Billy helped Winona in, felt for the matches, and got in himself. Tom pushed them off from shore. It was all done with the solemnity of a funeral procession. Winona looked at the boys’ excited faces, and laughed.
“We’re not being rowed off to execution,” she explained, though she felt a little excited herself. “I’m perfectly calm—O-oh! Gracious! What’s that?”
“That” was a long, unearthly wail which seemed to come from the inside of the canoe itself. It increased and quavered and howled and died down again.
“Oh, that’s us,” said Billy placidly. “Tom and I borrowed Boots Morris’s father’s Gabriel horn and fastened it into the canoe this afternoon. Forgot to tell you. Don’t you like it?”
“Lovely!” gasped Winona. “Only—only it was a little sudden, the first time. I thought Mr. Bones was expressing his feelings.”
“It adds to the effect all right,” said Billy proudly.
“It certainly does!” said Winona. “Yes, we have a tow-rope, marshal. Tie us on, please.”
“Well, you do look like you came from somewhere else!” said the marshal—he was the dock owner by day—as he fastened the “Ship o’ the Fiend” into line. “I don’t want anything more like D. T.’s than you be!”
“That’s what I call a delicate compliment,” said Billy, lifting his mask so he could grin with freedom.
“M’ yes, I suppose so,” said Winona doubtfully. “Are we going to start soon, marshal?”
“In about ten minutes,” said the marshal, seeming to be still entranced with the canoe and its decorations. “They burnt one o’ my great-grandmothers, a couple o’ hundred years ago, for doin’ not much worse’n you be,” he added.
“We ought to get something, then,” said Winona, thinking more of a possible prize than of the marshal’s family history.
“You sure ought!” he said darkly, handing them a number and passing on to the next boat.
The ten minutes seemed very long and tedious, but between eating some sandwiches which Winona had thoughtfully provided, exchanging compliments with the neighboring boats, and getting their Greek fire ready to set off, they passed somehow. The whistle blew, and the long trail of boats, canoes, and floats started on its slow and winding way. The float was tied far off, at the beginning of the procession, where they could not see it. Marie’s canoe was just in sight, but not near enough to talk to—a big silver cobweb spotted with lantern-flies, and Marie and Edith dressed as the Spider and the Fly, at either end of it.
Finally the whistle blew. Billy tucked a final piece of sandwich beneath his mask, and resigned himself to tending the Greek fire for the rest of the evening. As for Winona, finding nothing particular to do, she pulled a book out from under a cushion and began to read.
“Winona, would you kindly lay away that piece of literatuah and wo’k the Gabriel ho’n?” asked Billy in the softest and Kentuckiest of voices. Winona hadobserved that when Billy’s Southern accent reasserted itself he was generally in deadly earnest. She meekly put the book away and began to press the bulb of the horn at regular intervals.
“Oh, I do wish we could see us, and be us, too!” she said in one of the intervals.
“M’m! Don’t I?” said Billy. “I don’t know, though. Maybe we’d be disappointed.”
“I know we wouldn’t,” said Winona confidently, and pressed the horn again, which put a stop to conversation.
Meanwhile Tom, on the grandstand, was seeing them, and being very proud of his relationship to the “Ship o’ the Fiend.” The black-covered canoe, with its belt of shivering fire and its weird occupants, showed up gloriously. The irregularly hung lanterns looked more like skulls than Winona had dared to hope in her wildest moments. All the little demons and skeletons danced realistically on their invisible wires in the air, and, crown of all, the nearly-life-size skeleton swung above, with the witch and the demon watching him from either end, as he roasted above the Greek fire. An occasional shriek from the Gabriel horn gave the final touch. The whole thing was like a vision out of a Poe story, or some German goblin-legend. The people took to clapping as they went by.
“I believe they’re clapping for us!” said Winona awedly, as a burst of it came to their ears over the water.
“Sure they are,” said Billy. “Shows their goodsense, too. It’s a mighty good looking canoe we have.”
“Can we photograph you, please?” said a polite voice before Winona could answer—and lo, the reporter’s boat!
“Thisisglory!” said Winona, snapping down her mask, and being frankly delighted. “Just think, Billy, we may be in the paper!”
The reporter asked questions and fussed with his flashlight apparatus, and finally took two exposures. They kept very still while the flashlight was exploding, and answered the reporters in full.
“The designer of your decorations certainly was very clever, and had a vivid imagination,” ended the smallest reporter as the press-boat went on its way.
Winona sat up straight, and looked very proud.
“At last I’m appreciated!” she said. “Don’t you wish you had a vivid imagination, too, Billy?”
“If you straighten up much more,” said Billy, leaning over to light fresh Greek fire, “you will certainly hit the decorations, and something will bust.”
“I don’t care!” and Winona laughed excitedly. “It’s my first chance at being famous, and you can’t think how nice it is! Listen to that!”
The applause along the banks was certainly continuous enough to make someone older and staider than Winona happy. The canoes were making the circuit of the upper part of the lake now. In the centre was the royal float, where the king and queen of the carnival sat.
When the procession had gone down one side ofthe lake and up the other it would make a circle about this royal float, and the prizes would be awarded.
They were almost through with this, only a little way from the royal float, when a small green canoe full of sightseers whirled against them, sent by some sudden twist of wind or water. And—neither Winona nor Billy could ever understand how it happened—the shock of the blow, or perhaps some mischievous person in the other boat, parted the ropes that held Winona’s canoe lightly to the canoes before and behind it, and sent them far to one side of the lake, out of the radius of the lights. The wind, naturally, took this particular time to blow hard. The decorations made the canoe top-heavy and hard to guide, and they dared not paddle fast for fear of upsetting. They could see from their outer darkness the canoes they had been between being hastily tied together.
Winona paddled frantically. “Do you think we can get back in time to be judged?” she panted.
“We’ll try,” said Billy, working his paddle more slowly, but with greater effect than Winona’s.
“No—oh, Billy, Billy! There goes the signal—they’ve given the launch prize, and they are to give the float and rowboat prizes right afterwards, and then the canoes! There goes the gun again. Oh,dear!”
