performance, folded up on the bed and laughed
+until she was weak.
+
+"I never saw anything to equal it, never," she declared. "There's never
+been such a fad in the history of the college." Then she sat up and
+demanded a dog collar herself.
+
+"Why on earth didn't you tell us you could paint jewelry, Sally Prindle?"
+she asked, as she watched those swift fingers doing their wonderful work.
+"Of all things, wasting your time specializing in mathematical figures,
+when all the time you had designs like these in your head!"
+
+"I never knew I could do it," said Sally in a funny, bewildered fashion
+that set the girls all a-laughing. "I never had a paint brush in my hand
+before. _She_,"--pointing to Hinpoha--"put the things into my hands and
+ordered me to paint, and I painted. It came to me all of a sudden."
+
+Did we get the loving cup? I should say we did! By the end of the month
+we had raised five hundred and some odd dollars, more than half of the
+total, and by far the largest amount raised by any group. We were all
+wrecks by the time it was over, because we had to take turns waiting on
+table down at Sally's boarding house to hold her job for her while she
+worked up in our room; besides getting the paint off the girls' necks
+again. That wasn't always an easy job because sometimes she had to use
+things beside water colors to get certain effects.
+
+But it was well worth our while, for the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS have
+achieved undying fame. Migwan started it with her fake Indian legend and
+the rest of us surely carried it to a grand finish. The best of the whole
+business, though, was getting Sally.
+
+Do you know why she was so queer and stand-offish to people all this
+while? She told us in a burst of confidence that night after we had been
+given the loving cup. O Katherine, it would almost break your heart. It
+seems she has a brother who forged a note last year and was sent to
+prison. She considered that money a debt of honor which she must pay
+back, and so she came away to college, planning to work her way through
+and become a teacher of mathematics, which was her strong subject. But
+she had taken her brother's disgrace so to heart that she thought the
+people in college would consider her an outcast if they found it out,
+and, rather than go through the misery of having people drop her after
+they had been friendly with her she made up her mind to make no friends
+at all, and then she didn't need to worry about their finding it out and
+cutting her. It broke her all up to turn down our offers of friendship
+last fall and she left Purgatory because she couldn't bear to see us
+after that.
+
+Think of it, Katherine, what she must have suffered, and nobody to tell
+it to! And everybody calling her a prune! We all cried over her and
+assured her a million times we didn't care a rap what her brother had
+done; we loved her and were proud to have her for a friend. She was a
+different girl after that. All the stiffness came out of her like magic
+and she looked like a person who has been let out of prison after being
+shut up for years. Her great dread all the time had been that somebody
+would find out about her brother; now that we actually knew it and it
+didn't make a bit of difference, the big load was off her spirits. From
+being the most unpopular girl in the class she suddenly became one of the
+most popular.
+
+All her money troubles faded too, because she got work making designs for
+a big Art Craft jewelry shop that paid her enough so she didn't have to
+borrow any more money.
+
+The nicest part of it all, though, was what Agony did. The night that
+Sally Prindle told us about her brother Agony wrote to her father, who, I
+imagine, must be a very influential man, and asked if he could get
+Sally's brother pardoned. Just how Agony's father went about it we will
+never know, but not long afterward Sally got a letter from her brother
+saying that he had been pardoned on the condition that he would enlist in
+the army, which he had done.
+
+Think what that meant to Sally! Instead of being afraid anyone would find
+out she had a brother she could now speak of him as proudly as the other
+girls did who had brothers in the army; could take her place with the
+proudest of them.
+
+Oh, Katherine, if we could only see right through people and know just
+why they do things the way they do, what a wonderful world this would be!
+
+                            Lovingly yours,
+                                                             Gladys.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                     April 25, 19--.
+Dearest Winnies:
+
+I thought it had all happened, that is, everything that was going to
+happen for the next ten years, but it seemed that the excitement of the
+last few weeks was but a beginning, and a very humble beginning at that!
+We had just gotten over the sensation of the fire and the arrest of the
+negro, and school was in running order again and life in general had
+resumed the even tenor of its ways, when, without warning, the sky fell
+on the house of Adams. They say that coming events cast their shadows
+before, and that everything works out according to a fixed rule, but this
+could only have been the exception that proved the rule. Having battered
+around this wicked world for twenty years I thought I was prepared for
+all the shocks that human flesh is heir to, and that no matter what
+happened there was a special rule of etiquette to fit it, but there was
+nothing in all my experience, nor in the Ten Commandments, nor Hoyle, nor
+Avogadro's Hypothesis, nor Grimm's Law, that prepared me for what
+happened next.
