THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE OPEN ROAD (continued 3)

[164]

I grew to like my work more and more, as the days went by, and gradually learned to handle quite a bit of it myself. Mrs. Harper was very busy; she did a great deal of Red Cross and other war work, besides keeping up in all her clubs, and she got into the habit of telling me what to say to people and letting me write the letters myself. Early in March she went out of town to a convention and left me with a great many letters to write to various people, telling me to sign her name for her. I took very great pains with all those letters so as to be sure to say the right things to the right people, and I felt satisfied when the week was out that I had done myself credit.

Accordingly, it struck me like a thunderbolt when, several days after her return, Mrs. Harper came to me, blazing with anger, and demanded to know what I meant by writing such letters in her absence. Startled, I asked her what she referred to.

[165]

“You wrote Mr. Samuel Butler that if he didn’t hurry and pay up his subscription to the Red Cross Mr. Harper would pay it for him and take it out of his next bill,” said Mrs. Harper furiously. “Mr. Butler is insulted and has withdrawn his subscription of ten thousand dollars to the Perkins Settlement House, which I am trying so hard to establish. Whatever possessed you to write such a letter?”

“I never wrote a letter like that,” I replied with spirit. “I wrote Mr. Butler a very polite, respectful reminder that his pledge was due this month; I never mentioned Mr. Harper or anything about paying it and taking the amount out of any bill.”

I was completely at sea.

“You did write that letter!” declared Mrs. Harper angrily. “How dare you deny it? Mr. Butler showed it to me. It was written on this very stationery, on this typewriter with the green ribbon, and signed with my name in the way you sign it. You wrote it to be funny, I suppose. Well, I can tell you that I can’t have anything like that. I won’t have any further need for your services.”

[166]

She was so positive I had written it that I began to have an awful feeling that I might have written it in my sleep. You know what strange things I do in my sleep sometimes. But all the while I knew who had done it. Ethel Harper had sworn to get even with me for making her tell her mother about the locket. She had written that letter in place of the one I had written. I remembered that one day while Mrs. Harper was away I had been called downstairs and kept talking for over an hour to one of Mrs. Harper’s committee members who had undertaken to distribute some literature and came for instructions. During that time Ethel would have had plenty of chance to read through my mail upstairs.

I started to tell Mrs. Harper that I suspected someone else of writing it, intending to lead gently up to the subject of Ethel, but Mrs. Harper scoffed at the idea.

“There isn’t anyone else in the house who can run the typewriter,” she said flatly.

This was untrue. Ethel could run it; she had done so several times when I was there. But what was the use of accusing Ethel when her mother wouldn’t believe it anyway? I realized the hopelessness of trying to convince Mrs. Harper of something she didn’t want to believe.

[167]

“And further,” continued Mrs. Harper, “I have found that you have not been attending strictly to business. Ethel tells me that you often go over to her room when she is there and stand and talk to her instead of giving your time to my work.”

“Little snake-in-the-grass!” I thought vengefully. I had never gone to her room unless she had called me to do something.

I made up my mind I wouldn’t stay there another minute. I didn’t have to work for such people. I drew myself up stiffly. “If you believe such things, Mrs. Harper,” I said icily, “there can be no business relations between us. I shall not even take the trouble to prove the truth about that letter. I shall go immediately.” And go I did. I knew Mr. Barrett would be very much put out over the affair, because he seemed to think Mrs. Harper had done his school an honor by hiring one of his pupils, but what was I to do? Stay there and be the scapegoat for all Ethel’s sins. Not while I had feet to walk away on.

As I went down the steps I met Ethel coming up. She looked at me with a meaning expression and a triumphant smile. She had kept her word and gotten even with me.

[168]

I felt badly over it, of course, for who can lose a good position and not be cut up about it? I suppose I must have looked pretty doleful for a couple of days, because I met Mrs. Anderson, that friend of Nyoda’s, who used to lend us so many “props” for our Winnebago performances, on the street and she asked me right away what was the matter.

“You’re lonesome for those friends of yours,” she went on, without giving me a chance to answer. “I’m lonesome, too,” she went on. “My husband has been in Washington all winter. Come out and spend a few days with me. You used to be pretty good company, if I remember rightly.”