Winona had really been working harder than she should have over her canoe decorations, and helping with the float besides, as well as doing her routine camp-work. She had been “all keyed up” by the evening’s excitement, and her hopes of a prize, and this suddendownfall of her hopes was too much for her self-control. Billy saw two large tears roll down her cheeks from under her mask.
“Poor Winnie! It certainly is a shame!” he said.
“I suppose that horrid little gunboat canoe named ‘Flossie’ will get our prize,” mourned Winona, casting fortitude to the wind—which must have carried it quite a way, for it was blowing more and more strongly. “I know we’d have had one of the fourth prizes, too!”
“You have the glory, anyway,” he said. “Everybody applauded us more than they did anything else except that big Queen Elizabeth float.”
“But I wanted the money, and I wanted to have the Camp Fire have a prize! There, Billy, I won’t be a coward any more. I’m tired, I think, or I wouldn’t have acted like this kind of an idiot,” she said bravely, pushing up her mask to dry her eyes, and trying to smile.
“You’ve worn yourself out over this decoration business, that’s what the matter is,” said Billy. “Do you mind telling me what you want the money for?”
“No, certainly not. I wanted to get a pair of silk stockings apiece for Adelaide and me. I know she wants a pair dreadfully, because she never had them, and if I got a pair like them for myself she’d be more apt to take them—and—well, I wanted a pair, too!”
Billy registered an inward vow that his Aunt Lydia should manage it just as soon as it was humanly possible. He knew that she would do more than that for Winona, for whom she had conceived a strong liking.
“Poor kid, she’s all worked up about it,” he murmured,forgetting his own disappointment, for he, too, had hoped that his canoe would get a prize.
But help was in sight. About five minutes later (though Winona and Billy always swore it was a full half hour) they felt a violent rocking, and heard the insistent wuff-wuff-wuff of a steam launch.
“Here, catch a-hold and tie yourself on,” said the welcome voice of the marshal out of the darkness, without the least waste of words or time.
As soon as Billy’s excited fingers could do it they were fastened to the end of the marshal’s official launch, and bobbing off towards the royal float at a tremendous rate of speed.
“How did you come to come hunt for us?” Winona called to the marshal as they went.
“You were knocked out o’ line an’ got blowed away, didn’t you?” answered the marshal.
“Then we’re going to be judged—we’re going to be judged!” she rejoiced. “Oh, do you think we may get a prize yet?”
“Shouldn’t wonder but you got something,” said the laconic marshal. “Here we be.”
He bent over and unfastened them.
“You’re late, you see,” he said, “and you’ll just have to paddle out an’ get your sentence alone.”
Winona’s heart beat frantically, but she straightened up in the canoe, and she and Billy, standing up at front and back (it was risky work with the top-heavy decorations, but they never thought of that till afterwards), paddled out into the open space before theroyal float. All the other entries had been judged. Over in the place where the prize-winners were Winona had time to see that the Camp Fire float and Marie’s canoe were herded with the others. So even if she got nothing the glory of Camp Karonya was safe. It was trying to wait there alone, with everyone staring, but it did not last long. The red-and-gold herald came forward very soon.
“First prize, canoe class!” he said—and Winona almost lost her balance. “Awarded to Miss Winona Merriam of Camp Karonya, and Mr. William Lee, of Boy Scouts’ Patrol Number Six, for their entry ‘The Ship of the Fiend.’ Twenty-five dollars.”
The clapping burst out again. When it was done Winona and Billy started to paddle back to the prize-winners’ enclosure, but a gesture of the herald stopped them. They paused, a little puzzled.
“Do they want us to say thank you?” wondered Winona.
Before Billy could turn the canoe the left-hand red-and-gold herald walked forth.
“Silver loving cup for greatest originality of conception also goes to Miss Merriam and Mr. Lee,” read the herald.
They were clapped again—they could see Tom, on the grandstand, standing up and waving his hat—and then at last the marshal beckoned them to cross to the sparkling ring of other craft in the background. The winning launches, floats, rowboats and canoes were toact as a guard of honor to escort the royal float back to the grandstand, where the court carriages for the king and queen of the carnival waited.
They went to this place at last, and paused by their friends, the Camp Fire float and Marie’s canoe.
“We got a fourth prize!” called Marie gayly as Winona stopped by her. “Oh, Winona, you darling! You always were a mascot!”
“Marie always was an angel,” thought Winona to herself. Edith was not so selfless.
“Congratulations, Win,” she said bravely, holding out a tinsel-wrapped wrist across the canoes. “I’m glad you got it—but I wish we could have had something better. I think we deserved it.”
“You certainly did,” said Winona warmly. “But it doesn’t much matter, you know, Edith. The main thing people will notice is that Camp Karonya landed three prizes. And think of that loving-cup sitting up, with ‘Won by Camp Karonya,’ on it!”
“Aren’t you going to have your name put on it?” asked Edith.
“Certainly not!” said Winona. “It’s a Camp trophy. I shall put my name on the back of the check for twenty-five dollars. That is pleasure enough.”
“I think we’ve ‘done noble,’ all of us,” said Marie. The canoes were paddling off by now, but the going was slow, and they could still talk.
“What did the float get?” asked Winona. “You know we were blown off in the dark, and lost track of events till the marshal came after us.”
“Second,” answered both girls together.
“You were the belle of the ball,” added Marie.
“Well, I don’t think we did so badly,” declared Edith. “A first, second and a fourth prize all to one camp. I hope nobody thinks we got more than our share.”
“We didn’t,” said Winona. “Oh, I’m so happy!”
“I’m rather pleased myself,” said Billy’s quiet voice from the other end of the canoe.
But it was not until the royal float had been escorted home, and everything was broken up, and Tom and Billy were paddling Winona back to camp, that he said what he really thought.
“I’m mighty glad you got that first prize,” he said. “You deserved it if anybody ever did, for being such a little sport about dropping out of the float. I’d blow a lot of that money in right away if I were you, to congratulate myself.”
“After I’ve paid back what I owe certain people,” said Winona, “I shall divide with the Camp treasury. Even then I’ll have a lot more than I ever thought of getting.”