+
+Saturday was the fateful day. Saturday is the day on which everything
+happens to me. I was born on Saturday; it was on Saturday I met you and
+landed headfirst into the Winnebago circus; it was on Saturday I heard
+the news that I was not to go to college, and, I suppose, in the order of
+human events, I shall die on Saturday.
+
+On this Saturday morning--can it be only yesterday?--I sat in the doorway
+peacefully knitting and occasionally gazing off into space as my thoughts
+wandered, flitting from subject to subject like the yellow butterflies
+that flashed from flower to flower. The sunshine sprayed over the roof
+and glinted on my amber needles, until it seemed that I was knitting
+sunshine right into the socks. I was filled with a vast contentment that
+throbbed in my temples and quivered in my toes; from head to foot I was
+"in tune with the infinite." That morning father and I had gone over our
+accounts and our balance was so satisfactory that we figured in another
+year we could finish paying off the mortgage.
+
+When I complimented father on his talent for stock farming, he said
+simply: "It's all owing to you. You put new life into us again. We never
+could have done it alone. Besides, I reckon most of the sharp bargaining
+in horseflesh was done by you. You got more out of people than I ever
+did. You've kept up the collections, too. You never got cheated once.
+You're certainly worth your salt as a business manager, child."
+
+Imagine it! Calling me his business manager! I wasn't an absolute
+good-for-nothing, then.
+
+All these things went serenely through my mind as I sat there knitting in
+the sunshine, and laying my plans for summer pleasures. I would take the
+Wenonahs and go off camping somewhere in the woods for a week or two and
+give them a taste of real life in the open. The picture of that little
+camp rose vividly before me, and I planned out the details minutely. We
+would have to have a tent--somewhere or other I must acquire this
+necessary article. A humorous thought came to me of moving the
+schoolhouse out into the woods for a camper's dwelling, and in
+imagination I saw it bumping along behind us on our journey, with Justice
+walking along beside it, carrying the chimney in his arms. I laughed
+aloud at my incongruous fancies, startling a hen that was clucking at my
+feet so that she fled with a scandalized squawk, stopping a few yards
+away to look around at me inquiringly, as if trying to figure out what
+was coming from me next. The hen broke up my fancies and I returned to my
+knitting with a start to find I had dropped several stitches and had a
+place in the heel of my sock that looked like the stem end of an apple. I
+raveled back and painstakingly re-knitted the heel, then I laid my
+knitting in my lap and gazed dreamily up the road, resting my eyes on the
+tender greenness of the fields.
+
+Sitting thus I saw an automobile coming into view along the road. I
+watched it idly, glittering in the sunlight. To my surprise it turned
+into our lane and approached the house. I went down to the drive to meet
+it; tourists frequently stopped at the houses for water or for
+directions, and I would save these people the trouble of getting out of
+the car. The big machine rolled up to the drive and came to a standstill
+with a soft sliding of brakes.
+
+Then a loud, hearty voice called out, "Why here she is now! Katherine
+Adams, don't you know me? Don't suppose you do, with these infernal
+glasses on."
+
+I looked hard at the man in the long linen dust coat and tourist cap who
+sat alone in the car; then my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
+
+"Why, Judge Dalrymple!" I exclaimed, starting forward with a cry of joy
+and seizing the outstretched hand. "Where did you come from? Are you
+touring? How did you ever happen to stop here?" I tumbled the questions
+out thick and fast.
+
+"I didn't 'happen' to stop here," said the Judge in his decisive way.
+"I've been rolling over these endless roads for three days on purpose to
+get here. Lord, what a God-forsaken country! And now that I _am_ here at
+last," he added, "aren't you going to ask me in? Where's your father?"
+
+"Excuse me," said I, blushing furiously. "I was so taken by surprise at
+seeing you that I even forgot my own name, to say nothing of my manners.
+Come right in."
+
+I settled him in the best chair in the house, brought him a glass of
+water and left him talking to mother in his hearty way while I went out
+in search of father. Father was painting a shed when I found him, and he
+came just the way he was, with streaks of paint on his jumper and
+overalls. If he had had any inkling of what he was being summoned to----!
+
+Judge Dalrymple was just as pleased to meet father in his paint-streaked
+jumper as if he had been a senator in a silk hat, and after the first
+moment of embarrassment father felt as if the Judge were an old-time
+friend.