She persuaded me and I went. You remember the Anderson place out on the East Shore, don’t you? We were all out there once last year. Perfect duck of a house all made of soft gray shingles and seven acres of garden and woods around it. I tramped all over the place through the March mud, looking for signs of spring, and had a perfectly glorious time.

“There’s one sign of spring, over there,” said Mrs. Anderson, who was with me on one of my tramps.

“Where?” I asked, looking around.

[169]

“Young man’s fancy,” said Mrs. Anderson with a laugh of tolerant amusement, “lightly turning to thoughts of love. Look up on the barn there.”

I looked where she pointed, and saw a boy of about eighteen standing on the roof of the barn gazing off into space through a field glass. He had a white flag tied to his right wrist, which he was waving over his head, like the soldiers do when they signal.

“Who is he and what is he doing?” I asked.

“That’s Peter, the boy who helps around the stable,” replied Mrs. Anderson. “He’s sending messages to his lady love. A certain combination of flourishes means ‘I love you,’ and another means ‘Meet me to-night,’ and so on. He told John, my chauffeur, about it, and John told me.”

“How silly!” said I, with a laugh for poor lovesick Peter. “Who is the object of his affection?”

“Some servant girl from the next estate,” replied Mrs. Anderson. “They carry on their affair through field glasses and with signals. They think they are having a thrilling romance.”

“Disgusting!” said I. “How could any girl make such a fool of herself where everybody can see her!”

[170]

Mrs. Anderson laughed indulgently, but I could feel her scorn underneath it. “Some girls will sell every scrap of dignity they have for what they consider a good time, my dear,” she said, laying her hand on my arm in a motherly way.

We left Romeo on the barn flourishing out his messages in the late March sunshine and wandered over to the next estate. There was a new litter of prize bull pups over there and Mrs. Anderson had promised that I should see them before I went home. A creek divided the two estates, which we crossed on a little foot bridge. The path led along beside the creek for a while until the little stream widened out into a beautiful pond, big enough for boating. A pier had been built at one side of the pond, running out into the water. Someone was standing out on the end of the pier, and as we came up we saw that we had discovered the other half of the romance. A girl, with a field glass held to her eyes and a white flag tied around her right wrist, was signalling in the direction of the Anderson barn, the roof of which was visible in the distance, beyond Mrs. Anderson’s apple orchard.

[171]

Something about the girl was familiar, even in the distance, and as we came near I recognized the mink coat that I had seen many times lately. There was no doubt about it. The girl on the end of the pier was Ethel Harper. I stood still, too much disgusted to speak. Ethel Harper, the daughter of one of the “first” families, with the best social position in the city, her mother prominent in all great uplift movements, carrying on a vulgar flirtation with Mrs. Anderson’s stable boy! So this was the great romance she had been hinting about at various times! Randall—that was the name of the girl she was intimate with; this was the Randall place. She had been coming here so often for the sake of the boy next door. Did she know he was an ignorant servant? I doubted it. Anything in men’s clothes set her silly head awhirl. I wished her haughty mother could have seen her then.

Mrs. Anderson suddenly laughed out loud and at that Ethel turned around and saw us. She gave a great start as she recognized me, took a step backward and fell off the end of the pier into the pond, disappearing with a shriek into the deep water.

[172]

I slipped out of my coat, threw off my shoes and went in after her. The water was so icy I could hardly swim at first. When I did get hold of her it was a battle royal to get her back to the pier. She was so weighted down by the fur coat and she struggled so fiercely that several times I thought we were both going down. Mrs. Anderson threw us a plank and with its help I finally got her to the pier.

“Now run for your life!” I ordered, my own teeth chattering in my head. “Drop that wet coat and I’ll race you to the house.” She didn’t move nearly fast enough to avoid a chill and I took hold of her hand and pulled her along.

Up in a cosy bedroom in the Randall’s house we sat up, some hours later, wrapped in blankets, and looked at each other gravely. Mrs. Anderson had been in and talked with Ethel like a big sister about the cheapness of carrying on flirtations with strange boys. Ethel had seen her little affair in its true light, robbed of all romance, and shame had taken hold of her. Mrs. Anderson explained how the gallant Romeo had seen his Juliet fall into the pond and had fled basely in the other direction for fear he would be blamed, making no effort to rescue her, and she might have been drowned if I hadn’t fished her out.

[173]

Ethel had been frightened out of her wits when she fell into the water; she was still suffering from the shock. She flushed hotly as she caught my glance, and cast down her eyes.