“Anyway, you were a real sport, and you deserved everything that was coming to you,” repeated Billy, in which Tom agreed with him. And when your brother approves of you and says so you can generally be sure that you have done something remarkably right.
Next day was the “cold gray dawn of the morning after.” Not that it was particularly cold or gray, but there was all the unnailing of the float to do, and the dismantling of the two decorated canoes. The girls wound the tinsel off carefully for use on future Christmas trees, and packed away in a box what other decorations were not perishable, for you never know when you’re going to need things. Otherwise they sat around and gloated softly over Camp Karonya’s exceeding brilliancy in carrying off prizes in large quantities.
Mrs. Bryan would not let Winona divide her money with the Camp, because they had enough already to see them through the rest of the time they were to spend there; and then, too, the second prize that the float had won was fifteen dollars.
Nothing else memorable happened that day, except that Nataly Lee left for home. She was thinner and in better condition than she had been when she came, but she frankly didn’t like the life. To her, carrying water, instead of being a lark, was a nuisance. She had no particular pride in working for beads, and it was thought she was hungry for paper novels. It worried her, too, that she was getting burned brown. So she went back to her mother. The girls saw her off, and sang her a cheer, and were as good as they could be. But it is not to be denied that Camp Karonya felt a little relief at her going.
After that nothing happened but regular camp work for three days. And then Louise proceeded to distinguish herself. It was to be expected.
Tom and Billy had taken Winona and Louise off for a day’s fishing in the canoe. As usual, Winona and Louise provided the lunch, the boys the fishing-tackle and the canoe, and the fish were to be divided at the end of the day. They had fished most of the lazy, sunny morning, and it was noon. They climbed out of the canoe by a spring, washed their hands, and set out the lunch; the canoe was too fishy to be used as a dining-hall.
“Do you think that four of us can possibly eat all that?” inquired Billy, eying the piles of sandwiches, the veal loaf, the whole cake and the can of pears which graced the paper napkins on the grass.
“Well,” explained Winona, “the truth is, Louise and I rather doubled up on this lunch. We were both afraid there wouldn’t be enough, and each went separately and brought half a chocolate cake. You see it’s cut down the middle. I merely joined the twin halves for the sake of looks. But do you think that’s too many sandwiches for four people with real appetites?”
“I don’t,” said Tom decidedly. “I’ll attend to anything that’s left over. A very nice amount of lunch—just right. Watch me!”
But they did not watch him because they were otherwise engaged. None of them had small appetites, and they all did good work. Just the same when they were through there were a generous piece of cake, a fat slice of veal loaf, and seven sandwiches left.
“I told you so,” said Billy. “Here, Tommy, it is up to you. Have these seven nice sandwiches.”
“Can’t be done,” said Tom regretfully. “I’ve had that many. I had three pieces of cake, too.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Billy. “A gentleman’s word of honor——”
He prepared to jump on Tom and hold him, while Louise held a sandwich ready to insert.
“Ow!” said Tom. “Help! This is cruelty to animals. Pry him off, Winnie!”
“Oh, let up, please!” said Winona. “You know, he might explode, and mother’d feel badly.”
Billy took one knee off, and Tom wriggled more vigorously. Louise relented, and the two girls were trying to pull Billy off Tom. They had almost succeeded, when a little rustle behind them made Winona, whose senses were the most alert, let go and turn. The others followed her eyes. They sat up and looked, and Tom jumped to his feet and began to dust himself off.
The newcomer, who was a most forlorn and bedraggled little girl, spoke very welcome words.
“Me’s very hundry!” she said pathetically.
“You poor little thing!” said Louise. “Come here, dear; there’s lots for you to eat.” The little girl made straight for her. Louise got out a fresh paper napkin, and piled sandwiches, loaf, cake and all on it.
“Wait a minute,” said Billy. “Is all that good for so little a girl—hadn’t you better give her one at a time?”
Louise held the veal loaf poised in air on her fork. “Will your mother let you eat this?” she asked.
THE CHILD BEGAN TO EAT EVERYTHING AT ONCETHE CHILD BEGAN TO EAT EVERYTHING AT ONCE
The bedraggled small child sat down on the grass, as if the words were an invitation. She was a pretty, dirty child of perhaps five, dressed only in a soiled and ragged underwaist and petticoat, and with a mane of very long and heavy hair, all tangles and elf-locks. Her hair was yellow and her eyes big and blue, and she would have been pretty had she been cared-for looking.
“Ain’t got any mother,” she said, “just Vicky. She lets me.”
“Poor little thing!” said Louise again, and handed her the veal loaf. The child began to eat everything at once, with an eagerness which made it certain she had told the truth, at least, about being hungry.
“What’s your name, kiddie? You’ll tell me, won’t you?” asked Billy, when she seemed to have taken the edge off her appetite. He bent down to her with a sympathetic expression which he possessed at times, and which—or something about him—won the hearts of most small children he had dealings with.
“Sandy,” she said through large mouthfuls.
“Sandy what?” inquired Louise.
“Sandy Mitchell. Gimme more cake?”
As she had had two large slices, it was thought best not to give her any more.
“Mercy, no!” said Winona, as Louise was cutting it, in spite of prudence. “Not another bit. We don’t want her to die on our hands. You’d better come over here by the spring, dear, and let me wash your hands.”
Sandy got up immediately, with the placid remark, “It might-a given me a pain, anyway,” and allowed herhands to be washed, and dried on a fresh paper napkin.
“Poor little cowed thing!” exclaimed Louise at this instant obedience. “Sandy, dear, won’t your people be worried about you?”
“Nope,” said Sandy.
“And where do you live?”
“Way, way off,” she said. “We just comed. I’ll show you to-morrow.”
“Poor little dear thing!” said Louise. “How pretty she is! Winnie, I’ve a good mind to adopt her.”
“Having only five at home,” murmured Tom.
“From the way she talks her people wouldn’t care,” said Louise. “Maybe Camp Karonya could take care of her. We will till we go back, anyway.”
“She must belong to one of those poor families along the west branch,” said Tom. “Three miles away, and we can’t possibly get there by canoeing, because we’d have to paddle back seven miles before we could paddle over the three. Who’s going to walk three miles and a half by the thermometer to take the lady home? Don’t all speak at once.”