+
+Then the Judge began to explain why he had come, and the bomb dropped on
+the roof of the house of Adams. I couldn't comprehend it at first any
+more than father could. It sounded like a page out of Grimm's Fairy
+Tales. But it seemed that he knew all about the company my father had
+lost his money in last summer, and he and some other men bought it up and
+set it on its feet again. War orders had suddenly boomed it and it was
+now solid as a rock. The original stockholders still held their shares
+and would draw their dividends as soon as they were declared, which Judge
+Dalrymple prophesied would be soon. Our days of struggling were over. We
+were "hard-uppers" no longer; we were "well off" at last. I left the
+Judge and father talking over the details of the business and wandered
+aimlessly around the dooryard, trying to comprehend the meaning of what
+had happened to us, and capering as each new thing occurred to me. My
+narrow horizon had suddenly rolled back and the whole world lay before
+me. College--travel--study--return to my beloved friends in the
+east--best doctors for mother--all those things kaleidoscoped before me,
+leaving me giddy and faint. I seized a hoe and began to demolish an ant
+hill for sheer exuberance of spirits.
+
+"What's the matter, have you had a sunstroke?" asked Justice Sherman,
+suddenly appearing beside me from somewhere.
+
+"Worse than that, it's an earthquake," I replied. "Take a deep breath,
+Justice Sherman, because you're going to need it in a minute."
+
+Then I told him about father's investing his money in the western oil
+company last summer and apparently losing it, and how the company had
+unexpectedly come to life again.
+
+"Whew!" said Justice, looking dazed for a minute; then he expressed the
+sincerest joy at our good fortune I have ever heard one mortal express at
+the prosperity of another. But after his congratulations were all made he
+stopped short as if he had just thought of something and then he said
+slowly, "I suppose you'll be going away from here now; moving out west,
+possibly to San Francisco?" It seemed to me that he looked very sober at
+the thought.
+
+"Not if I know it," I replied decisively. "It'll be the east for me, if I
+go anywhere, where the Winnebagos have their hunting grounds."
+
+"You _are_ going away then?" asked Justice composedly.
+
+"I don't know," I replied truthfully. "Nothing is settled yet. Give us
+time to catch our breath. In the meantime, come in and meet our guest,
+the new president of the Pacific Refining Company, who came to tell us
+the good news."
+
+Justice assumed an exaggerated air of dignity and formality that upset my
+composure so I could hardly keep my face straight as I walked into the
+house.
+
+"Oh, Judge," I called blithely, "here is the rest of the happy family.
+Justice, this is Judge Dalrymple."
+
+Then the second bomb dropped.
+
+For, at the sight of Justice, Judge Dalrymple sprang out of his chair
+with a hoarse sound in his throat as if he were choking, and stood
+staring at him as if he had seen a ghost. Justice looked fit to drop.
+
+"Father!" he said weakly.
+
+"Justice!" said Judge Dalrymple with dry lips. "How did you get here?
+Where have you been all this time?"
+
+"Out west," replied Justice.
+
+"Why didn't you tell us where you were??" asked the Judge, sitting down
+heavily again.
+
+"I merely followed your instructions," replied Justice with dignity. "You
+told me to get out; that you didn't ever want to hear from me again, and
+I took you at your word."
+
+"I was a fool, a blind fool, and in a great rage when I said that. I
+didn't mean it," said the Judge, in a choking voice.
+
+"But you said it, nevertheless," replied Justice, "and I was hot-headed
+and went."
+
+"What have you been doing all this time?" asked the Judge curiously.
+
+"Roughing it," replied Justice, in the tone of one who has great
+adventures to tell, "until I came here and turned into a professor." A
+humorous twinkle lit up his eye as he mentioned the word "Professor."