“Thank you, Miss Brewster, for saving my life,” she said rather shame-facedly. Then she went on in a low tone, “I want to tell you something. I wrote that letter to Mr. Butler,—the one that made mamma so angry.”

“I know,” I answered gravely.

“You knew, and you jumped into the water after me anyway?” she said in a tone of unbelief. “Why, you might have let me drown as easy as not.”

“O no, I mightn’t,” I answered. “That isn’t the way a Camp Fire Girl gets even.”

Ethel was silent a long while. Then she said, “Will you come back to our house after I have told mother the whole thing? She misses you a lot, says she never had anyone do her work so well as you did it, and she has been in a terrible temper ever since you left.”

“I don’t know,” I answered slowly. I had been very deeply hurt and my foolish pride was still on its hind legs.

[174]

“Will you please come?” pleaded Ethel, slipping out of her chair and putting her arms around me. “We can have such good times after your work hours. Please, for my sake, I want you. You’re the most wonderful girl I’ve ever met!”

Old Mr. Pride and I had a final round and we came out with me sitting on his head. “I’ll come back,” I said, slipping my arm around Ethel.

So you see, Katherine, adventure isn’t dead, not by any means, even if you do have to take it along with your bread and butter.

Loads of love from your stenographic friend, Sadie Shorthander, once upon a time your

Sahwah.

[175]

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

April 8, 19—. Dearest Winnies:

Daggers and dirks! Did I say it was dull out here? Deluded mortal! For the past week it’s been so strenuous that I have seriously considered moving to Bedlam for a rest. If I’m not gray by the time I’m thirty it’ll be because I’m bald.

As Mistress of Ceremonies your humble servant is a rather watery success. You know from sad experience my fatal fondness for trying new and startling experiments and also my genius for leaving the most important things undone. Remember the time I was Lemonade Committee when we climbed Windy Hill and I carefully provided water and sugar and spoons and glasses, and no lemons? And the time I hid the unwashed dishes in the oven at Aunt Anna’s and then went home with Gladys and forgot all about them, and Aunt Anna nearly had spasms because she thought her silverware had been stolen? And the time we went to Ellen’s Isle and I mislaid the vital portion of my traveling suit half an hour before the train started and had to go in a borrowed suit that didn’t fit? Every time little Katherine was given something to do she either forgot to do it altogether, or else did it in such a way as to make herself ridiculous.

[176]

The memory of all those things rose up and oppressed me after I had undertaken to stage a Patriotic Pageant for the township of Spencer. I was so afraid I would do something that would turn it into a farce that I began to have nightmares the minute I sank to weary slumber. It was a daring idea, this patriotic pageant. Since history began there had never been a pageant, patriotic or otherwise, in this section. Most of the folks had never seen a circus, or a show, or a parade; so there was nobody to give me any help except Justice. I myself would never have thought of tackling it, but no sooner had my Camp Fire Girls gotten absorbed in Red Cross work, and been thrilled by reading accounts of what Camp Fire Girls were doing in other sections, than they begged me to get up a pageant. I had my misgivings, but, being a Winnebago, I couldn’t back out. A pageant it should be, if it cost my head. (It pretty nearly did, but not in the way I had feared.)

[177]

Justice Sherman hailed the plan with delight.

“Go to it,” he encouraged. “I’m with you to the bitter end. I’ve never done it before but I’ll never begin any younger.

“Lead on MacDuff! Trot out the order of events.”

At Justice’s suggestion I summed up all the possibilities.

“There isn’t much to work with,” I said thoughtfully, having counted up all my assets on the fingers of one hand. “Just ten Camp Fire Girls, about as many boys, one trick mule, and—you.”

“So glad I know, right at the outset, just where I come in,” said Justice politely, “after the mule.”

“Sandhelo’s got his red, white and blue pompom that the girls sent him for Christmas,” I went on, ignoring Justice’s gibe. “We could make red, white and blue harness for him, too.”

“If only he doesn’t get temperamental!” said Justice fervently.

[178]

“The girls could wear their Red Cross caps and aprons in one part of it,” I continued, “and flags draped on them when they act out ‘The Spirit of Columbia.’ One of the girls can wear her Ceremonial gown and be the Spirit of Nature that comes to tell the others the secret of the soil that will help them win the war. Oh, ideas are coming to me faster than flies to molasses.”

