“Mrs. Merriam,” she said, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I never can eat fish without a sprinkle of nutmeg. Could you have a little grated on this delicious bit for me?”
“Why, yes!” said Winona cordially. “Clay——!”
“Hit ain’ none, Miss Winnie,” interrupted the small servant in a distressed whisper.
“Then go borrow one at Mrs. Lee’s, and hurry!” whispered Winona. “Anything, so you only get it and have it for Mrs. Driggs’s fish.”
Clay looked black for a moment. Then a comprehensive grin dawned on his face. He trotted outwith Mrs. Driggs’s fish, and brought it back again a few moments later, liberally nutmegged and very much to the lady’s taste. She ate it all and was happy.
“You seem to have no difficulty in keeping discipline in your family and among your step-children, Mrs. Merriam,” said Mr. Donne, almost directly after the nutmeg episode. “You must seem more like a sister than a mother to these tall young people.”
Winona was struck dumb with astonishment for a moment. She looked across at Tom, who looked back at her imploringly. She could see what had happened out in the kitchen, that time that the three others had been there alone and giggling. But this was no time to have a scene. She braced herself and settled her glasses more firmly, after one reproachful look at the three culprits, whose faces were tense with apprehension.
“Yes,” she replied quietly, talking, as Tom afterwards said, like a seraph, “They do seem like that. They are charming children, really.”
Mr. Donne went on talking about it. Winona went on replying with serene dignity. Even when he praised the cook she took it serenely, and when the Ladies’ Aid came in sight again she called to mind a visit from the secretary at which she had been present, and quite overwhelmed Mr. Donne with particulars.
Mrs. Driggs had been a little quiet and hard to talk to at the beginning of the meal, but Billy—Billy the quiet, Billy the shy among his own kind—proved to have the art of talking to grown people down to a fine point. He not only kept his end up, but he steerednobly away from risky questions of relationship, and other such perilous topics.
“It certainly gives you confidence to be a married woman!” thought Winona, as she excused herself and went to see about unpacking the ice-cream. Clay’s performance so far had been perfect, but she did not trust anybody but herself to get the cream successfully out of the freezer, without getting salt into it.
“Where did you find that nutmeg, Clay?” she asked curiously, as they arranged the cakes and ice-cream, and put melted chocolate in a pitcher.
“Law, Miss Winnie,” said Clay, his smile nearly coiling itself around his ears, “I done tole you hit wasn’t none. I des took dis yere ole wooden button-hook what hangs on a nail here, an’ grate a li’l bit of it off. De minister’s wife she never know de diffunce.”
Winona caught her breath, but this was no time to be overcome. The dessert had to be served. They were all laughing at something Louise was saying, when she came back. “I wonder if they would look so happy if I told them about the nutmeg!” she couldn’t help thinking, but it did not seem a very good thing to tell anyone, just then—although it was too good to keep always. The Camp Fire heard about it afterward.
Coffee, cheese, nuts and raisins, all appeared and disappeared, and then Winona led her sated guests out on the porch. She felt triumphantly virtuous. The dinner had been good straight through, the talk had gone smoothly, and the company seemed very happy and pleased. She sat down by Mrs. Driggs and went ontalking. She was going on prosperously when Mr. Donne’s voice, from the other end of the porch, stopped Mrs. Driggs’s account of her last maid.
“How long did you say you had been married, Mrs. Merriam?” he inquired.
“Married?” echoed Winona desperately, trying to think of a way out.
She was spared giving her answer. There was a sound of footsteps and wheels within the house, and Mrs. Merriam’s wheel-chair, propelled by Florence, appeared in the doorway.
“I got back sooner than I thought I should, Frances,” said the real Mrs. Merriam’s cheerful voice. “Florence came over and told me that our friends were here, so I had her wheel me back as soon as I’d had my supper. We didn’t get home from the ride till a little while ago, and I couldn’t get here for the meal.”