“Do you live up there?” Louise asked her. “And does your father drink?”
“Yep,” said Sandy. “Favver? Course he dwinks. Evvybody dwinks.”
“Think of being brought up to think things like that,” said Louise.
“Don’t you think,” suggested Winona, “that we’d better take her back to camp? I don’t know the way to the place Tom talks about, and maybe it would be bestfor Mrs. Bryan to take her anyway, if they do drink.”
“Good idea,” said everybody. Sandy herself seemed pleased, and attached herself to them as readily as a stray puppy would have done. They cleared up leisurely, then got back into the canoe, taking the child in, too. It was rather a close fit, though it was an eighteen-foot canoe, but they managed it. She was no more trouble than Puppums would have been—Puppums, fortunately, had been left with Florence. They had a good day with the fishing, and trailed into Camp Karonya at six with fish for breakfast; and Sandy.
“Good luck!” were Tom’s parting words. “We’ll come to-morrow and help you take her back, if you like.”
“You needn’t bother,” said his sister. “We’ll take the faithful rowboat.”
“We aren’t going to take her back!” insisted Louise. “I’m going to adopt her. Sandy, wouldn’t you like to live with me?I’ddress you in nice clothes and give you a dolly.”
“An’ five cents?” demanded Sandy, “An’ things to eat?”
“Oh, the poor baby!” said Louise. “She’s had to think about money and food and grown-up things like the poor little children you read about in the pamphlets. Yes, indeed, you shall, Sandy.”
“She looks well-fed,” said Tom. “Well, good luck. Don’t get a reputation for collecting them—you mayn’t be able to dispose of orphans as easily as you can kittens.”
They parted, and Louise carried Sandy into camp. They arrived as supper was about ready. The Blue Birds carried the fish off to the ice-box (it was literally a box, a very ingenious arrangement of sawdust and wood which had meant a bead for Elizabeth) and the rest clustered about Louise’s treasure-trove.
“Better find out if she really needs adopting,” advised Marie as they sat around the long table, and Sandy exercised an appetite as large as her noon one.
“With a drunken father, and no mother, and looking like that?” fired up Louise. “I’m going to wash her after supper.”
There seemed no connection between washing her and adopting her, but there evidently was to Louise.
“Want me to help?” offered Winona. “It ought to be more fun than washing Puppums.”
“I hope she won’t howl and try to climb over the side of the tub, the way he does,” said Louise. “Yes, thank you, I’d love to be helped.”
A warm bath in a foot-tub, following directly on a large meal of corn fritters, baked potatoes and huckle-berries, ought nearly to have killed Sandy, but it didn’t.
“I never dreamed you meant to do more than wash her face and hands,” protested Marie, who, as the guardian of the Blue Birds, had ideas about such things. But it was too late. Anyway, there was no visible effect. Sandy awakened next morning, well, happy, and still hungry. They had given her Nataly’s bunk with Mrs. Bryan. Helen bunked with Elizabeth, because Nataly said the girls tossed, and Mrs. Bryan didn’t.
While Sandy slept Louise and Winona were busy. Louise woke Winona at five, and they heated water, filled the charcoal-iron, and washed and ironed and mended Sandy’s underclothes. While Louise darned Sandy’s socks, Winona ironed the garments dry. Then they foraged about the store-shed, which was a warm place at that time of year even in the early morning, and found a white dress of Florence’s which Winona thought she had remembered bringing.
When found it proved much too large for Sandy, but Louise was still enthusiastic, and took it up with such good will that two of the tucks she put in had to be ripped out again when they came to dress Sandy in it. They polished the small strapped shoes the child had taken off, sewed the button of each on more firmly, and decided that they looked almost new.
Then Winona went back to awaken her own little sister. When she returned to Louise’s tent she found her friend had finished giving Sandy another bath. She was just dressing her.
“I don’t believe this poor little thing knows what a thorough bath is,” she greeted Winona over the child’s head.
“Yes, I do, too,” said Sandy. “But I had one last night, an’ you’ve been an’ given me anuvver now!”
“I think I’ll box her hair, too,” went on Louise. “It is getting rather common now, but she has so much, and it’s so untidy, that it would really be the best thing even if I didn’t keep her.”
“I wouldn’t do her hair till you’re sure we’re goingto keep her,” objected Winona. “Her people mightn’t like it.”
“A dissipated father and a poor little overworked elder sister—Vicky is your sister, isn’t she, Sandy?—and a home where they don’t even wash or feed her? Poor people haven’t time to take care of hair like this. Anyway, they haven’t done it, for it was tangled awfully,” she finished conclusively.
“But it’s so pretty!” protested Winona. “Just look at it, nearly to her waist, and thick and curly, and such a lovely gold color!”
“So much the worse for her health,” said Louise as promptly as Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf. “Sandy, wouldn’t you like your hair cut nice and short, so it wouldn’t get tangled any more?”
“An’ twousers?” demanded Sandy hopefully. “Gee, zat’s gweat!”
“I’ll have to stop her using slang,” said Louise. “No, dear, not exactly twousers, but—I could get her some overalls, couldn’t I, Win?”
“I suppose so,” said Winona.
“Then I will,” said Louise.
“You’re gweat, too,” said Sandy, turning around where she sat on Louise’s lap, and throwing both little bare arms around her neck and kissing her. Louise kissed her back warmly.
“Isn’t she a dear?” she said. “Winnie, will you please hand me the scissors?”
“No,” said Winona, “I won’t. It’s wicked to spoil pretty hair like that.” And she walked out of the tent.
“I’ll det ’em,” said Sandy, slipping down and bringing them to Louise from the table at the end of the tent.
“Here’s a piece of ribbon to tie it with, if you won’t cut it off,” said Winona, reappearing with a wide length of blue taffeta.
“No, thank you,” said Louise, cutting industriously and very neatly. “It would just be in her eyes all the time. I’m going to cut it straight across her eyebrows, like a little boy’s.”
“I did it to all my dolls once,” said Winona. She sat down, though, and watched Louise till she was done.