“Would you advise me to wear my Ceremonial gown or my Red Cross apron and cap?” asked Justice soberly. “I could braid my hair in two pig-tails—”

“Oh, Justice!” I interrupted, “if you only had a soldier’s uniform!” Then, as I saw Justice wince and the laughter die out of his eyes, I stopped abruptly and changed the subject. It was an awfully sore point with him that he had been rejected for the army.

“We’ll have a flag raising, of course, and tableaux,” I rushed on. “Would you put the flag on the schoolhouse, or set up a pole in the ground?”

“I think on the schoolhouse,” said Justice, with a return of interest. “That’s where it belongs.”

[179]

Justice and I held more conferences in the next day or so than the King and his Prime Minister. Lessons in the little schoolhouse were abandoned while we drilled and rehearsed for the pageant. Justice and I put together and bought the flag.

“Who’s going to raise it?” asked Justice, shaking the beautiful bright starry folds out of the package.

I considered.

“I think the pupil that has the best record in school should raise it,” suggested Justice.

“I think,” I said slowly, “I’ll let Absalom Butts raise it.”

“Absalom Butts!” exclaimed Justice incredulously. “The laziest, meanest, most mischievous boy in school! I wouldn’t let him be in the pageant, if I had my way, let alone raise the flag.”

[180]

“Exactly,” I said calmly. “You’re just like the rest of them. That’s the whole trouble with Absalom Butts. He’s been used to harsh measures all his life. His father has cuffed him about ever since he can remember. Everybody considers him a bad boy and a terror to snakes and all that and now he acts the part thoroughly. He’s so homely that nobody will ever be attracted to him by his looks, and such a poor scholar that he will never make a name for himself at his lessons, and the only way he can make himself prominent is through his pranks. He’s too old to be in school with the rest of the children; he should be with boys of his own age. His father makes him stay there because he is too obstinate to admit that he will never get out by the graduation route, and Absalom takes out his spite on the teacher. I can read him like a book. I’ve tried fighting him to a finish on every point and it hasn’t worked. He’s still ready to break out at a moment’s notice. Now I’m going to change my tactics. I’m going to appoint him, as the oldest pupil, to be my special aid in the pageant, and help work out the details. I’m going to honor him by letting him raise the flag. We’ll see how that will change his mind about playing pranks to spoil the pageant.”

“It won’t work,” said Justice gloomily. “Absalom Butts is Absalom Butts, the son of Elijah Butts; and a chip off the old block. The old man has a mean, crafty disposition, and he probably was just like Absalom when he was young. Absalom is going to do something to spoil that pageant, I see it in his eye. You watch.”

[181]

“It’s worth trying, anyhow,” I said determinedly.

“It won’t work,” reiterated Justice. “You can’t change human nature.”

“It worked once,” I said, and I told him about the Dalrymple twins, Antha and Anthony, last summer on Ellen’s Isle.

“So you turned little Cry-baby into a lion of bravery and Sir Boastful into a modest violet!” said Justice, in a tone of incredulity.

“Yes, and if you’d ever seen them at the beginning of the summer you wouldn’t have held any high hopes of changing human nature, either,” I remarked, a little nettled at Justice’s tone.

Justice started to reply, but was seized with a violent fit of coughing that left him leaning weakly against the door. I looked at him in some alarm. I knew it was throat trouble that had kept him out of the army, but it hadn’t seemed to be anything to worry about—just a dry, hacking cough from time to time. Now, standing out there in the brilliant sunshine, he looked very white and haggard.

[182]

“You’re all tired out, you’ve been working too hard,” I said, remembering how he had been putting in time after school hours working in Elijah Butts’ cotton storehouse, because it was impossible to get enough men to handle the cotton. Then, by drilling my boys and girls by the hour in military marching and running countless errands for me—poor Justice was in danger of being sacrificed on the altar of my ambition.

“I’m a selfish thing!” I said vehemently.

“Nonsense!” said Justice, holding up his head and beginning to fold up the flag. “I got choked with dust, that’s all.” Manlike, he hated to display any sign of physical weakness before a girl. I decided to say no more about it, but I knew he needed rest.

“Sit down a minute,” I said artfully, sinking down on the doorsill, “and keep me ’mused. I’m tired to death. Tell me all the news in the Metropolis of Spencer.”