Winona did not wait to hear more. There was a long open window at her back. One spring—and all that remained to tell the tale of “young Mrs. Merriam” was an overturned porch-chair and the distant sound of a tearing garment. Up in her room, pulling down her hair and slipping on her fresh middy-blouse and white skirt, Winona heard the laughter, and knew the others were being forgiven, and the whole tale told.
“Anyway!” she said to herself as she took off her glasses, shook down her hair, washed her hot face and prepared to walk downstairs and meet the family. “Anyway, that couldn’t have been a better dinner if I’d been married sixteen times!”
“This paying for deceased poultry,” said Tom, “is getting monotonous. First there were those pedigreed geese up on the river, and now Henry. I know Henry never cost as much as the Janeways say he did.”
“I think we’re paying for all it cost to send him to prep school and college,” suggested Louise, who was staying over a day. “You forget that Henry was intellectual.”
“He was tough,” agreed Tom, “if that’s any sign! So was paying for him.”
“Oh, Tommy dear!” said Winona penitently. “Henry was really my fault. I oughtn’t to let you join in with me. I can pay for Henry very well alone.”
“I think I see you!” said Tom. “No, Winnie, united we stand, divided we fall. I help pay for Henry—see you later—just remembered how late it is.”
He bolted upstairs, leaving Winona, Louise and Billy on the porch staring at each other.
“What’s struck Tom?” asked Billy. “First time I ever knew him to be in a hurry.”
“Why, I don’t know,” said Louise. “I thought you two generally hunted together.”
“Not to-night,” said Billy. He vaulted the railing casually, and walked out into the middle of the lawn, where he could see Tom’s lighted window. “He’s up there with all the lights on, walking the floor as if he had something on his conscience, trying to tieall his neckties, one after another,” reported Billy. “There—there goes the third one. He’s going to try a red one now.”
“I know what it is,” said Winona, seeing a light. “I’ve just remembered. He’s going to call on a girl. He’s been going to for all week, and just got braced up to it. He’s been wearing me out all day, asking me for things to talk to her about. I suppose he’s trying to decide on the necktie that matches his socks best.”
“But, great Scott, he’s been to see girls before!” protested Billy. “I’ve been along when he’s been seeing girls, and fellows, and even old gentlemen, and he never took it so hard.”
“It’s a very particular, grown-up call,” explained Winona, “with a card-case and a cane, and everything like that.”
“What’s the cane for?” asked Billy, who had come back to his seat on the porch. “Girl collecting them?”
“I think it must be for moral support,” put in Louise.
“I didn’t know he had one,” said Billy. “Where did he get it?”
“Christmas present last year,” explained Winona briefly. “Billy, don’t you wish we were all back at Wampoag, having a moonlight swim?”
“I certainly do,” said Billy. “Not but that your porch is nice, too,” he added with the politeness he never seemed to forget.
Before they could lament camp life any further, Tom rushed down the stairs.
“Winnie! Winnie! Where’s my blue scarf?” he called from inside the front door.
“On Louise,” Winona called back promptly. “Don’t you remember, you asked her if she didn’t want to wear it with her sailor-suit?”
“Can I have it, Lou?” he asked, coming out. “I wouldn’t ask you, but it just matches my hatband.”
“Certainly you can have it,” said Louise, with chilly politeness, unfastening it and handing it to him.
“Good-evening, Mr. Merriam,” said Billy, grinning, and rising in order to make a very low bow. “I never thought you were this far on the way to being a perfect lady, old boy—Mr. Merriam, I mean.”
“Going to call on an awfully correct girl,” said Tom off-handedly. “I say, Lou, can I have that blue class-pin of yours?”
“Certainly,” said Louise again, still more coldly, detaching it and holding it out. “Anything else you think you’d like?”
“Not that I can think of,” said Tom, taking the class-pin. “That’s a good old Lou,” he ended, adding insult to injury. Then he sat down and pulled out his mother’s celluloid memorandum tablets. He laid them on his knee and looked at them earnestly, as he adjusted the tie and the class-pin.
