Adelaide turned and faced Winona.
“Well, go ahead and talk,” she said. “It won’t make things any less so.” Then suddenly she burst out, “You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how it feels never to have anything extra. If I go to a party I’m likely to be the worst-dressed girl there. If I go to school and the girls treat I have to say I don’t want any because I can’t pay back. I can’t invite anybody to meals, because I can’t give them extra nice things to eat. And, anyway, the flat’s horrid—even the furniture and the carpets are shabby. Lonny and Frances are good, and help, but everything drags. And I just hateeverything.”
“Hate everything!” said Winona soothingly. “Why, of course you don’t—you just think you do!”
“It’s all right for you to talk,” murmured Adelaide miserably. “Everybody’s crazy over you—of course they would be. I am myself, and I don’t like people generally. You have something about you that would make people like you even if you weren’t sweet to them. Everything turns out right for you. I don’t see what you wanted to join the Camp Fire for—its rules stuck out all over you before you ever joined.”
“Oh,don’t!” said Winona, blushing. “What rules do you mean? I never kept any rules.”
“You know the Law of the Camp Fire: ‘Seek beauty; give service; pursue knowledge; be trustworthy;hold on to health; glorify work; be happy.’”
“I don’t do all those things,” said Winona. “Wish I did! But anybody seeks beauty, and as long as you have to work the only way to get fun out of it is to glorify it. As for the rest, I think they’re only rules for getting all there is out of living. I’ll tell you, Adelaide,”—Winona sat upright, as if a new thought had struck her—“why don’t you see how many of the rules would apply to getting fun out of the things that worry you? When things go wrong at our house mother always says to Florence and Tommy and me, ‘Can’t you turn it into a game?’”
“Turn shabby furniture and stews and no money into a game?” said Adelaide, as if she thought Winona was crazy.
“Yes!” said Winona undauntedly. “To begin with the stews—well, Adelaide, you don’t know one single thing about cooking. There’s any amount of things beside stew that you can make out of stewing meat. And don’t you remember the cold things we got out of Mrs. Bryan’s refrigerator? That was a good supper, wasn’t it? If you know how, cooking’s fun, or nearly anything.”
“If we have more cooking-classes I suppose I could learn how to do more things with the meats and vegetables, or maybe market better,” said Adelaide. “But that would only help that one thing.”
“You can figure out keeping house just like anything else,” said Winona. “All you have to do’s tothink!”
Adelaide laughed. “Do you suppose I could think the furniture new?” she asked. “You ought to see it—horrid old brown rep, and a carpet that’s worn into white spots!”
But though she laughed, she looked to Winona for the answer with real eagerness.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’d do,” suggested Winona thoughtfully—“I don’t suppose you would, you’re such a haughty Lady Imogene—I’d make a furnishing bee of it, and have a party, and invite all the girls to help you do the flat over. Your father and Lonny would help, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh, I guess so,” she said.
“Well, then, the girls would help you cover the furniture and stain the floor, and even paper, maybe. And if your father or Lonny could paint the wood-work—or would the landlord?”
“No,” said Adelaide, “he won’t make repairs. It’s not in the lease. And where would I get money for the paint and paper and stain and covers?”
“Earn it!” said Winona. “There are lots of ways. That jam you made for the sales—you could get heaps of orders for that, I know. Oh, I should think it would be lovely to do. I tell you, Adelaide, you may think I’m crazy—but everything’s fun, if you’ll only remember that itisfun!”
“I wonder!” said Adelaide. “But I believe I could make money with jams and preserves if I worked hard at it.”
“We’ve all got to earn some more money soon ifwe want to stay in the camp longer than three weeks,” said Winona, “unless Louise can feed us all on the venison steaks she was talking about last night. If you can make money for the camp you can for yourself!”
Adelaide turned impulsively—they had risen and were going on through the wood—and threw her arms around Winona.
“You certainly are the most comforting girl!” she said. “I don’t wonder everybody does what you want them to.”
Winona didn’t know what to say. It’s pleasant to have people say such things to you, but it is embarrassing, too.
“People like you just as much as they do me,” said she. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find the river we’ve heard so much about.”
They caught hands and ran on through the trees.
The river was not hard to find. Above them it was a broad stream, but just here it wasn’t very wide, just a pretty, clear, clean-looking stream, with green banks and some sort of a dock to be seen a little way beyond them. On the dock, when they reached it, was seen to be an elderly native with a pipe, and beside him was moored a rowboat which looked as if it could be rowed. He looked up from his fishing as the girls appeared.
“Morning,” he said sociably, “you little girls going down to the village?”
“Good-morning,” said Winona. “No, we hadn’t thought of it. We might, though. Is there anything we could get for you if we went?”
“Well,” said the old man, jerking in his line with a good-sized fish on it, “ye-es, there is. I want an ad put in the paper. I guess I could trust you with a quarter to do it with.”
“I guess you could,” said Winona, smiling. “Will this afternoon do? I don’t believe we’d have time now to get there and back before dinner-time.” She looked at her wrist-watch. “No, we won’t,” she said. “It’s eleven now.”