Justice fell into the trap. He sat down beside me and launched into a lively imitation of Elijah Butts convincing the school board that the old school books were better than the new ones some venturous soul had suggested.

[183]

“If he only knew how you took him off behind his back, he wouldn’t confide in you so trustingly,” said I.

“That’s what comes of being a bargain,” replied Justice loftily. “Great ones linger in my presence, anxious to breathe the same air. The Board coddles me like a rare bit of old china and proudly exhibits me to visitors.

“Oh, by the way,” he added, “I hear there’s a stranger in town.”

I looked up with interest. “Fine or superfine?” I asked.

“Superfine,” replied Justice.

“Where from?” I inquired.

“Like Shelley’s immortal soul,” replied Justice solemnly, “she cometh from afar. She cometh to study Rural School Conditions—sent out by some Commission or other. She’s likely to visit your school. Thought I’d tell you ahead of time so you’d manage to be on the premises when the delegation arrived. She might object to hunting through the woods for you.” Here we were both overcome with laughter at the remembrance of the last “visitation” of the school board.

[184]

“I can’t figure out yet why I wasn’t fired,” said I, flicking a sociable spider off my lap with the stem of a leaf. “I would have been willing to bet my eyebrows on it that night. What made them change their minds, I wonder?”

“Maybe it was because they hated to lose the bargain,” answered Justice, half to himself.

“Hated to lose what bargain?” I asked innocently. Then suddenly I understood.

“Justice Sherman!” I exclaimed, starting up. “Did you threaten to leave if they discharged me?”

Justice turned crimson and became reticent. “Well, I don’t know as I threatened them exactly,” he replied in a soothing drawl. “I don’t look very threatening, now, do I?”

“Oh, Justice,” was all I could say, for at the thought of what he had done for me I was stricken dumb.

Verily the power of the Bargain was great in the land!

The pageant grew under our hands until it assumed really respectable proportions. The girls and boys were wild about it and drilled tirelessly by the hour.

[185]

“I wish we had a better parade ground,” sighed Justice regretfully, squinting at the small level plot of ground in front of the schoolhouse that was worn bare of grass. “We haven’t room to make a really effective showing with our drill. If only the old schoolhouse wasn’t in the way we could use the space that’s behind it and on both sides of it.”

It was then that I had one of my old-time, wild inspirations. “Move the schoolhouse back,” I said calmly.

Justice shouted. “Why not roll up the road and set it down on the other side of field?” he suggested.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t move the schoolhouse back,” I repeated. “Why not, if it’s in the way? It’s no ornament, anyway.”

Half-amused, half-serious, Justice looked first at me and then at the little one-story shack that went by the name of schoolhouse.

“By Jove! we can do it!” he exclaimed suddenly. “It’ll be no trick at all. Just get her up on rollers and hitch Sandhelo to the pulley rope and let him wind her up. Just like that. An’ zay say ze French have no sense of ze delicasse!”

“What will the Board say?” I inquired, half fearfully.

[186]

“We won’t ask the Board,” replied Justice calmly. “Move first, ask for orders afterwards, that’s the way the great generals win battles. Remember how General Sherman cut the wires between him and Washington when he started out on his famous march to the sea, so that no short-sighted one could wire him to change his plans? Well, we’re out to make this pageant a success, and we aren’t going to risk it by stopping to ask too much permission. We’ll move the schoolhouse first and ask permission afterward. By that time it’ll be too late; the pageant is to-morrow.”

And we did move it. If you had ever seen us! It wasn’t such a job as you might think. I suppose the word “schoolhouse” conjures up in your mind the brick and granite pile that is Washington High—imagine moving that out of the way to make room for a military drill! ’Vantage number one for our school. We also have our points of superiority, it seems.

The old shack looked vastly better where we finally let it rest. There was a clump of bushes alongside that hid some of its battered boards beautifully. The parade ground seemed about three times as big as it had been before.

[187]

“That’s more like it,” said Justice approvingly. “Now we can turn around without stubbing our toes against the schoolhouse.”

“What will Mr. Butts say?” I asked, beginning to have cold chills.

“Just wait until that gets between the wind and his nobility!” chuckled Justice. “Never mind, I’ll take all the blame.”