Louise had washed the little girl’s hair when she gave her the second bath, and when it was even and short enough to suit her she finished dressing the child in her white frock, and set her on the grass outside, to dry in the sunshine. She gave her a picture book to look at to keep her amused. The bobbed locks, thick and curly, fluffed out charmingly in a yellow bush around the sweet little face.
“It’s becoming,” admitted Winona. “She looks like a cherub, or a choir-boy on a Christmas card. There is the signal for breakfast. You just got her dry in time.”
“Breakfast?” said Sandy, brightening.
“Poor little darling!” said Louise, catching and kissing her. “I don’t believe she ever had anything to eat before she came here!”
They went to breakfast in state, and Sandy’s golden aureole and clean white frock made quite a sensation at the table. They piled things up for her to sit on, andshe was put where Mrs. Bryan could reach her, and argue with her easily if she misbehaved. But she acted very well indeed. Her table-manners were good, considering, she talked without the least shyness, and managed to eat a very large breakfast. Louise beamed with pride over the impression her protegee was making.
When breakfast was over, and Sandy turned loose again to play with Puppums and Florence, to whom she had taken a violent fancy, Louise packed a market-basket with everything a starving family might need. Then she found her purse, summoned Winona, and they took the rowboat and went forth, Sandy and Puppums in the bottom of it.
They rowed along the west branch, a narrow stream that doubled at right angles from the branch the camps were on. It was lined with pretty summer cottages for a part of the way, then after that, at the very end, came a part that was filled with poor people who had squatted there. But long before they came to the poorest part Sandy desired to land.
“Here we is!” she said cheerfully, at a prosperous-looking dock about a third of the way up.
“Not here, dearie,” said Louise. “It’s probably some place where the poor child’s been fed,” she added aside to Winona.
“We may as well get out, though, mayn’t we?” suggested Winona. “Maybe they can tell us where she comes from.”
They tied the boat and got out, and walked down a deep lane for a while. Presently they came to a largewhite house in the middle of a couple of acres of half-yard, half-lawn looking land.
The doors and windows were all wide open, but there was no one to be seen. Sandy walked into the hall with an assured tread, took a long breath, and called at the top of her lungs, “Vicky! Vick-ee!”
The girls stood at the door and waited, ready to apologize for their charge’s rudeness whenever somebody might appear. In about five minutes, during which Sandy continued to shout, they heard a light, slow step along the upper hall. Presently a slim, dark, rather pretty little girl of about eleven scuffed down the stairs. She had on a kimono over her nightgown, though it was quite late in the morning.
“That you, Sand?” she called as she came. “Goodness, you’re up early!”
“This is Vicky,” Sandy explained to the girls over her shoulder. “Vicky! I’ve had two baths!”
Louise stood, for once, speechless. She hung mechanically to the handle of the basketful of provisions, but she was too surprised to move. It was Winona who finally took courage to come forward and explain.
“I’m Winona Merriam,” she said, “and this is my friend, Louise Lane. We are over at Camp Karonya, the Camp Fire, you know. We found this little girl yesterday, and we came over to-day to bring her home. Does she—does she belong here?”
“Why, of course she does,” said Vicky. “Thank you for bringing her. She’s always trailing off that way, aren’t you, Sand? How long you been gone?”
“Is she your sister?” asked Louise, who had her breath by this time.
“M’hm,” nodded Vicky. “Why—why, Alexandra Mitchell, where’s your hair?”
“It got boxed!” exclaimed Sandy gleefully. “Isn’t it nice?”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to explain about that,” said Winona bravely. “Your little sister strayed into a little fishing-trip four of us were having yesterday, very hungry and rather dirty, and without all her clothes on. And from the way she talked we thought she was—well, we washed her and dressed her, and—I’m sorry—shortened her hair, it was so tangled. I’m ever so sorry. I think it will grow——”
Vicky stared a minute at Alexandra, very proud of herself, neat, clean, dressed and bobbed. Then instead of being angry she sat down on the floor, where she was, and burst into a fit of laughter.
“You thought—you thought—oh, mygoodness!”
“Yes,” said Winona. She sat down, too, and finally went off herself. “Yes—wedid!”
“And you brought food for the hungry family——” Vicky’s eye fell on the large basket which Louise still held stiffly before her. “Oh, oh, oh! And Uncle Will’s pride, Sandy’s hair, that he made a picture of that sold for ever so much money—oh, my goodnessgracious!”
She and Winona both began to laugh again. Louise didn’t. She stood against the wall like a wax statue.
“It certainly is funny,” said Vicky at last, moppingher eyes, “but I’m good and glad about Sandy’s hair. It was an awful nuisance to take care of, and Uncle Willwouldkeep it that way so he could paint pictures of it. Won’t you stay and have some breakfast? We have a cook.”
“No, thank you,” said Louise hurriedly, “we’ve had our breakfast.”
“What an awful noise, children!” said a voice; and a rather rumpled man appeared. He had an absent look, and also gave an impression of not having been to bed all night. He had a paint-brush in his hand.
Vicky and Sandy sprang for him, hanging to him.
“Oh, Uncle Will, this is two Camp Fire girls,” said Sandy. “They cutted my hair when I was lost. Ain’t it cute?”
“Oh!” said Uncle Will, and looked as aghast as Louise had. “How did this accident happen?”
“It wasn’t an accident,” said Sandy. “Louise boxed my head, an’ gived me two baths!”
Uncle Will—so far as the girls learned that was all the name he had—uttered another faint exclamation. Then he dived back into his room as if he wanted to bear the shock alone.
“I’m so sorry!” said Winona, who found she had all the talking to do. “I’m afraid your uncle doesn’t like it!”
“Oh, he’s only got an artistic temp’rament,” said Vicky, as if it were a disease uncles could not help. “I think Sandy’s goin’ to, too. Do stay to breakfast. We’ll have things out o’ your basket if you will.”
“No, thank you,” said Winona. “I think Louise is in a hurry to go home. Come over and see us. It isn’t far if you have a boat.”
“We’ll get somebody to bring us,” said Vicky. “I’d come now if I was dressed.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad plan if you dressed a little earlier,” said Winona frankly. “Are there just you two?”