“Well, this afternoon would do,” he said.
So, while the girls looked at the rowboat wishfully, and wondered if they couldn’t get enough fish for supper if they had some tackle, the old man adjusted his spectacles, pulled an old envelope out of his pocket, and wrote on it laboriously.
“Do you mind if I read it?” asked Winona, when he was done and had handed it to her.
“Seein’s that’s what it’s for, I dunno’s I do,” he grunted, grinning pleasantly. Winona and Adelaide took each a corner, and read as follows:
For sale, one rowboat in good condition, with oars. No reasonable offer refused. Apply to John Sloane, R. F. D. 3, village.
They looked at each other, then at the boat. Then both girls exclaimed with one impulse, “Is it this boat?”
“This very rowboat,” said Mr. Sloane, eying it with affection. “I don’t use it no more. I’ve got a motor-boat, and them Boy Scouts up the river has got a fine young flock of canoes, so they ain’t likely towant to hire it. Anyway, she ain’t so young as she was. Good boat, though!”
“And what would you call a reasonable offer?” inquired Winona. “The reason I want to know is that I have just six dollars, and if I could buy a rowboat that way I would.”
“Six dollars, hey?” said Mr. Sloane slowly. “That ain’t much for a good boat.”
“It’s all I have to spend on rowboats,” said Winona placidly.
“We-el,” decided Mr. Sloane, “guess I might’s well let you have it!”
And he proceeded to make out a receipt on the spot, on the other half of the envelope he had used for the advertisement.
“It certainly pays to advertise!” he remarked, as he turned his attention again to his fishing-line.
Adelaide and Winona jumped into their boat with delight, and rowed downstream for half a mile. There they were stopped by the beautiful sight of a lot of huckleberry bushes, full of fruit, along the edge of the stream. They both filled their hats, and when these would hold no more they pinned up Winona’s skirt in front and filled that—Winona sitting very still thereafter in order not to smash any berries. Then Adelaide rowed back and tied their newly-acquired property to the dock, the use of which was thrown in, and went back to camp with berries enough for dinner. Just before they came within hearing of the others, Adelaide whispered:
“Winona, I’m going to try to—to feel that way about things.”
Winona squeezed her hand, but there was no time to say anything more, for a horde of small pirates descended on them and carried away the berries.
After dinner the girls lay on the grass and made plans, more or less wild, for getting money to prolong their vacation.
“We can’t have a cake-sale,” said Marie practically, “because the farmers’ wives in the village make all their own baked stuff, and the people at the summer-resort are mostly boarders.”
“Oh, please don’t let’s have any more cake-sales, whether they’re profitable or not,” said Louise pathetically. “I sold eats for those sales till I used to go to sleep at night and dream I was a wedding-cake myself.”
“All right, then,” soothed Helen, “you shan’t ever have such dreadful dreams again, you poor little thing!”
“Well, what shall we do, then?” asked Edith Hillis pulling her yellow curls over her shoulder and examining them as if she had never seen them before.
“When you want money,” remarked Mrs. Bryan, “you have to sell something, either your services, or your manufactures, or your talents.”
“In other words,” said Winona, “work for people, or make things to sell them, or have an entertainment.”
“Precisely,” said the Guardian.
“Then let’s start at the beginning,” offered Winona, “and everybody try to think what she can do best inthe way of work, and whether anybody’d want them to!”
“One thing,” reminded Marie, “we can’t live by taking in each other’s washing, so to speak. We’ll have to scheme to get some of their hard-earned butter-and-egg money away from the farmers’ wives, or else prey on the summer-resorters.”
“We expect to give it right back to them for butter and eggs,” said Adelaide. “Whatever we do we might as well take it out in trade!”
After that nobody seemed to have any more ideas. Everyone sat silently and thought very hard; till Louise jumped up with a yelp of impatience that woke Puppums from his after-dinner nap, and made even Hike the Camp Cat open one green eye.
“Don’t let’s waste this gorgeous day thinking!” she said. “My head isn’t used to it, and it hurts. Come on, anybody that wants to—I’m going to walk down to the village to buy something, I don’t care what. Who’ll come?”
Winona, Helen and Nataly dropped into step beside Louise, and the four marched off singing “In the Land of the Sky-Blue Water,” which they were trying to learn.
“That song really sounds better to Opeechee’s ceremonial drum than anything else,” remarked Louise.
“Real Indian music always sounds better if you pound something while you sing it, even if it’s only a dish-pan,” said Winona.
“Please don’t mention dish-pans,” begged Louise,“they’re a tender point. I just parted from mine half an hour ago.”
“All right,” said Winona good-humoredly, “I have something else interesting to tell you. I bought a rowboat to-day.”
“Oh, good!” cried Helen. “Marie’s canoe and mine will be up in a day or so, but a canoe wiggles so when you try to fish from it. Now we can all go fishing. Elizabeth brought tackle, but we thought we couldn’t do much good, fishing from the bank.”
“And the Blue Birds can go out in it till they learn more about canoes, too,” said Winona. “I’m going exploring myself in it as soon as I can. What are you really going to the village for, Louise—or don’t you know?”