Nevertheless, when the crisis came, and Elijah Butts came driving up on the afternoon of the great occasion, I was there to face the music alone, Justice being nowhere in sight.

Mr. and Mrs. Butts arrived in state, bringing with them a strange lady, who I figured out must be the one Justice had told me about, the one who, like Shelley’s immortal soul, had come from afar and was sent by a Commission to study rural school conditions.

I glanced wildly about to see if Justice were not hovering protectingly near, but there was no sign of him. However, I knew my duties as hostess. Nonchalantly I strolled over to the road to welcome the newcomers. Elijah Butts had just finished tying his horse and, bristling with importance, had turned to help the Commission Lady out of the rig.

[188]

“Ah-h, Miss Fairlee,” he said in smooth tones, “this is—ah—Miss Adams, our teacher at the Corners school.”

Then he suddenly jumped half out of his boots and stared over my shoulder as if he had seen a ghost. “Where’s that schoolhouse?” he demanded, in a voice which seemed to indicate he thought I had it in my pocket.

“It’s right over there,” I said calmly, pointing toward the bushes.

Elijah Butts’ eyes followed my fingers in a fascinated way; he could hardly believe his senses. “How did it get there?” he demanded.

“We moved it back,” I replied casually. “It was in the way of the maneuvers.”

Elijah Butts sputtered, choked, and was speechless.

But Miss Fairlee, the Commission lady, laughed until she had to grip the side of the buggy for support. “It’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” she gasped. “I’ve heard of the Mountain coming to Mahomet, but I never heard of the Mountain getting out of the road for Mahomet. Oh, Mr. Butts, I think the West is delightful. You people are so original and forceful!”

[189]

That took the wind out of Mr. Butts’ sails. What could he do after that neat little speech but take the compliment to himself and pass the matter off lightly?

The pageant was a wonderful success in spite of my misgivings. I didn’t forget to hand the torch to Columbia at the right moment and I didn’t forget to bring the brown stockings for little Lizzie Cooper, who was the Spirit of Nature, and I made fire with the bow and drill without any mishap. But one thing was a dreadful disappointment to me. Absalom Butts was not there, and I had no chance to work out my experiment on him. Where he was I couldn’t imagine. I had taken Clarissa home with me the night before to help me finish some things and she hadn’t seen him since he went home from school; Mr. Butts also said he didn’t know. He added, in a voice loud enough for Miss Fairlee to hear, that he would lick the tar out of him for not being in the patriotic pageant.

[190]

No one knew that I had picked Absalom in my mind to raise the flag. There had been much speculation about who was to have this honor and in order to keep everybody happy I said I would not announce this until the moment came. Then I planned to make a speech and award the honor to Absalom, thus singling him out for something besides punishment for once in his life. I had had him helping me for several days, and given him certain definite things to do on the great occasion and was much disappointed that he didn’t come to do them. Justice’s warning came back and I had an uneasy feeling that he was in hiding somewhere, plotting mischief.

I had a real inspiration, though, in regard to the flag raising. In a flowery speech I called upon Mr. Elijah Butts, the “President of the School Board and the most influential man in Spencer Township,” to perform that rite. He swelled up until he almost burst, like the frog in the fable, as he stood there, conscious of Miss Fairlee’s eye on him, with his great hairy hand on the pulley rope. Round the corner of the schoolhouse and hidden from view by the bush, I caught Justice Sherman’s eye and he applauded silently with his two forefingers, meaning to say that it was a master stroke on my part. Then he dropped his eye decorously and started the singing of the National Anthem.

[191]

The pageant ended up in a picnic supper eaten on the erstwhile parade ground, and then the people began to go home through the softly falling dusk. Miss Fairlee came to me and complimented me on the success of the pageant and asked to take some notes for future use; and Elijah Butts was quite cordial as he departed. I’ve discovered something to-day; if you want to win a person’s undying affection, single him out as the most important member of the bunch. He’ll fall for it every time. You note that I am talking about male persons, now.

“Well, the show’s over,” said Justice, when the last of the audience had departed. “Now the actors can take it easy. Come on, let’s get Sandhelo and go for a ride.”

We climbed into the little cart, still covered with its pageant finery, and drove slowly down the dusty road, discussing the events of the day.