+
+In a daze of astonishment father, mother and I watched this unexpected
+meeting and reconciliation between father and son. In due time we had all
+the story. Judge Dalrymple had set his heart on having his oldest son,
+Justice, become a lawyer like himself, and go into his law firm as junior
+partner. But Justice had no liking for the law. All he wanted to do was
+tinker with electrical things. It was the only thing in the world he
+cared for. When he got through college and his father insisted upon his
+entering the law school he flatly refused. There was a scene and he and
+his father quarreled bitterly. His father told him he could either go to
+law school or get out and hoe for himself and he chose the latter. He
+left home. All the while he had been in college he had been working on an
+electrical device to enable deaf men to receive wireless messages. He now
+went to work on this and finished it, and, boylike, thought his fortune
+was made. But it seemed fortune had turned her back on him. He had no
+money himself to market the device and he could not succeed in
+interesting anyone with capital. He spent many weary days, going from one
+place to another with his invention, only to meet with failure on all
+sides. He had always had delicate health and the long hours he had spent
+indoors working on his beloved experiments finally told on him and he
+developed a throat trouble which made it impossible for him to stay in
+the north. One day, in a moment of great discouragement, he threw his
+invention into the New York harbor and sorrowfully gave up his dream of
+being an inventor. He was down and out but still too proud to write home
+and ask help from his father. He had a chance to act as chauffeur for a
+party of ladies who wanted to tour the west and in this manner he made
+his way to Texas. He worked there on a sheep ranch for a number of
+months; then, seized with a desire to see the country, he worked his way
+through the Territory and into Arkansas, and finally into the township of
+Spencer, where he was attacked by robbers one night on the road, robbed
+of all his belongings and left lying there with his head cut open. Then
+it was that he had wandered into our stable, was found, and nursed back
+to health.
+
+Our climate agreed with him so well that he decided to stay for a while,
+and got the position of teaching in the high school at Spencer, which
+wasn't very hard work. The long walk or drive in the open, back and forth
+every day, and his sleeping in the airy shack, gradually worked a cure to
+his throat, and brought back the health he had lost through overwork and
+disappointment.
+
+Besides--just listen to this, will you--he said that I had given him such
+an amazing new outlook on life that he wanted to stay as near to me as he
+could and learn my philosophy. He had been utterly discouraged when he
+came, had lost his grip on things, and didn't care a hang what became of
+him, but I had put new life and ambition back into him. Imagine it! My
+philosophy!
+
+He had resolved to have nothing more to do with his father after he had
+turned him out, and dropped the name of Dalrymple, going by the name of
+Justice Sherman. His full name was Justice Sherman Dalrymple.
+
+Thus ended the mystery of the scholarly sheep herder. The son of _my_
+Judge Dalrymple! I couldn't believe it, but it was true beyond a doubt. I
+_did_ know a hawk from a handsaw, after all. No wonder he had looked so
+sad sometimes when he thought no one was watching him, with such memories
+to brood over! No wonder he had acted so queerly when I told him what we
+had done to Antha and Anthony up on Ellen's Isle. They were his younger
+brother and sister!
+
+Judge Dalrymple was speaking to Sherman again. "So you threw your
+invention into the New York Harbor, did you?" he said regretfully. "It's
+too bad, because some one to whom you showed it has been writing and
+writing to the house about it. I couldn't forward the letter because I
+had no idea where you were. The Government wants to try out your
+invention. I never dreamed that those fool experiments you were forever
+making amounted to anything. I see now you were wiser than I. Come home,
+boy, and tinker all you like. We'll throw the lawyer business into the
+discard. Could you build up your thingummyjig again?"
+
+At this astonishing news Justice began whooping like a wild Indian.
+"Could I build it up again?" he shouted. "Just give me a chance. Just
+watch me!" He seized me around the waist and began jigging with me all
+over the floor.
+
+"Save the pieces," I panted, sinking into a chair and making a vain
+attempt to smooth back my flying hair.
+
+Then I noticed that Judge Dalrymple was looking at me with eyes filled
+with awe, not to say fear.
+
+"Girl, what are you?" he asked in a strange voice. "Are you Fate? Every
+time I come in touch with you, you work some miracle in my household.
+First you perform a magic in my two younger children, and then when I
+attempt to make some slight return for your great service and seek you
+out, I find that you have also drawn my other child to you from out of
+the Vast and worked as great a miracle in him. Are you human or
+superhuman, that you can play with people's destinies like that? Under
+what star were you born, anyway?"
+
+"Weren't any stars at all," I replied, laughing. "The sun was shining!"
+
+O my Winnies, what a day this has been! The sun rose exactly as on any
+other day, without any warning of what was coming, and yet before he set
+the world had been turned topsy turvy for five people! Isn't life
+glorious, though? Mercy, but I'm glad I was born!
+
+                          Breathlessly yours,
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                     April 27, 19--.
+Oh, My Winnies:
+
+How can I tell it? Father died to-day. Heart failure, brought on by
+excitement over the fire and the coming of Judge Dalrymple. Think of it!
+After all these years of hard work and grinding poverty and bitter
+disappointment, to fall just at the moment when success and prosperity
+were within reach. Oh, the terrible irony of Life!