“Benzine for my burnt-wood outfit,” said Louise. “I had some thinks, and that was one. Little Louise is going to make some nice burnt-leather things for the neighborhood. Pillows and table-covers, and heaps of things for the farmers’ wives to buy. Lessons in the art if they want them. I brought my outfit, and some skins, and colors.”
“I thought I’d model some vases and pots and bowls, and fire them,” said Helen. “They might sell, too. Have you thought of anything, Winona?”
“Not a blessed thing, for myself,” said Winona. “You know, I’m not particularly clever about doing things like that, except making baskets, and Florence does those better than I do. But I have thought of one thing—how to sell our wares after they are made.”
“That’s quite a useful thing to know,” said Louise. “About the most useful thing there is, in fact. Well, how?”
“We’ll have to peddle them,” said Winona calmly. “The farmers’ wives won’t come out here to buy unless we advertise a lot, and we can’t afford that. The thing for us to do is to get some sort of a thing to carry the goods in, and make it look awfully arts-an-craftsy, and pull it round and sell things at the houses.”
“A soap-box on wheels is what Ithinkyou’re hinting at,” said Louise, “but I hope not.”
“Are you really in earnest?” asked Nataly, who had taken no share in the talk so far.
“Why not?” asked Winona. “It’s no worse than taking a horse and cart down through the Italian quarter and selling rummage things to the women there; and that’s what the Ladies’ Aid at our church did last winter.”
“It’s different,” insisted Nataly, and nothing could shake her in her ideas. So Louise poked Winona, as a hint not to argue any more. But when Nataly went into the little general store to buy some picture post-cards Louise whispered to the other girls, “I have a glorious improvement on your soap-box plan, Winnie. If you girls will help me put it through I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’d like to hear about it first,” said Helen doubtfully; for Louise’s plans were always original, but not always safe and sane. Before Louise could answer Nataly was back again, and Louise began to tell herthe story of the reduced English gentlewoman who had to sell shrimps for a living, by calling them up and down the streets. “And she was such a perfect lady,” finished Louise, “that whenever she called out ‘Shrimps for sale!’ she’d add under her breath, ‘I hope to goodness nobody hears me!’”
“And did they?” Nataly asked innocently, while Winona tried to keep her face straight.
“No, they didn’t,” said Louise sadly, “so she never sold any shrimps at all. And so she died of starvation.”
But Nataly, instead of grasping the moral, said only, “Well, why didn’t she eat the shrimps, then?”
At which Louise grunted disgustedly and went in to buy herself the benzine.
After that day there was always a feeling in the village near Camp Sunrise that every Camp Fire Girl’s first object in life was cat-rescue. And it was Winona who was responsible. To begin with, the day the girls arrived at camp she had been seen by all the interested villagers, walking near the head of the dusty procession, leading a small, sash-bandaged gray kitten by a string. Hike had meowed for air and exercise just as the village had been neared, and Winona had taken that means of giving it to him, without risking his running off. The villagers might have let that, by itself, pass. But when it was coupled with Winona’s performance of this afternoon—well, you can judge for yourself.
It was after the girls had bought everything they came for, and were on their way to camp. Out of agate, across their road, bounded two small boys, each of whom held a wriggling black kitten.
“Won’t you hurt the kitty if you hold it by just one leg?” inquired Winona of the nearest boy.
“It don’t matter if we do hurt ’em—they ain’t any good anyhow,” he explained. “We’re going to drown ’em in a minute.”
“Oh,no!” protested Winona.
“Well, will you take ’em?” asked the other boy. “Mother says she can’t keep any more cats.”
Winona took the victims on the spot, and put them into the continuous pocket all around the bottom of her Balkan blouse. The small boys went back into their yard, where they were heard announcing, “Mother! A girl took the kitties!” And Winona stood still with a kitten at each hip.
“You’d better give them back,” said Nataly, who was afraid of cats.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” said Winona. “It’s so nice to be alive, even if you’re a cat—and there isn’t really any Cat-Heaven, you know.”
“Well, advertise them for sale, then,” said Louise impatiently. “Good home and kind treatment wanted for two black kittens—salary no object.”
She wasn’t in earnest, but Winona was.
“I will!” she said. “Not for sale, but to give away. Will one of you take this notice to the paper, while I take the kittens to camp for the night?”
“I’ll take the kittens home!” volunteered Helen, Louise and Nataly with a touching oneness of feeling.
Winona grinned. “Why, you very obliging people!” she said. “Please put them in a box with netting, then, so they can’t get away. I’ll go and advertise. I’m perfectly sure such good kittens as these will have lots of applications!”
Louise and Helen, each with a kitten, accompanied by Nataly, kittenless, went slowly campward in eloquent silence, while Winona sped back to the office of the village paper. So the next day an advertisement appeared in thePress:
Wanted, to find homes for two black kittens, nice purrers, good mousers. Can be separated. Apply Box 2,Pressoffice, or at Camp Karonya, in person.