“Did you think of any more things for me to say after I landed the California Exposition on her?” he asked his sister.
Winona looked over at Billy to see if he saw the funny side of it. There was no use looking at Louise,for in her present sulky frame of mind she would not have seen anything funny in a whole joke-book.
“How would the next election do?” she suggested gravely.
“M-m—all right,” said Tom, entering it. “That won’t last forever, though, because all you can ever do is guess which man will get it. I think you might help a fellow out, Lou. You’re generally so clever.”
“Ask her how she likes her hats trimmed,” said Louise scornfully, without turning around to him.
“Oh, no,” said Tom, “that’s too silly a question.” But he put it down just the same. “Let’s see. That ought to carry me on till nearly nine.... Cæsar! It’s time I went! Don’t mind if I go off and leave you, do you Bill?”
“Not a bit!” said Billy calmly. “I’m all right. But”—Billy’s eyes twinkled—“don’t you really think you ought to wear your tuxedo, old fellow? Much more correct, you know. I saw it in a Hints to Best Dressers’ column awhile ago. It said that no true gentleman was without evening clothes in the evening.”
Tom looked uneasy, but he was firm.
“I won’t get into that thing for anything less than a dance or a hand-made clerical dinner,” he said, thoughtlessly jamming his hat down over one ear the way he usually wore it, then putting it straight with a jerk. “Great Scott! I must hurry!”
“My ears and whiskers! The Duchess! Won’t I catch it if I’m late!” quoted Louise scornfully from Alice in Wonderland, as Tom dived down the steps.
“What on earth’s got into Tom!” asked Billy. “The idea of doing that because you like it!”
“I don’t know,” said Winona. “It is queer, isn’t it?”
“Going off acting like he was all grown up!” mused Billy, still lost in wonder at such a waste of a perfectly good evening.
“I do wish you wouldn’t always say ‘like’ for ‘as if,’ Billy,” interrupted Louise sharply. “I hate it.”
“We always say it that way down home,” said Billy.
“That’s no reason for your doing it here! Being born in China doesn’t make it good manners for you to eat with chopsticks,” said Louise, walking into the house and slamming the screen-door behind her.
“Can’t Ah help yo’ find yo’ tempah, Louise?” Billy called teasingly after her, with a purposely exaggerated Southern accent. There was no answer.
“You’d be cross, too, if you were Louise,” Winona defended her friend. “One of the things she stayed down from camp over to-night for was that she and Tom were going off to kodak some cloud effects for a magazine prize. And she was going to try to get some photographs that would count in Camp Fire work, too. And Tom’s walked off, forgetting all about it.”
“Why didn’t you remind him?” asked Billy sensibly.
“Louise wouldn’t let me. She said she’d go straight back if I did.”
“Well, she needn’t have taken it out on me,” saidBilly plaintively. “I didn’t break any engagements. I suppose she has a red-haired temper.”
Meanwhile Louise, after she banged the screen-door, had gone straight through the house to the back. Mrs. Merriam was in the living-room, which prevented her crying there. She was very much hurt at Tom’s forgetfulness. They had been chums for a long time, and this particular expedition after cloud effects had been something they had planned long before the Scouts’ camp broke up. And now Tom had gone gayly off, forgetting all about it. It really was horrid.
Crying on a bed is hot work in summer, so she decided to go out back and do it. She sat on the porch, put her arms on the back of a chair and began to cry.
But circumstances seemed to be against her. Puppums, who had been asleep under a chair, got up, yawned, sauntered across the porch, and sat down by her. Then he proceeded to whine for her to turn around, make a lap, and take him up into it.
“Oh, do stop!” said Louise indignantly, when the whining had gone on steadily for some minutes. But if you took any notice of Puppums he merely argued that a little more work would get him what he wanted, and went on begging. In the present instance he answered Louise by lifting his nose further up in the air, and howling, as if he wished to assure her that he felt for her.