“O Justice,” said I, “did you ever see anything so touching as the pride some of those poor women took in their boys and girls? They fairly glowed, some of them. And did you see that one poor woman who tried to fix herself up for the occasion? She had nothing to wear but her faded old blue calico dress, but she had pinned a bunch of roses on the front of it to make herself look festive.”

[192]

“We’ve started something, I think,” said Justice thoughtfully. “We’ve taught the people how to get together and have a good time, and they like it. They’ll be doing it again.”

“I hope so,” I replied. Then I added, “I wonder where Absalom was?”

“You see, your scheme didn’t work after all,” said Justice, in an I-told-you-so tone of voice. “Absalom wasn’t impressed with the honor of being your right-hand man. He took the occasion to play hookey. It’s a wonder he didn’t try to play some trick on the rest of us; but I suppose he didn’t dare, with his father there. He’s afraid to draw a crooked breath when the old man’s around.”

“I’m disappointed,” I said pensively, leaning my head back and letting the cool wind blow the hair away from my face. It had been a strenuous day and I was tired out. The strain of being afraid every minute that I would do something ridiculous or had left something undone that was of vital importance had nearly turned my hair grey. Now that it was all over without mishap, the people had enjoyed it and my Camp Fire girls had covered themselves with glory, I relaxed into a delicious tranquillity and gave myself over to enjoyment of the quiet drive in the sweet evening air.

[193]

“Why so deucedly pensive?” inquired Justice, after we had jogged along for some minutes in silence.

“Just thanking whatever gods there be that I didn’t make a holy show of myself somehow,” I replied lazily. “Isn’t this evening peaceful, though? Who would ever think that down around the other side of this sweet smelling earth men are killing each other like flies, and the night is hideous with the din of warfare?”

Above us the big white stars twinkled serenely, approvingly; all nature seemed in tune with my placid mood. Justice fell under the spell of it, too, and leaned back in silent enjoyment.

What was that sudden glare that shone out against the sky, over to the south? That red, lurid glare that dimmed the glory of the stars and threw buildings and barns into black relief?

“The cotton storehouse!” exclaimed Justice in a horrified voice. “Hurry!”

[194]

For once Sandhelo responded to my urging without argument, and we soon arrived on the scene of the blaze. Elijah Butts’ plantation is about three miles from Spencer, and no water but the well and the cistern. “This is going to be a nice mess,” said Justice, jumping out of the car and charging into the throng of gaping negroes who stood around watching the spectacle. The family of Butts had not returned from the pageant yet, having taken Miss Fairlee for a drive in the opposite direction. A few neighbors had gathered, but they stood there, gaping like the negroes and not lifting a hand to save the cotton.

“Here you, get busy!” shouted Justice, taking command like a general. Under his direction a bucket brigade was formed to check the flames as much as possible and keep the surrounding sheds from taking fire. “Go through the barn and bring out the horses and cows, if there are any there,” he called to me.

[195]

I obeyed, and brought out one poor trembling bossy, the only livestock I found. Then Justice turned the command of the bucket brigade over to me and started in with one or two helpers to remove the cotton from the end of the storehouse that was not yet ablaze. He worked like a Trojan, his face blackened with smoke until it was hard to tell him from the negroes, the remains of his pageant costume hanging about him in tatters.

“Somebody started this fire on purpose,” he panted as he paused beside me a moment to clear his lungs of smoke. “There’s been oil poured on the cotton!”

Just at that moment the Butts family returned, driving into the yard at a gallop. Mr. Butts’ wrath and excitement knew no bounds and he was hardly able to help effectively; he ran around for all the world like a chicken with its head off. Assistance came swiftly as people began to arrive from far and near, attracted by the blaze, but if it hadn’t been for Justice’s timely taking hold of the situation not a bit of the cotton would have been saved, and the house, barn and sheds would have gone up, too.

[196]

Conjectures began to fly thick and fast on all sides as to how the fire had started, and a whisper began going the rounds that soon became an open accusation. One of the negroes that works for Mr. Butts swore he saw Absalom going into the storehouse that afternoon. My heart skipped a beat. He had not been at the celebration. Was this where he had been and what he had done the while? Elijah Butts was stamping up and down in such a fury as I had never seen.

“He couldn’t get out!” he shouted hoarsely to the group that stood around him. “He’s locked in the woodshed, I locked him in there myself, and there isn’t even a window he could get out of!”