“I don’t care if they do laugh,” said Winona when she got back, to find Camp Karonya howling at her in rows. “If they laugh they’re more apt to remember, and come get the kittens. I’ll put them out of the way, poor little things, if nobody answers in a day or two.”
But—whether it was that cats who were “nice purrers” were a novelty, whether it is true that there’s a place for everything in this world if we could only get in touch with it—the very next day there were five applicants for those two black kittens. Indeed, Winona had great difficulty in holding onto Hike the Camp Cat, who had grown by now into a very presentable, if fat, Maltese kitten. People seemed to think that it was Winona’s duty to distribute cats as long as cats held out.
The only drawback was that for the rest of the time it was there the village with one accord used Camp Karonya as a clearing-house for its cats!
A couple of days later Winona took Florence and Puppums, and went exploring in the rowboat. Louise and Helen were very busy making a tree-house, but they promised to see that Hike the Camp Cat was looked after and no belated advertisement answerer got him.
The Merriams rowed about a mile along the river, in the direction away from the village, without finding anything more interesting than a muskrat, who disappeared when Puppums barked at him. But just a while after this thrilling incident they rounded a bend, and there in a red canoe, placidly catching fish, sat Tom!
His back and that of the boy with him were turned to them, but there was no mistaking him, nor Billy Lee. Neither of them saw the rowboat till it was quite close, and Florence and Puppums howled together in greeting.
“Hello, kid! H’lo, Winnie—you’ve frightened the fish!” was his brotherly greeting: while Billy, not being a relation, took off his hat and said politely that he was glad to see them, and how was the camp?
“Oh, never mind the fish!” said Winona, when she had answered Billy with equal politeness. “You can fish any day, but you haven’t seen your family since last week. How do you come to be up here so soon?”
“Captain Gedney worked it somehow—I don’t know how,” said Tom. “Anyhow, we’re here. Good fishing, too. See?” He held up a string of fair-sized fish in proof.
“Where’s your camp?” asked Florence, while Puppums almost had hysterics and had to be handed into the canoe so that he could love Tom properly. “Can I come see it?”
“Sure you can,” said Tom. “No charge for the view. It’s those tents right over there.”
“You know I don’t mean that,” said Florence, pouting. “I mean I want to get out and go over.”
“Oh, wait a day or so, can’t you, Floss?” implored Tom, who plainly didn’t want to be detached from his fishing. “Wait and come over with the rest of the bunch, and we’ll give you a grand welcome, fifes and drums and things. I tell you, though, girls, why can’t you all come use our swimming pool? We’ve just finished damming off a little branch stream into a dandy pond—paved it and all. Started it last year. But you’d have to give us warning, so we wouldn’t be in it.”
“Why, how lovely!” exclaimed Winona. “I know Mrs. Bryan will let us, and all of us brought our bathing-suits.”
“Good enough!” said Tom.
“How was mother—was everything all right at home when you left?” asked his sister.
“Oh, fine and dandy. But what do you think, Winnie, that Children’s Aid child has come. Mother says she’s glad it happened while we were out of the way, so she’d have a better opportunity to get him running smoothly without our help.”
“Him!” said Winona. “Do you mean they sent a boy, not a girl?”
Tom laughed. “They certainly did—a darky about twelve, as black as your hat, and a regular Topsy.”
“Good gracious!” said Winona, laughing.
Mrs. Merriam had written to the Children’s Aid Society a little while before for a girl of about fourteen—black preferred—who could help with the dishes out of school hours. She had heard nothing about it, and the family had completely forgotten it till now.
“When did he get there?” asked Winona.
“The day before I came away,” said Tom. “It was wash-day, and that colored washerwoman mother has opened the door. First we knew she came back and said: ‘There’s a white woman and a young colored gemman to see Mrs. Merriam.’ So mother went out, and came back in a minute with the agent, an awfully nice sort of a girl, and the smallest, solemnest, black boy you ever saw. Mother didn’t want him at first, but the agent-girl swore he had all the virtues, and needed a good home and moral training. Then she walked off and left him sitting on a chair, staring straight ahead. I tell you, it got sort of embarrassing after awhile. So I asked him his name.”
“What is it?” asked Winona.
“He said, ‘Ah was christen’ Thomas!’” returned Tom, grinning. “So mother told him that I’d been christened Thomas, too, and asked him for his last name. And he said, ‘Ma las’ name’s Clay—but hit ain’ ma callin’ name. Ma callin’ name’s Thomas. But yo’-all kin call me Mistah Clay if yo’ want to!’”
“Did mother want to?” asked Winona.
“She nearly exploded,” said Tom, “but I think they came to some sort of a compromise. I don’t think he’ll leave her time to miss us, for a week or so anyway!”
“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Winona. “Tommy, did you ever know of anything I could do?”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Tom, while Billy Lee, who had been silently fishing all this time, looked interested.
“I mean something I could do that would earn money,” she explained. “We want to stay in camp longer than we have money for, so we must earn it.”
“The thing you always were best at was darning my stockings,” said Tom cheerfully, and grinned.
“Oh, dear, I just knew you’d say that!” said Winona. “I can’t go round selling darns!”