“You mean old dog!” said Louise, jumping up. “I’ll settle you!” Puppums was very much pleased.He had an optimistic disposition, and he thought it was a game. He ran around and around the porch, finally, when he began to see that Louise was in earnest, hiding under the ice-chest, where he knew nobody could follow him. Louise stopped short, and eyed the ice-box. It occurred to her that she was thirsty.
“This is what you might call being guided,” said she, and opening the lid, looked in. She found a bag of lemons, a bunch of bananas, and she thought she remembered where Winona kept the bottled cherries and the cookies. She went into the kitchen and began work, and in a very little while was on her way back to the front porch with a tray, designed to show her remorse for being cross, piled with cookies and fruit lemonade. Mrs. Merriam, to whom she offered the first glass, pronounced it very good indeed, and sent her on her way. Puppums danced wildly about her, with the idea that she was clearing a table, and he might get bones.
Winona and Billy were still talking as placidly as if Tom had not been wrestling with a formal call, and Louise with a bad temper, for the last twenty minutes.
“Cookies—oh, and fruit lemonade! Louise, you dear!” cried Winona, while Billy took the tray and put it on a table.
“Won’t you have some, Billy? I know you like it, and—and Idolike your Southern accent,” she added in a rush.
“Thank you, Louise,” said Billy. “I like your accent, too—and your fruit lemonade—very much.”
They both laughed. “Let’s bury the hatchet,” he added. “Louise, these certainly are fine cookies.”
The three were still sitting comfortably over their refreshments, even Puppums crunching cakes contentedly in a corner, when Tom hurried up the steps and banged himself down in a chair. His hat was jammed to one side in the old unceremonious fashion, his gloves had vanished, and even his cane was nowhere to be seen.
“Have some,” said Billy tactfully before Tom could say anything. They pushed the cakes toward him, and poured him some lemonade in Winona’s glass, and after he seemed less gloomy they got him to talk.
“Tell us all about it,” said Winona soothingly.
“Nothing to tell!” said Tom in something rather like a growl.
“Have another cooky, and tell us all about it,” repeated his sister in a persuasive voice. And after awhile, when he had had some more cookies and another glass of lemonade, he told them, gradually.
“Well, I sent in my card, of course,” he began. “Asked for Miss Davis.”
“Of course!” said Winona; for her brother’s usual custom was to call up from the sidewalk, “I’m coming over to-night,” and then to walk unceremoniously in whenever he thought of it, that evening.
“I did that all right, thank goodness!” said Tom. “The maid kept me waiting about a year, with a copy of Snowbound, and a Gems from Shakespeare, and a pug-dog made out of plaster, to amuse me. The Davises never seem to sit around in their rooms andon their porches like other people. Just as I got to the point of thinking I’d better go back homeMrs.Davis walked in. I was so surprised at seeing her, instead of Elsie, that I couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say—so I fished up this!”
He jerked the tablets out of his pocket and threw them to Winona.
“Keep ’em away from me,” he said. “I never want to see the blessed things again. First thing I found was ‘Civil War.’ I’d picked out that for a start anyway—thought it would be nice and general, and we had it in History last term, so I knew a lot about it. You’d have thought that would have lasted awhile, wouldn’t you?”
“Seeing that the real thing lasted four years or so, I think it might have,” answered Billy.
“Not a bit of it!” said Tom mournfully. “Mrs. Davis turned out to have had a grand-uncle or something in it, and she said it was a painful subject. I don’t think she ever had a grand-uncle. I believe she didn’t know anything about it, and just invented the old fellow to get out of talking about it!”
“Mercy, what suspicions!” said Winona, laughing. “You certainly have nearly ruined your lovely disposition. Never mind, Tommy, I sympathize with you. What did you tackle next?”
“Tariff-reform, I think,” said Tom.
“What is tariff-reform?” asked Winona. “I never could understand it exactly.”