+
+                          Your broken-hearted
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                      KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
+
+
+                                                        May 9, 19--.
+Dearest Winnies:
+
+Thanks, a thousand times, for all the beautiful, comforting letters you
+wrote. When did anyone ever have such friends as I? Everyone has been so
+kind, so sympathetic. The whole countryside turned out to help us. Judge
+Dalrymple and Justice are still here, straightening up father's affairs.
+The farm and the stock are to be sold. Mother is sick; father's death was
+a great shock to her. As soon as she is better she and I are going home
+with Judge Dalrymple for a visit. We are going to motor back with him and
+Justice--won't it be glorious? Justice is going back home to live. He and
+his father have become great pals; it is perfect joy to watch them going
+about like two boys, arm in arm. You never see one without the other any
+more. Now that they are together it is possible to see quite a
+resemblance, but Justice is much handsomer than his father ever could
+have been. Sandhelo acted just as though he remembered the Judge from
+last summer; he squealed when he saw him and put his nose into his
+pocket. We had a council about what should become of Sandhelo and finally
+decided that he was to be sent home to Judge Dalrymple's to be a pet for
+Antha and Anthony. Sandhelo nodded solemnly when we told him, as much as
+to say it was all right with him. I have a queer feeling all the time
+that that mule is more than half human. He has such an uncanny way of
+taking people's affairs into his own hands, sometimes. Did he not
+recognize Justice in the road that night when I would have fled from him,
+thinking he was the negro, Solomon, and didn't he scare Solomon into
+confessing that he had set fire to Elijah Butts' cotton storehouse?
+
+To-morrow is May 10th, the date that school closes in this district, and
+I have planned a farewell celebration for the scholars. I am going to
+give them "for keeps" all the things that came from the House of the Open
+Door, besides all the splendid things that came for Christmas, to be the
+property of the Corners schoolhouse from that time on henceforward, to
+make of it another House of the Open Door.
+
+                           May 10th, Evening.
+
+Another amazing day! Do you know, I half believe that I have been
+transported in a dream back to the land of witches and fairies, and have
+to keep pinching myself to make sure I'm still myself, Katherine Adams,
+and not some other girl who has gotten into my shoes by mistake. I have a
+dreadful fear that I will find my real self sitting in the road
+somewhere, tumbled off old Major's back as he ambled along, reading in
+some book of romance the wonderful things that are happening to this new,
+strange self. And presently it will be time to go home and help with
+supper, and romance will come to an end with the closing of the book.
+
+But I guess I'm real, all right. Before the door stands Judge Dalrymple's
+car, latest model; its loud, raucous voice containing no hint of elfin
+horns as it announces the return of Justice and his father from a spin in
+the country. Beside me on the table is the deed of sale of our property,
+made out to one Jim Wiggin, and drawn up on very substantial-looking
+paper; and on my wrist sparkles the beautiful little gold watch which is
+a very tangible souvenir of this last amazing day. It ticks away
+companionably, as if to reassure me of its realness. I have named it
+Thomas Tickle, and we are going to be inseparable friends.
+
+You remember I told you I had planned a little last-day-of-school
+celebration for the scholars? Well!!! As it turned out, it made the
+Pageant look like five cents' worth of laundry soap by comparison. When I
+got to school in the morning I found the schoolhouse draped with flags
+and bunting, inside and outside, and my desk piled a foot high with great
+red roses.
+
+Then the people began to arrive. It seemed the whole county was there. My
+eyes began to pop out of my head as one after another of the celebrities
+began to arrive. The School Board from Spencer came _en phalanx_, and in
+marching order behind them came the high school pupils with Justice at
+their head. The parents of the pupils were all there in state and it soon
+became evident that we would have to hold our closing exercises outdoors,
+as the schoolhouse would not hold one-tenth of the crowd.
+
+I was rushing around like a fire engine with the steering gear gone,
+trying to find things for various mothers to sit on, when I was conscious
+of a solemn hush, and with a flourish the county school commissioners
+drove up and with them came Miss Fairlee, the Commission Lady.
+
+Then there broke loose a sound of revelry by day. My scholars did the
+folk dances and gave the little play I taught them; the Camp Fire Girls
+held a ceremonial meeting and gave demonstrations of poncho rolling, camp
+cooking, etc., while the boys had an exhibition of the articles they had
+made from wood, out of the Dan Beard book.