Billy Lee lifted up his head from a tangle in his fishing-line as he answered, “I don’t see why you couldn’t. I mean—why couldn’t you do mending for the Scouts? If you’d be willing to, I know we’d be glad. There’s an awful lot of holes in my clothes.”
“And nobody to do them?” asked Winona, delighted.
“Not a soul,” answered both boys at once.
“Oh, how perfectly splendid!” said Winona. “Mr. Gedney will know how much I ought to charge for them, won’t he?”
“Yes, or Mrs. Bryan had better tell you,” said Tom.
“Oh, can I have them now?” asked Winona.
“Oh, bother!” said Tom. “Won’t to-morrow do?”
“I’ll get ’em,” said Billy Lee, and made a flying leap out of the canoe to shore.
He was gone a few minutes, and came back with a clothes-basket full of garments of various kinds: also with the Scoutmaster, Captain Gedney.
“Good-morning, girls!” said the Scoutmaster. “This is fine! Billy tells me we’re going to get our mending done!”
“Oh, is it really all right?” quivered Winona.
“Yes, indeed, it’s more than all right,” answered Mr. Gedney enthusiastically. “I was thinking of taking a trip to the village to see if we could find somebody we could put at it, but this is better. Now you get your Guardian to put a price on the work, either by the piece or by the hour. I can promise you spot-cash, and a great deal of gratitude into the bargain.”
So the end of it was that Florence and Winona rowed happily back down the river with what looked extremely like two weeks’ wash in their boat; also with the joyful certainty that Winona, at least, was going to be able to earn her share of the expenses for the extra weeks of camping.
The boys promised to paddle down in a couple of days and get the mended clothes, and—most important—the bill for them. Billy Lee wanted to see his sister, anyway, he said.
When Florence and Winona got back nearly every girl in camp was seated out in the open air, in a big circle, and nearly all of them were talking at once,planning the ceremonial meeting for that night. There was to be a ceremonial fire, a very high and beautiful one with a central pole—this last an innovation which Louise was introducing. And Winona and Marie Hunter were going to be made Fire Makers, Louise and several of the others were going to be Wood-gatherers, and Nataly Lee was going to join.
When Winona joined the circle she found that a good deal of the excitement was being caused by the Book of the Count. Marie and Helen, with paints and pen and brushes, were making the record of the days they had spent in camp a very lively affair.
Winona sat down and looked on at what Marie was doing, and read on the page they had open:
On the second day, Winona,Ray-of-Light, the Cat-CollectorMade her way unto the village,To buy post-cards at the village.With her went the cheerful Comet,Ishkoodah with flaming tresses;With her went the Star of Evening,Helen, gentle Star of Evening,And Nokoma, flower-giver—Nataly the flower-giver.Seeking post-cards, thus they wandered,But alas, the Cat-CollectorMuch preferred to bring home kittens,And to advertise those kittens.All next day the ad-replyersTracked our camp with questing footsteps,Asked of us—“Where are those kittens?Give us several dozen kittens!”For, alas, those cats had vanished,Gone with the first two replyersTo the ad Winona paid for.Still about our Camp come wailingFolk who seek the cats they heard of,Seeking several dozen kittens;Still the Ray-of-Light, Winona,Cannot give them any kittens,Cannot stop their wronged insistenceOn those kittens, on those kittens—
“Oh, good gracious!” asked Winona, beginning to laugh before she read any further. “Whodidmake all that up?”
“I did,” said Marie proudly, “but we all helped.”
“Do you mean to tell me that any more people have come catting to-day?” demanded Winona.
“Only seven,” said Helen. “Winnie, you’ll never hear the last of this.”
“Well, Mrs. Bryan, I’ve found some work to do that will earn money,” said Winona, hastily changing the subject. “Florence and I went up to the Scouts’ camp, and Mr. Gedney gave us the boys’ mending to do. He said you were to put a price on it for us.”
“Twenty to twenty-five cents an hour,” supplied Mrs. Bryan promptly. “You’d better have some of the other girls help you, too, dear, for there’s enough work there to take up a good deal of your time for three or four days, and you don’t come camping to turn yourself into a sewing-girl, even for the good of the camp.”
“Very well,” said Winona. “Who hasn’t picked out any special work to do yet?”
“Nataly Lee,” said someone.
“Neither have I,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll help, too.”
A half-dozen of them went off to a sunny spot, produced a large alarm-clock to time themselves by, and put in two hours of work immediately. That is, all but Nataly. She got tired at the end of one hour, and went off, she said, to lie down. The others got the mending almost done, for many hands make light work. Then they piled up the basket again, and went back to camp. It was Winona’s turn to get supper that night.
“There ought to be about four dollars’ worth of work in that basket,” said Helen thoughtfully when they all met at supper.
“It’s probably more than we’ll have next time,” said Winona. “But anyway, it’s a steady income. Let’s hope they’ll be kind, and wear big, awful holes in everything they have.”
“They will, unless they’ve had a change of heart since last week,” said Louise.