“Don’t ask me to say it all over again!” begged Tom. “I was getting anxious by that time for fear Iwouldn’t have subjects enough left to use on Elsie. You know she isn’t much of a talker. But I had to say something, and Mrs. Davis didn’t, and I couldn’t think of anything but this foolish book. Mrs. Davis didn’t seem to care much about tariff-reform, either, so I gave that up and looked at the list again, and chose ‘Weather.’ She did warm up a little at that. But the best weather won’t last forever, and you could just hear the silence bump every little while.
“Then I got desperate, and used up Politics and Canoeing and the California Fair, and all the rest. Folks, I finished off every last thing I was going to talk to Elsie about, before she ever appeared! Except about trimming hats—that seemed such a foolish thing to ask a woman that old about.”
“They discussed Measles and Mice, and Music, and everything else that began with an M,” quoted Louise from her favorite Alice in Wonderland.
“Don’t mind her,” said Billy as soberly as he could. “Just go on. Did Elsie Davis ever come down at all?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “she did. Just as I finished my last subject, if you please! She seemed to be dressed for a party, but she said she wasn’t. She sat down at the other end of the room, and tried to see if she couldn’t keep as still as her mother. Mrs. Davis stayed right there, too, and smiled like an alligator—and there was I without an idea in my head or on the memorandum!”
“Didn’t they even show you the photograph album?” inquired Louise, forgetting to be offended.
“They wouldn’t talk, I tell you!”
“Well, whatdidyou do?” asked Louise.
Tom grinned a little, shamefacedly.
“Well—I simply yanked out that old tablet, and began at Civil War again. I said ‘As I was just saying to your mother!’ and I gave her every subject over!”
His hearers howled, and after a minute Tom himself joined in. “Did it work better this time?” asked Winona at last, wiping her eyes.
“Not a work,” said Tom cheerfully, reaching for the last cooky. “That is, all but the hat one. That was clever of you, Lou. She got almost human over that, and began to talk about how many engagements she had—had to break half of them. And I said ‘I don’t believe in breaking dates,’ and suddenly I remembered the one with you to take the pictures—and I left then and there, like a streak of lightning. I left my cane—I don’t care—she can have it to remember me by. Louise, I owe you an apology the size of the house. Why didn’t you remind me about those snapshots?”
“It’s not too late,” said Louise amiably. “The moon’s just about right, now.”
Tom went into the house after the cameras, sending his hat flying up to the hat-tree, followed by his gloves.
“Let’s go, too,” said Billy.
“All right,” said Winona. She leaned back, and laughed, as they waited for the others to come out.
“I don’t believe Tom will try any more formal calls till he’s eighteen, anyway,” she remarked.
“It seems a pity, though,” said Billy, getting up. “He wasted a perfectly good cane!”
Louise went back to camp next day, and Winona went on with her work at home. Louise had left all sorts of presents and messages from the girls, and taken a great many from Winona away with her. Louise’s visit cheered Winona up very much. There was only one hard thing about it—the news Louise had brought that the girls had extended the time of their stay again. The plan now was to stay in Camp Karonya till the fourteenth of September. School opened on the fifteenth. It seemed a long time to wait to see her friends again—for the doctor was certain that her mother would not be able to bear her weight on the injured ankle for a month to come.
Meanwhile Winona wrote to the girls, and her mother and Florence kept track, in what Winona considered a very wild way, of the things she did that should entitle her to honors. The honor-list and a sheet of blanks lived under her mother’s pillow, Winona was sure. If it gave her mother pleasure she was glad to have her do it; but it occurred to Winona the day after Louise left that it mightn’t be a bad scheme to collect a few honors herself, things that she was sure would count. Also she wanted some fun, and she had found that the acquiring of honors usually led to it. So Winona proceeded to “start something.”
To begin with, next door lived Nataly Lee. Winona went over there the very afternoon of the day Louiseleft, and spent the most persuasive three hours of her life, explaining to Nataly that they, as the only two Camp Fire Girls in town, ought to start some good times for other people, who, not being Camp Fire Girls, probably didn’t know how. And before she went back to get supper she had persuaded Nataly she was right.