+
+Then in a speech, which was more earnest than eloquent, I gave to the
+school the furnishings from the House of the Open Door, together with the
+graphophone, the lantern and the slides, to have and to hold, to be the
+foundation of a new House of the Open Door. There was tumultuous
+applause, and I sat down, red and perspiring, and my part of the show was
+over.
+
+Thereupon, up rose Absalom Butts, punched in the back as I could see by
+three or four of the other boys, and, swallowing his fourteen-year-old
+embarrassment as well as he could, he thrust into my hands a little blue
+velvet case, mumbling the while, "It's yours. From the school. In token
+of our--of our----"
+
+Here he forgot his speech, looked around wildly, and then burst out:
+
+"We're givin' it to you because you showed us such a good time, and we're
+sorry you're goin' away!" Then he fled to his place and hid his blushes
+behind Henry Smoot's red head.
+
+I opened the case and took out a dear little gold wrist watch. I started
+to thank them, but choked utterly when I thought of the sacrifices it
+must have cost some of those people to help buy that watch.
+
+But this was no time for tears. The main dish of the feast was being
+brought in. The chief of the County school commissioners, the guest of
+honor, rose pompously and made his way to the front after being
+ceremoniously introduced by Elijah Butts. After much clearing of the
+throat he began a flowery speech about the fame that had been gained
+throughout the county by the little schoolhouse at our Corners on account
+of its Red Cross activities and Patriotic Pageants; how it had been made
+the social center for the people all around and had helped educate them
+to better things; how the boys and girls had learned more useful things
+from me than from anyone else who had ever taught there; and how Miss
+Fairlee, who had come from the East to study rural school conditions in
+our section had been quite carried away with my work, and so on, _ad
+infinitum_.
+
+Then, having loaded his cannon very carefully, so to speak, he proceeded
+to fire it into the crowd with telling effect. The County school
+commissioners, he announced with a fine air of jocularity, had heard that
+I was carrying the schoolhouse around with me wherever I went, and as
+they were afraid it might get mislaid some day they had voted to build a
+new brick schoolhouse on a foundation; one that couldn't be moved. A new
+schoolhouse for our district! Nobody had ever dared hope for such a
+thing, not even in their wildest dreams. And it seems that I had
+precipitated all this good fortune!
+
+Later on I happened to hear this same commissioner congratulating Elijah
+Butts on the good teacher he had picked, and Elijah swelled up like a
+pouter pigeon and replied:
+
+"Yes, sir, I spotted her for a good one the minute I laid eyes on her. It
+was me that persuaded the Board to hire her when some of them was holdin'
+back, favorin' a different kind of female. Yessir, it was me that picked
+her!"
+
+Justice, who had also overheard the conversation, winked solemnly and we
+both fled where we could have our laugh out unnoticed.
+
+But the best part of it all came after the Big Show was over. Miss
+Fairlee came up and took me by the arm and strolled away with me.
+
+"My dear," she said, "would you consider leaving this place and coming
+East with me? I need an assistant in my Social Settlement work for the
+summer, and there's no one I've met in the whole country that would fill
+the bill as well as you. For handling difficult situations you are a
+perfect marvel. Your talents are wasted out here--anyone can carry on the
+work that you have started so wonderfully. Won't you please come?"
+
+We talked about it a bit, and where do you suppose this Social Settlement
+is? Where but in the one spot on earth that I'd rather be than any other!
+The same city, my dears, that has the honor of being your home! It's all
+settled now, and I am to go, after my visit to the Dalrymples. Mother is
+going into a big Sanitarium, and I am going to work with Miss Fairlee
+through the summer.
+
+Clear the track! The Winnebago Special is about to start once more! O my
+Winnies, don't you see the miracle of it all? Here I was, pining to live
+in a House by the Side of the Road, when all the time I _was_ living in a
+House by the Side of the Road! It was my little despised schoolhouse. I
+was sent here by fate to prove myself worthy or unworthy of what she had
+in store for me. I was taken away from you that I might come back to a
+richer, fuller life than I had dreamed of in the old days. It is all part
+of a Plan, so big and wonderful that I lose my breath when I think of it.
+But whatever the Plan may turn out to be in the future, there's only one
+thing about it that interests me now, and that is, I'm coming back to
+you. I'm coming back! Back to my Winnies! Hang out the latchstring and
+remove everything breakable, for the wanderer is coming home!
+
+                          Your thrice-blessed
+                                                          Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+                       *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Punctuation and obvious typographical errors were corrected
+without comment.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE OPEN
+ROAD***
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