After supper was cleared away the girls set about collecting wood in the open space on the top of the little hill, for their ceremonial-fire. It was the most happy and successful meeting they had had, and also, as Louise expressed it, the most beadful. It ended in a ghost-dance around the fire. After it was through the girls lay still and told stories, which gradually became more ghostly than the dance. It was very pleasant till bedtime came. Then even the bravest of them made dashes for their tents; and Mrs. Bryan, making her rounds after the camp was asleep, found five lighted candles keeping ghosts out of five tents in a row!
There were bathing and boating and tree-climbing in the days that followed and there were hikes and folk-dances and various entertainments, by themselves, and occasionally with the Scouts for audience. The girls canoed all up and down the river, and borrowed the Scout swimming-pool with rapture, and learned all sorts of swimming and diving stunts. And everybody got brown and husky and cheerful. But in between the good times the girls worked on steadily, each at her appointed task, and in about ten days there was a promising collection of material to be sold, for the virtuous purpose of giving Camp Karonya some more weeks of life in the Wampoag woods.
Helen gave up modelling her beloved statuettes, and went soberly to work at bowls and vases, and other such things that people would be likely to find useful. She decorated them with motives she drew herself, and took them up to Wampoag, the summer-resort, where there was a kiln, and had them fired. Louise made burnt-leather pillows, which filled her hair with such a fearful smell that for awhile she washed it every day, till it occurred to her to wear a bathing-cap to work in. She also burned mats and table-covers and napkin-rings to the limit of her purchasing power; and when that failed she took to carving things out of wood she picked up. The Blue Birds wove raffia baskets and table-mats, and Marie and Edith crocheted bags andcollars. Adelaide devoted herself to canning. The rest helped her sometimes, but more of the time she took pride in putting up the fruit all by herself.
There were embroidered tea-cloths and runners, and there was hammered brass-work. The honor-counts rolled up like snowballs, for the girls made nearly everything a girl is capable of making or decorating. There was almost enough made to stop.
But still Camp Karonya held nightly discussions, having made these various things, as to how to sell them. The plan most of them wanted to adopt was that of going from house to house with them. Having a fair meant hiring a room or store, or running the risk of having nobody come to buy—for the camp was two miles from the nearest point of civilization. The only alternative seemed putting them into some of the resort shops to be sold on commission, and there was a large risk there that the shops might not do properly by them. There was another alternative, sending them home to be sold, but that seemed inglorious, somehow.
One night, after everything had been argued over until everybody had finished from sheer inability to think of anything more to say, and begun to discuss constellations instead, Winona, lying on her back, felt a pull at her sleeve. She rolled over, to see Louise stealthily working herself down the hill, out of the moonlight. Winona rolled as stealthily after her.
“What is it?” she asked, when they were at the bottom of the hill, where they couldn’t be seen.
“Come hither, Little One, and I will tell you!”responded Louise, like Kipling’s Crocodile. She led the way to the dock, where they sat down in the moored rowboat, and Louise began to hold forth.
“We’ve got more than enough things to sell, and none of those plans are a bit of good. What we want to do is to take all that stuff up to Wampoag, in this old boat of yours, and peddle them at the big hotels.”
“I think so, too,” agreed Winona, “but the girls haven’t gotten unanimous yet. You know Nataly Lee’s going to fight to the last ditch against selling things that way. I don’t know whether she thinks it’s too hard work or too undignified, but you can see she isn’t going to stand for it one little bit.”
“Oh, that girl makes me tired!” said Louise. “I’m not going to wait for their old unanimity. I tell you, Win, I have a plan!”
“Well, go ahead!” Winona encouraged.
“To-morrow morning,” said Louise. “You and I will slide off early, like the Third Little Pig, and pack the boat with all the junk we have ready. It’s all in the boxes in the store-place. Then we’ll row to Wampoag, and just sell things all day!”
“How’ll we get them away without anybody seeing us?” objected Winona, who liked the plan very much. “It would be gorgeous if we could manage it.”
“We’ll have to go now and sneak the stuff into the boat before bedtime,” said Louise. “We can pile them on that amateur stretcher we used to carry Florence. I think nobody ever took it apart.”
“Hurrah! Come on, then!” said Winona, and the two girls slid off into the shadows.
It was not such very hard work. They filled their two suitcases, and put what wouldn’t go in the suitcases on the stretcher; and had everything in the boat and covered up with a waterproof blanket before their absence had been noticed. Then they stole back into the circle as innocently as kittens, in time to sing “Mammy Moon” at the tops of their voices with the rest.
They were both on the policing shift that week, so it was easy for them to arrange to get their share of camp-work over early. By half-past eight in the morning they were rowing gayly down the river in the direction of Wampoag. Florence wanted to come, but they had to repress her. She might have been in their way.
When they were around the bend, safely out of sight of the camp, Winnie stopped rowing.
“I had an idea, too!” she said. “Reach under the seat, Louise.”
Louise pulled out, first, the luncheon she herself had poked under a little while before; next, a good-sized bundle that appeared to be clothes.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“For us,” said Winona.
Louise opened it, and eyed its contents puzzledly. There were a dressing-sack made of bandanna handkerchiefs, partly ripped up, two old skirts, an old shawl and a checked gingham apron.