Next day she and Nataly, cheerful and enthusiastic, made a canvass of the girls in their classes who were staying home. Winona had rather gone on the principle that nearly everyone was off somewhere else, but she found it wasn’t so at all. There were six girls beside herself and Nataly who were ready and willing to join a Porch Club that was to meet once a week, and have a picnic one week and a party the next.
Winona and Tom and Billy, with Nataly, even, helping once in a while, spent some time in furnishing the Merriam porch with chairs and hammocks and screens and lanterns. Then the boys went forth and invited their own friends with a lavish hand. The first porch party was a grand success, although there were about three boys to one girl. But that righted itself next time, which was three days later, for the Porch Club made an unanimous and prompt decision that it wanted to meet twice a week. And more girls wanted to join. So, although they were not like her own old comrades, Winona found that she was making friends whom she would never have had at all, if it had not been that she was cut off from her own set of girls, still having good times at Camp Karonya. As for Nataly, she was a marvellously different person. Thework of management, of social entertaining, proved to be exactly what she could do best. And having to teach things to others (for the Porch Club added an afternoon session, devoted to hand-craft work and reading aloud), made her find that she could do things very well here that she hadn’t liked doing in camp at all! As for Winona, she let Nataly run things as much as she wanted to. She herself was just what she had always been, Ray of Light, holding the girls and boys together by her brightness and her fondness for them. She was the centre of things, after all. Not that she realized it, particularly; she only thought how queer it was that there were so many nice, friendly people in the world, willing to do nice things and have nice times if you only suggested it. And there are, too.
“And, Helen and Louise dear,” Winona wrote to her own two best friends back at Camp Karonya. “Some of the girls in our classes that we scarcely knew, and thought were quiet and stupid, are as nice and bright and funny as ever they can be, and ever so Camp Firey! I believe we can organize another Camp Fire this fall. And I have my housework arranged so that I have two hours in the morning, and most of my afternoon and evening, to do what I please with. So I have a gorgeous time working for honors. It’s a scheme I shan’t tell you about till it’s all worked out and over with, but I think it’s going to work all right. Florence suggested it, bless her heart. Love to the whole Camp Fire, and ask them to take a hike for me!”
Winona’s supplementary plan for honor-winning had been suggested to her this way:
One day she was on the back porch, mending, and Florence had four bosom friends out in the back garden, making a most fearful racket. Mrs. Merriam had a headache, and Winona knew that in a little while the headache would be worse, or that she would have to go and send Florence’s friends home, which meant hurting that independent young person’s feelings.
“Florence,” called Winona, “wouldn’t you and the other girls like me to come down to the end of the garden and tell you fairy-stories?”
The little girls seemed to very much want to. So Winona took her mending and her rocker, and they sat down in the shelter of a big tree. Winona told them stories till it was time for her to go in and see about supper. By then her mother’s headache was over. But after supper Florence came up to Winona, and said, “The girls want to ask something. They want to know if you won’t tell them stories other times, too!”
“Why, what a lovely idea!” said Winona. “Of course I will!”
So to the Porch Club and the housekeeping Winona added two hours every other day, telling stories to Florence and her small friends. She felt rather shy over it at first, but gradually it began to be more and more easy. When the fairy-tales ran low she went to the library and hunted out the Robin Hood and Arthur legends, and even history stories once in awhile. And one day when she was rummaging the card cataloguefor more stories about King Arthur she found out that the Malory book was only a very little of what there was to be told. Everything seemed to lead somewhere else. So the story-hours kept to King Arthur, except for one fairy afternoon a week, for the rest of the month, and Winona learned a good deal about him that she would never have found out by herself.