“Nope,” said Vicky, “there’s Lancy, too. He’s eight. Uncle Will tries to bring us up, but he don’t know how so very well.”
“Well, when you come down to camp we can tell you a lot of things if you’d like us to,” said Winona.
“Maybe,” said Vicky indifferently. “But it’s all right this way. You can try telling us, though.”
“Well, good-bye,” said Louise—it was all she had contributed to the conversation, but she seemed to contribute it gladly.
So they went, still carrying the basket.
“Wait!” called Sandy’s voice behind them when they had gone a little way. “I’m goin’ back wiv you! You said you’d ’dopted me!”
“But we didn’t know your uncle wasn’t poor then,” said Louise. “We can’t take you away from him.”
“You ’dopted me,” said Sandy doggedly, “an’ I’m goin’ wiv you—so there!” And she thrust her wet little hand into Louise’s and trotted along beside them. “Louise—wasn’t there cake in the basket?”
“You have cake at home, dear,” said Louise. But she looked as if she felt a little better. After all, evenif an orphan didn’t need adopting, it was a pleasure to find that she liked it.
“Like you best,” insisted Sandy. “Goin’ to stay wiv you. They don’t care!”
“Oh, let’s let her, just for to-day, anyhow!” said Winona. “I don’t believe anybody’ll mind.”
“All right,” said Louise rather as if she wanted to. They got into the boat again, and rowed to camp.
“Sandy,” asked Louise, “what did you mean by saying your father drank? You haven’t any father.”
“Well, I did have,” said Sandy. “And of sourse he did dwink when there was a him. Evvybody does. Little flowers do. My governess said so.”
“Yourgoverness!” said Louise. “Is your uncle rich enough for you to have a governess—and you go trailing round in your underwaist and petticoat!”
“When he draws pictures an’ sells ’em he is. When he don’t he don’t. Gimme some cake?”
Sandy was evidently quite calm about her way of living.
“She mayn’t need adopting, but she certainly needs reforming,” said Louise vigorously.
They were paddling past the Scouts’ camp by now. Louise was quite willing to go past softly, but Sandy yelled, for she saw Billy.
“Hello, girls!” he called. “Back already? Got all the papers signed?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Louise. “And, Billy, if you ask me any more questions, I’ll jump over and drown!”
The Camp Fire might all grin broadly whenever it spoke of Louise’s adoption—even more broadly than it had at Winona’s cat-collection: but the adoptee herself was quite serious about it. Adopted she was by the Camp Fire in general and Louise in particular, and adopted she meant to stay. She went home once in awhile—there was nobody to worry about her, it seemed, when she stayed away—but as a rule she considered herself a Camp Fire Girl. She was too young to be a Blue Bird, but that didn’t make any difference. Finally she was given the official position of third sub-mascot, ranking after Puppums and Hike the Camp Cat. Unofficially, she got better training than she appeared to have had for some time, for she knew that to stay in Camp she had to obey rules. Vicky never did come over. Once in awhile they would return Sandy to her home, just for politeness, but it didn’t seem to be specially required of them.
“We ought to have a grand entertainment,” declared Marie one day, “and invite all the summer people who bought our things.”
“Yes,” Louise approved, “and then, perhaps, if we made them happy, they’d buy some more.”
“Well, I was thinking of charging for the entertainment,” demurred Marie.
“But wouldn’t it be piling things up just a wee bit too much?” asked Louise.
“Perhaps,” admitted Marie.
“What were you thinking of having?” asked Winona.
It was at the end of a weekly Council Fire, and the girls were lying about, as usual, on the hill.
“I was wondering”—from Marie a little doubtfully—“if we could have some tableaux from Maeterlinck, with readings. I could do the readings.”
“What’s Maeterlinck?” asked Louise cheerfully. “Something good to eat?”
“No, you goose!” instructed Marie. “He wrote the ‘Blue Bird,’ and—oh, a lot of plays.”
“Nice ones?” asked Louise. “Lots of people running around doing exciting things?”
“No,” admitted Marie. “Nothing much happens. But it’s very elevating.”
“I don’t feel as if I wanted to be elevated, somehow,” said Louise firmly, “and I’m sure those summer people don’t; they come here to relax and enjoy themselves, and when they want something really high-brow they go to the movies and see bears and lions eating each other. They can do that right in the place itself.”
“I don’t believe they’d come to a Maeterlinck show, either, Marie,” so said Mrs. Bryan. “We can take him up to read this winter, if the girls want to know more about him. But he isn’t exactly the author for a summer entertainment—especially if we want to make money.”
“We do,” said Marie who had a strictly practical side to her.
“Does it have to be an author?” Helen wanted to know.
“It seems to,” said Louise.
“I have an idea!” exclaimed Winona, sitting up.
“Is it an author?” asked Louise.
“Yes!” said Winona, “it is!”
“Well?” from everybody.
“Samantha Allen!” cried Winona eagerly. “My plan’s this. Have somebody dress like Samantha—you know the pictures—and tell all about herself to begin with. Then we could make a big, wooden frame—we have those boards left from the float—and Samantha could turn over the leaves of the album, and describe the characters in her books one by one, as they were shown in the frame. We could call it ‘Samantha’s Picter-Album,’ or something like that.”
“I saw an entertainment that was something of that sort once,” said Adelaide. “But it was just a frame with old-fashioned pictures, like daguerrotypes. There wasn’t any Samantha, or any talking. I should think this would be lots better. But would it last a whole evening, and make the Wampoag people think they’d had their money’s worth?”
“I think so,” said Louise. “And anyway, if it wasn’t so very long we could amuse the visitors by showing them over the camp, and telling them all about our customs and habits. Maybe we could do a folk-dance for them afterwards.”
“Oh, yes, of course we could!” said Edith, whose specialty it was. “We could give them an Indiandance as easy as anything, and that Russian one I learned before I came. I can teach it to eight of us.”
“I know how to dance the minuet,” suggested Helen. “How many had it in that Washington’s Birthday thing Miss Green’s class had last year?”