“They’re to dress up in,” explained Winona. “We’ll be poor little emigrant girls that want to sellada nice-a goods, lady! The women who go around selling things out of suitcases always have a foreign look. So I fished these out of the box of stuff we had for theatricals. I knew just where it was, because we got some things out of it for ‘Everygirl’ last week.”
“Oh, gorgeous!” cried Louise, finishing the ripping-up of the dressing-sack into its original red handkerchiefs. She dug through the pile again and picked out the shortest skirt, for she hadn’t her full growth yet. “Who gets the little checked shawl?” she asked.
“You do, if you want it,” answered Winona. “I’ll take the apron.”
They both turned in the collars of their middy blouses, and rolled the cuffs under. Skirts over them, a bandanna apiece round their necks, and the checked shawl over Louise’s head and a handkerchief on Winona’s—and they were very convincing emigrants.
“Our shoes are rather too good,” said Winona discontentedly, “but you mustn’t ask too much in this world. Pin your hair up, Louise. It’s too red for an Italian, or even a Syrian.”
She managed to secure her own on top under her ’kerchief as she spoke. They were both so brown that they looked like natives of somewhere else, and the dresses were very natural. The long skirts and fastened-up hair made them both look eighteen or twenty—for Winona was as tall as she would ever be, five feet six, and Louise, though shorter, was plump.
“We can buy long earrings at the ten-cent store on our way up,” said Louise. “I always did want to.”
“All right,” said Winona.
“And, for goodness sake, Win, see if you can’t get up some sort of an accent. Italian would be the easiest, I guess.”
“Yes, kinda lady! Sella da fina things—real handa-made!” responded Winona, her white teeth flashing.
Then they came to the Boy Scouts’ camp, and they had to row very softly, and keep as far away from the bank as they could. But luck was still with them, and none of the Scouts happened to be fishing that morning.
“If we’d remembered we might have brought back the mending,” said Louise, with a half-concealed desire to go tell the Scouts about her prospective lark.
“Better not go in there!” said Winona. She had a brother in the camp, and she didn’t care to risk being stopped in mid-career of what promised to be a very fine time. So they rowed down the river till they reached Wampoag, and tied their boat to the dock.
They took out the stretcher, put a suitcase on either end of it and piled the things that were too big for the suitcases in the middle. Then they each took an end and started bravely forth.
“Where da gooda hotel for sella da goods?” asked Louise, with a broad and friendly grin, of the interested dock-keeper.
“Any at all,” he answered. “Just go straight down this road till you see a hotel. They’re all together.”
“Thank you, mister,” Louise answered, and they trotted on.
The sight of two young Italian girls carrying astretcher full of goods proved to be a little more of a sensation than the girls had bargained for. They felt as if they had never been so much stared at in their lives, and they were both grateful when they reached the shelter of the first hotel porch.
It was a big hotel that they had come upon, and its wide porches were full of women, young and old, rocking, and talking and embroidering, and willing enough to look at the things the girls had. The arrangement was that Winona should take care of the smaller things, the painted and embroidered linens and so forth in the suitcases, while Louise attended to the pottery and larger art-craft things, and a row of Adelaide’s jellies. She didn’t expect to sell the jelly to people who already had three meals a day, but she was agreeably surprised. Evidently they liked to have things to eat in their rooms.
The stretcher and suitcases were set on the porch and Louise, with an ingratiating grin under her shawl, went from woman to woman, holding up her wares.
“Look at da fine pot—native wares—very cheapa?” she asked. “You not have to buy. We lika show. Buy da fine pot cheapa? You nice lady—you take real Indian pillow—real pine pillow!”
“I believe I will,” said an energetic-looking old lady with white hair and a black silk dress. “How much is that pillow, my dear? And aren’t you pretty young to be out selling things this way? You don’t look more than seventeen.”
Louise swelled with pride at being taken for as old as that, but she managed to answer, “One dollar forpillow—very cheap—real hand work!” and to the last question, “I lika sella da goods—four little poor ones younger as me home. Iveryold!”
At which the elderly lady bought the pillow on the spot. Louise put the dollar in the pocket of her skirt, and went back to the stretcher after a big vase of Helen’s, which was the pride of her heart, and for which she meant to ask at least one-fifty.
“Real pottery pot, lady!” she explained to the nearest woman to her. “Real hand-made—see? Real hand-painted—only two dollar!”
Louise had spent a summer at a hotel herself, the year before, and she knew all the tricks and manners of the porch-peddlers. She let the woman who wanted the vase beat her down to one-sixty, and pocketed the extra dime that she hadn’t thought she’d get with a sense of duty well done. She frisked up and down the porch having a glorious time, while Winona, with her open suitcase, sat still by the top step. She did not need to move, for the women were as interested in her wares as they always are in table-linens. She sold a stencilled crash luncheon set of Marie’s, five pieces, for five dollars, while Louise was haggling over the price for Helen’s vase. Several of the bead bags and necklaces woven on the little looms went, too. The girls left that porch with nearly twelve dollars worth of goods sold.