After one or two meetings, sewing as she talked, she began to show the children a little about darning, too. They brought stockings after that, and kept quieter, she found, when they were working as well as she. The most surprising thing of all to her was that she had time enough for everything. The story-hours took care of all the household mending that her mother did not do; the Porch Club, which met at different houses in rotation, was no trouble at all, merely a good-times affair. The housekeeping was running smoothly, and Winona got time for letter-writing and walks with the boys, and even practice on the piano. There were lots of places where she and Nataly and Tom and Billy could go trolley riding on hot evenings, and there were always boys and girls running in and out, asking her to go places and do things. Winona discovered, as others have before her, that you can have a very good time by staying home in the summer.
One night, toward the last of August, her mother asked her a question.
“How would you like to go back to camp to celebrate your birthday, dear?” she asked.
Now Winona’s birthday, her fifteenth, was on theeleventh of September, just two days before the girls were coming back.
“I would, very much,” she said, “but do you think you will be able to spare me?”
“I am quite sure of it,” said her mother. “Indeed, I might be able to take charge of the house again by next week, if my ankle improves as it is doing now.”
“Oh, no,” said Winona, “I won’t take the risk. Besides, I couldn’t leave the story-hour children, and the Porch Club has to have some things planned for it that I think I’d better help with. But if I can go up there over my birthday it will be lovely.”
“You’ll have to get somebody else to tell the stories while you’re gone, then,” said Florence. “I don’t want my story-hour broken up!”
“By all means, don’t break up Florence’s private story-hour!” said Tom. “Why don’t you do the story-telling yourself, Floss?”
But, “That’s true, Florence,” said Winona. “I think I can find one of the girls in the Porch Club who will do it. You see, mother dear, I’ll need to get all the loose ends up out of the way if I go back even for three days!”
But all the loose ends tied themselves up neatly. Ellen Marks, one of the nicest of the Porch Club girls, promised to tell the stories for the two days Winona would miss. Nataly could look after things elsewhere, and by the eleventh Mrs. Merriam was nearly as well as ever. So the morning of that day saw Winona on her way back to Camp Karonya, with joy in her heart, andher ceremonial costume over her arm, in a special bag.
The whole crowd of girls rushed out to meet her, and sang a cheer from the time her motor-boat was in sight till she landed. They surrounded her, and carried her into camp, where supper was nearly ready.
It seemed very good to be back. The pine needles smelled as woodsily as ever, and the long wooden table looked very homelike, with its brown, chattering girls surrounding it, all trying to tell her everything at once. As soon as supper was over Helen and Louise swept her off to her old tent.
“Hurry,” said Helen. “Get into your ceremonial costume, honey. Heap big Council Fire to-night.”
“Council Fire?” said Winona in surprise. “Why, is it the night for it?”
“This is an extra-special,” explained Helen hastily. “Here, Win, let me help you.”
She began to unfasten Winona’s travelling suit.
“You have a lot more beads than you had,” Winona observed a little wistfully, as Helen took her own gown down from the wall and began to put it on.
Helen laughed as she slung the long string of colored honor-beads around her neck.
“Maybe you’ll catch up,” she remarked carelessly. “You’ll doubtless get an honor or so to-night.”
“Oh, yes,” said Winona. “I ought to get a bead or two for home-craft, and I did some story-hour work, too.”
“As if that was all you did!” said Helen indignantly; and stopped herself short.
“Hurry up, girls!” said Louise, sticking her bead-banded head into the tent. “Time to begin. Hear the drum!”
“Oh, the nice old drum!” cried Winona happily, as she heard its well-remembered monotonous sound in the distance. The three girls linked arms, and hurried to the council hill.
“Oh, but it’s good to be back!” said Winona for the third or fourth time, as she sank into her place in the circle around the first place. She listened dreamily as the ceremony of fire-lighting and all the rest went forward. Things had been happening, it appeared. The reports were given one by one. Winona listened on, and Hike the Camp Cat trotted noiselessly over the ground and curled himself into Winona’s lap. Even he remembered her. She stroked him and listened.
Helen, they told, had managed to coax an old farmer down the road, the identical one they didn’t buy the music-box of, to stop setting traps that hurt rabbits. Louise had, after many hoppings about in solitude, actually managed to master five folk-dances. Adelaide and little Frances had made an emergency dash down the river to get the doctor, when one of the other little girls had fallen from a tree and broken her wrist. There were other things as thrilling.