Five had, it seemed. As a minuet only needs ten performers it was very simple to polish that up. And all of them knew Indian dances already. So a committee was appointed to get up the costumes. The Indian dresses were there already. For the Russian dance Edith thought head-dresses of paper muslin would do and aprons of colored scrim, over white skirts and turned-under, slipped-under-the-skirt middy blouses. For the minuet—well, there was cheese-cloth in red and yellow that Marie had had on her canoe; everyone could powder her hair and contrive a ’kerchief. The pannier draperies could be pinned into place, and broad bodices of Winona’s black paper muslin from the canoe-trimming could be cut and pinned into place with very little trouble. Helen and Edith and Adelaide were told off to see about the costuming; Edith, as she had to train the others in dancing, had nothing but supervision to do. Helen and Adelaide did what little actual work was needed.
“The main thing this entertainment needs seems to be pins,” said Helen the third day after they had decided to have it. It was a Thursday, and they planned the affair for the next Monday night. “We’re nearly out of them.”
So eight papers of pins were bought, not to speakof a good deal of white paper muslin. The girls were assigned their different characters in the Album, and each left to her own cleverness in getting up the costume. About midway in the preparations it suddenly dawned on the girls, who had gotten all the Samantha books from the Wampoag library, and had their families send them on the ones they owned, that boys were needed.
So a committee consisting of all the sisters was sent up the lake to borrow Boy Scouts. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, for boys seem to dislike “dressing up” as much as girls like it; but Mr. Gedney was Camp Karonya’s friend, and they went back with all the boys they needed promised them—if they would look after the costumes and not expect the Scouts to rehearse.
Louise was appointed a Committee of Tickets, with Elizabeth to help her. Louise was a born ticket-seller. She loved it. She and Elizabeth put in most of their waking hours exchanging bits of ecru cardboard with small red things on them (meant for Camp Fires) for thirty-five cents. And they did very well. They got permission of all the drug-stores and many other stores, to put up posters, which were camp-made, also, of course. So by the time the fateful night arrived quite a goodly crowd was ferried over to Camp Karonya by the Scouts’ canoes.
At eight precisely the audience, accommodated on long planks which reached from box to box, saw a curtain pulled away from between two trees. Nothingwas to be seen in its place but a plump red album standing out against a background which represented every sheet in the camp. They had used Marie’s red cheese-cloth after all, instead of Winona’s black paper muslin. As for the framework, that was a work of art for which several of the girls were responsible. It had taken all the manual training they knew, and a little bit more—they had had to call Tom Merriam, whose hobby was carpentry, before they got it all right—but the general effect was gorgeous. The audience was given a fair amount of time to appreciate the beauty of the album, which was about eight feet high. Then Marie stepped out. She had been elected to the very responsible part of Samantha because her memory was good, rather than because she looked it. But she had done excellently with what means she had. Two small pillows for a foundation, a pink wrapper with large black spots, sent on from home, an elderly bonnet borrowed from a friendly farmer’s wife, a substantial gingham apron, spectacles, a Paisley shawl, and a large palm-leaf fan, completed a get-up that would have disguised Marie Hunter effectually from her own best friend.
When she thought she had waited long enough to give the audience a chance to appreciate her she curtsied, and reaching over, pulled at the album cover with the crock of a green-handled umbrella. The inside page of the album was imitated by a frame with white muslin tightly stretched over it, and an oval hole in the middle for the picture. In the hole just now was a meek,chin-whiskered face surrounded by a high collar—Mr. Gedney, normally. Samantha pointed to this proudly.
“Brethren and sisteren,” began Samantha, after she had introduced herself, “this here is my lawful, though sometimes wayward, pardner Josiah Allen. I was married to him in a brand-new green silk gown, made pollynay, and Mother Jones’s parlor, come twenty year ago. Our mutual affection has been a beakin ever since, though I can’t deny it has sputtered some once in awhile, and burned purty low, tryin’ times like house-cleanin’ an’ wash-days.”
She went on with the famous tale of “How the Bamberses borrowed Josiah,” cutting it short when she heard the tiny bell behind the scene tinkle, as a signal that another picture was ready. Then she jerked the cover to with her umbrella-handle, and operated it again. This time the inside leaf had been fastened back with the lid, for this was a full-sized picture. The audience, by this time, was laughing at nearly everything she said, for Marie was a capital mimic, and she had picked out and strung together all the funniest things she could find in the Samantha Allen books.
“This here,” announced Samantha, “is my step-children, Thomas Jefferson and Tirzah Ann. They ain’t bad children, if I do say it as shouldn’t, and I have brung ’em up like they wuz my own.”
Winona was Tirzah. She sat stiffly in a high-backed chair (the back was pasteboard, covered with black muslin, cut in a Chippendale sort of way) and she wore a full, flowered gown, with her hair looped over herears and fastened in the back to a “chignon” with two fat curls hanging from it. They had put Tom with her, with a view to mutual support. He, too, had a preposterous collar (collars may be made by the dozen if you have scissors and patience, and the Camp Fire Girls had both) and a flowered vest. His baggy clothes and a tall hat at his feet completed a picture that was so much like the ones you do see in old albums that the audience began to clap before Marie was through her introduction.
“Woof!” said Tom when he got out of the frame. “Never again for me!” He turned to grin at Billy, who had still to go on. Billy was supposed to be ‘Submit Tewksbury’s beau, a dashin’ city feller,’ and he was trying to get an appropriate amount of dash into his mustaches.
“Every time I go up against Camp Karonya,” responded Billy sadly, “I have to do something that needs a lot of stiffening. I had to work two hours over that fiend tail of mine, and these whiskers are just as bad.”
“It’ll be worse when you have real ones,” remarked Louise consolingly. She was acting as putter-on-of-finishing-touches. There was a dressing-tent apiece for the girls and boys, and Billy was on the outside of his, trying to arrange the mustache to his liking by means of a small mirror pinned to the canvas.
“At least I won’t have to worry about their sticking on,” was his reply.
“There,” said Louise, “they’ll do now.”
“Billy and Adelaide wanted!” called Edith.