The next hotel did not do so well by them, for the people there only bought a few handkerchiefs and bead chains. Still it was better than nothing. They had covered six hotels by one o’clock and made twenty-fivedollars. The needle-work, much to the girls’ surprise, went more quickly than anything else.
“It must be the wistful sweetness of your expression, or else they think I look too well-fed to be sorry for, Win,” said Louise as they munched their sandwiches on the dock. The dock-keeper had given them permission. “You just sit still and look pleasant, and the sales get made. I have to chase all over creation, and tease and joke and cheapen, to get them to buy mine.”
“I’m afraid to talk much, for fear my accent will break through,” explained Winona. “It’s the goods, I think. They all seem crazy over those stencilled things. I could sell a lot more if I had them.”
“Haven’t you any more?” asked Louise between bites.
“Only one, and I promised that to your kinda lady that you sold the pine pillow to, and told you were the oldest of five. But I’m taking orders,” finished Winona with a grin.
“Do you suppose Marie will stand for going on with it?”
“For what—this bandanna party? She needn’t—I’ll deliver them myself,” stated Winona calmly.
“What about the carved frames Elizabeth made?” asked Louise, as they rose and took up the burden of life in the shape of their much lightened stretcher.
“Pretty well, but nothing like the way Florence’s and Frances’s little sweet-grass baskets went.”
“If we sell enough to run the camp another twoweeks, I don’t see why the girls shouldn’t keep any money over that they earn,” said Winona thoughtfully. “The proprietor of that little boarding-house we went to last but one says she wants more jelly.That’sall gone, thank goodness—oo, but it was heavy!”
“The little baskets at a quarter apiece are going off fast, too,” said Louise. “Hotel Abercrombie-by-the-Water. Don’t forget your dialect, angel-child.”
“E pluribus unum! Panama mañana! Nux vomica!” answered Winona enthusiastically as they ascended the steps. “Buya da beada necklace, lady?”
“Good!” said Louise under her breath, and herself tackled dialect again. “Buya da pot for poor woman, lady? Got thirteen children to keep—no money!”
“Thirteen children—really?” asked the woman in horror.
“Thirteen—all girls!” answered Louise mournfully, while Winona bent very low over her suitcase, and tried not to laugh. “Unlucky number, huh?”
“Very, for her!” said the woman. “Well, I really must buy something to help her.”
Winona was going to stop her, for she thought it wasn’t fair; although Louise evidently took it as a lovely joke. But as the woman did not feel that her duty to the thirteen went beyond buying one fifteen-cent sweet-grass napkin-ring—and she only wanted to give ten cents for it—Winona did not intervene. She only whispered, “Don’t, Louise!” next time she passed her. And Louise, though she laughed, said no more about the thirteen poor little Camp Fire Girls starvingat home. Then towards evening it was Winona who got into trouble.
They had sold about forty-five dollars’ worth of stuff in the course of the day, and were back at the first hotel, the one they had started from, to deliver the stencilled set Winona had promised to Louise’s white-haired lady. Winona, who felt very tired after her long day of tramping and selling, was sitting on the top of the hotel porch in the shade of a pillar, her hands crossed on her lap. Her pretty face was pale with the long, tiring day, and her eyelids drooped. She was figuring out that, what with the Scouts’ mending and this day’s work, and the orders they had taken, the camp could go on three weeks more. And she felt a touch on her shoulder.
“My dear,” said the brisk voice of the lady who had bought the stencilled set, “you seem tired.”
“Why, not so very,” said Winona, coming out of her thinking-fit hastily, and forgetting her accent on the way.
“And don’t you find this a hard life for so young a girl?” went on the lady. “Wouldn’t you rather do something else?”
Winona smiled and shook her head. “I like it,” she said.
The old lady sat down by her and took her hand. Louise, meanwhile, out of hearing, was trying to sell a very lopsided basket to an elderly gentleman.
“My child,” she said, “I can’t help feeling that you’re too intelligent and too refined-looking for a lifelike this. I am sure you are not an Italian. Is there nothing I could do to help you?”
Winona felt very uncomfortable. She hadn’t bargained for having people take a personal interest in her.
“Really there isn’t anything,” she answered truthfully. “I have a very good time. I can’t tell you all about it, but indeed, I have a very pleasant life.”
But the old lady was not to be daunted.
“My dear child, there is something very attractive about you,” she said. “I believe with the proper education you would become an unusually charming young girl. You are young enough still to be trained. Is that girl with you your sister?”
“Oh, no,” said Winona, wondering what next.
“I thought as much,” said the old lady. “You don’t look like sisters. You’re naturally of a better class than she is. Now, supposing that someone who could do a good deal for you took you and had you educated, do you think you would be a good girl and do them credit?”
Winona did not know in the least what to say. It looked as if the old lady intended to adopt her before she could escape.
“It would be awfully nice,” she said, uncomfortably, “and very kind. But—indeed, I couldn’t!”
The old lady had begun to speak again, when a clatter of hasty feet on the steps behind them made her and Winona both turn around and look.