“And all I did was stay home!” thought Winona as the tales went on, and the beads were awarded. Then she sat up and began to listen more closely, for Mrs. Bryan, Opeechee herself, was rising to give this report, and that was something sure to be special andworth while. When Opeechee related what a girl had done it was an honor worth having.
“You have all done well, and deserved the honors you have been awarded on this, our final Council in the open,” began the Guardian. “Here, together in the woods, it has been easy to follow the law of the fire. We have found it so, I know.
“But now I want to tell you about a watcher of the Camp Fire who has been following the law without any of the helps we have. She gave up the camp and its good times, and went back to assume the duties of a woman—the tending of the real Fire of home. She had charge of the household. She kept a family of four beside herself, including an invalid mother, comfortable, well taken care of and happy, for one month. She made a pleasure out of her duties, and showed others how. Besides this, she collected girls who had not much social life and gave it to them. She led them for a month, three times a week. She told children stories and taught them sewing every other day for a month. And through it all she was happy, and made light for others wherever she went. She has carried the Torch of happiness and health and work and love, and passed it on undimmed to others. Winona, the Flashing Ray of Light, is just fifteen to-night. That is the earliest age at which anyone can be made a Torch-bearer—but I think she deserves the rank, Sisters of the Camp Fire. What do you say?”
Before the girls could answer Winona was on her feet with the kitten in her arms, scarlet and protesting.
“But I didn’t do all those wonderful things, Opeechee!” she cried. “I just did what there was to do. I like to plan things and have people have good times. I just wanted to get as good a time out of it all as I could. And I don’t believe I have enough honor beads to be a Torch-bearer.”
Mrs. Bryan paid her protest very little attention.
“What do you say, Sisters of the Camp Fire?”
The girls burst out into cheering.
“Winona, Flashing Ray of Light, is to take the rank of Torch-bearer to-day,” repeated Mrs. Bryan inexorably. “Rise, Winona.”
And as Winona stood up again (she had sat down hastily after her first objection) Mrs. Bryan repeated the honors she had won, and that her mother and Florence had kept track of so faithfully. She had expected the honor for story-telling, but the one for marketing—and the one for folk-songs—and—why, that Alice Brown pantomime had meant an honor bead! So had bringing in and arranging her mother’s invalid-tray, and the Porch Club and the story-hour had given her a double right to the Torch-bearer rank, which requires leadership of a group. Then, of course, the wood-craft honors she had won before she went home—she had known about those. But to think that everything, even that hilarious ten-course dinner she and Louise had planned, had been good for a bead! Winona had far more than the fifteen required honors for the highest rank of the Camp Fire.
“Repeat the Torch-bearer’s Desire, Winona,” said Mrs. Bryan, and Winona, half in a dream, said,
The light which has been given meI desire to pass undimmed to others.
Mrs. Bryan stepped forward, and threw a string of beads over her head. She had not been in Camp till now, and so the beads had not come one by one as they generally did. She fastened the pin on Winona’s breast, and stepped back, while the girls sang a tempestuous cheer.
Winona sat down on the grass, still bewildered.
“Well, how does it feel to be a Torch-bearer—the only one in Camp?” asked Helen late that night, as the girls were undressing together.
“Wonderful—only I don’t believe it, yet!” said Winona. “Think of all those honors that I never even dreamed I was getting—and to think I was having such fun getting them, too! It seems as if I ought to have worked so hard it was uncomfortable, somehow, to deserve them.”
“It was dreadfully hard to keep the surprise a secret, sometimes,” said Helen. “When your letters were a wee little bit lonesome, sometimes, we had hard work keeping Louise from telling. Oh, Winona, all the girls are so glad!”
“I’m glad, too,” said Winona soberly. “And oh, Helen, Iamgoing to keep on carrying the torch, too—as high as ever I can!”