Adelaide, on account of a mournful expression that still appeared at times, had been selected for “Submit Tewksbury,” who had a broken heart and was good to one relative after another for thirty years or more. She had been told to look as sad as she possibly could, and she was posed with a medicine bottle and spoon, with which she had just—so Samantha explained—been nursing her relatives. Billy, behind her, looked very cheerful and debonair with his jaunty mustache and a very gaudy shirt which—so he said afterwards—he had bought especially for the occasion, for thirty-nine cents marked down from fifty. It had a large, spotty pattern on it, and it lookedveryfestive.
The tableaux went smoothly on. Marie remembered all her lines, the audience appeared to enjoy it all very much, when suddenly in the midst of a speech she remembered something, and halted, secretly referring to the list of pictures which was pinned inside her palm-leaf fan. Widder Doodle, Submit Tewksbury, Elder Minkley, Maggie Snow—yes, they were four past Betsy Bobbet, the crowning glory of the evening, and no Betsy Bobbet had there been! Marie pulled herself together and thought a minute, talking on meanwhile.
“Brethren and sisteren,” she said, “I hope you’ll excuse me for a minute. My wind’s a gittin’ low, and my new congress gaiters pinch me some. I’m goin’ to ask you to wait a bit, till I fetch me a drink of water.”
The audience laughed, and clapped, as it had been doing most of the evening, and Samantha scuttled distractedlybehind the scenes, where she clutched the nearest person to her. It happened to be Mrs. Bryan, who was making up one of the boys under a light.
“Where’s Betsy Bobbet—I mean Lilian Green?” she asked hurriedly. “It’s way past her turn, and she’s never been in at all.”
“Oh, my dear, didn’t anyone tell you?” said Mrs. Bryan.
“They couldn’t,” said Marie. “I’ve been out front all this time.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Mrs. Bryan. “Can’t you do without her? She slipped and tore her costume so badly that it wasn’t fit to appear in. She could pose, of course, but the tears would show.”
“I went right down over a tent-pole,” explained Lilian, appearing to speak for herself. She was indeed badly torn, not to speak of the fact that she was limping a little. Her bonnet and veil—a green mosquito-netting veil—were wrecked—and she had managed to muddy herself thoroughly, too.
“You certainly made a thorough job of it!” exclaimed Marie. “But oh, Mrs. Bryan, what shall I do? I’ve been talking about her all the evening—leading up to her. She’s the keystone of the whole performance.”
“It would be a case of Hamlet with Hamlet left out without her, then, would it?” queried Mrs. Bryan. “My dear, I don’t know what to say. If Lilian were damaged somebody else could supply her place, but we haven’t any understudy for Lilian’s clothes!”
“There’s only one thing to do,” offered Winona, coming over from a group of girls. “Have her go on anyway, Marie, and make up something to explain why she looks so funny. Explain why she’s so torn and crumpled—make a joke of it, so they’ll think it was all on purpose.”
“Winnie, you’re the pride of my life!” vowed Marie. “I’ll have to do just that. It will be hard,” she added doubtfully.
“Oh, no, it won’t,” and Winona laughed reassuringly, “you’re the cleverest one of us, and if you can’t make up some reason why Betsy Bobbet looks mussed, nobody can. Now go on out and do it.”
She gave her a little push.
“Ray-of-Light, you’re a dear!” Marie said affectionately as she turned and went out. “Put Lilian in the frame just as she is, please,” she said. “I think I can manage it.”
Lilian laughed a little at the idea of displaying herself to two hundred summer people looking as if she had come out of a subway accident, but she got into position like the good-natured girl she was, and Marie heard the little bell and began to make her impromptu explanation.
“My friend, Betsy Bobbet, she’s a considerable kind of a curis person,” she said. “She’s sorter sentimental, an’ sometimes she’s too impulsive. Now, just before she had this daguerrotype took that I’m goin’ to show you, she was writin’ a pome to the Muse. This is how it went:
“Muse of PoetryI would do much for theeAnd I am full of tearsBecause I have been writin’ so many yearsAnd still unappreciated I be—
“Betsy can write pomes like that any time,” explained Marie, and the audience giggled. “But I always tell Betsy,” Marie went on, “that walkin’ cross-lots ain’t any place to compose poetry to Muses. Well, she was walkin’ ’cross-lots in a brown study an’ a red-striped morey waist, speakin’ this out loud as she went. An’ she got to gesturin’ before she thought. An’ Farmer Peedick, him that married Jane Ann Allen, had jest let his best bull out in the field. An’ whether it was the red morey waist or the pome Betsy never did know, but she thinks it was the pome. She says she thinks the bull, not bein’ used to fust-class poetry, was excited. So he just up an’ ran after her. Well, she stopped recitin’, an’ ran, too. She jest got over the barb-wire fence in time. But I tell you, Betsy Bobbet is a wonderful woman! When she was safe she fixed that bull with her eye (it was a poet’s eye, she says to me), an’ recited the remainder of that ode to him. An’, ladies an’ gentlemen, you mayn’t believe it, but that bull was cowed! Yes, sir. He looked at her, Betsy says to me, as if he was sayin’ ‘I can’t stand that!’ an’ he ran. Yes, sir, he just ran!”
She pulled aside the frame, and there smirked Betsy, very stiff and proper, with her bonnet and veil still a wreck and her red morey waist very much askew, and with a jagged rent down the front of herskirt. But her corkscrew curls twisted gracefully down either side of her face, her eyes were rolled up, and her mitted hand clutched a roll of paper. The audience howled.
Marie closed the cover, bowed, and went on to the end of the pictures.
The dances—the Indian dance, the minuet and the Russian dance—were beautiful and everyone applauded them, though they liked the Indian dance best. When they had finished some of the guests, to Louise’s great delight, demanded Camp Fire work, and bought it, too. After that the girls distributed coffee and sandwiches free, and then the Scouts took the audience, in relays, up the river to Wampoag.
Before they went somebody said to Marie:
“My dear, you were splendid. I’m going to give that entertainment for our church this winter, and write to you for help. But the most convincing and amusing picture of the lot was ‘Betsy Bobbet.’ Do tell me how you ever managed to make the thing so life-like?”
But Marie merely looked modest.
“We did the best we could,” she said. “It was quite simple, after all.”