I started at his words. So that was where Absalom had been that afternoon. He hadn’t deliberately disappointed me, then. But—Elijah Butts hadn’t said that afternoon that he had locked Absalom up at home. He had pretended to be much mystified over the non-appearance of his son. Why had he done so? The answer came in a flash of intuition. Elijah Butts had probably had a set-to with Absalom over some private affair and had locked him up as punishment, but he didn’t want Miss Fairlee to know that he had kept him out of the patriotic pageant and so he had denied any knowledge of Absalom’s whereabouts. “The old hypocrite!” I said to myself scornfully.

[197]

“Your woodshed’s wide open,” said someone from the crowd. “We were in there looking for a bucket. The door was open and there wasn’t nobody in it.”

“He got out!” shouted Elijah Butts in still greater fury. “He got out and set fire to the cotton to spite me! Wait until I catch him! Wait till I get my hands on him!” He stamped up and down, shouting threats against his son, awful to listen to.

“I thought he’d drive that boy to turn against him yet,” said Justice, drawing me away to a quiet spot, and mopping his black forehead with a damp handkerchief. “I can’t say but that it served him right. After all, Absalom is a chip off the old block. That’s his idea of getting even. He didn’t stop to think that it was the government’s loss as well as his father’s. Well, it’s all over but the shouting; we might as well go home.”

We drove home in silence. Justice was tuckered out, I could see that, and I began to worry for fear his strenuous efforts would lay him up. I was still too much excited to feel tired. That would come later. All my energy was concentrated into disappointment over Absalom Butts. I couldn’t believe that he was really as bad as this. I didn’t want to believe he had done it, and yet it seemed all too true. Why had he run away if he hadn’t? I shook my head. It was beyond me.

[198]

Silently we drove into the yard and unhitched Sandhelo.

“Good night,” said Justice, starting off in the direction of his cabin.

“Good night,” I replied absently. I did not go right into the house. I was wide awake and knew I could not go to sleep for some time. Instead I sat in the doorway and blinked at the moon, like a touseled-haired owl. It was after midnight and everything was still, even the wind. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Justice wearily plodding along to his sleeping quarters, saw him open the screen door and vanish from sight within. Then, borne clearly on the night air, I heard an exclamation come from his lips, then a frightened cry. I sped down the path like the wind to the little cabin. A lamp flared out in the darkness just as I reached it and by its light I saw Justice bending over something in a corner.

“What’s the matter?” I called through the screen door.

[199]

Justice turned around with a start. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “Come in here.”

I went in. There, crouched in a corner on the floor, was Absalom Butts, his eyes blinking in the sudden light, his face like a scared rabbit’s. It was he who had cried out, not Justice.

“What’s the trouble, Absalom,” said I, trying to speak in a natural tone of voice, “can’t you find your way home?”

“Dassent go home,” replied Absalom.

“Why not?”

“Pa’ll kill me.”

“What for?”

“Because I ran away.”

“So you’ve run away, have you?” said I. “Why?”

“Because pa licked me and locked me in the woodshed and wouldn’t let me come to the doin’s this afternoon, and I just wouldn’t stand it, so I got out and cut.”

“When did you get out?” I asked, leaning forward a trifle.

[200]

“This afternoon,” replied Absalom. “I thought first I’d come to the doin’s anyhow and help you with those things I’d promised, but I was scared to come with pa there, so I went the other way. I walked and walked and walked, till I was tired out and most starved, because I hadn’t brought anything along to eat, and I didn’t know where I was headed for, anyway, and then I came along here and saw this shack and came in and sat down to rest. I must a fell asleep.”

“You didn’t do it, then?” said I, eagerly.

“Do what?” Absalom’s tone was plainly bewildered.

“Set fire to your father’s cotton storehouse.”

“Whee-e-e-e-e!” Absalom’s whistle of astonishment was clearly genuine. “I should say not!”

“Do you know who did?” asked Justice, watching him keenly.

“Did somebody?” asked Absalom innocently.

“I should say they did,” said Justice, puzzled in his turn. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about it?”

Absalom shook his head vigorously. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said straightforwardly.

“I was sure you didn’t do it,” I said triumphantly. “I had a feeling in my bones.”

[201]

“How does it happen that you weren’t at the fire?” asked Justice wonderingly. “You must have seen the glare in the sky. People came for miles around. Didn’t you see it?”

Absalom shook his head. “I must a slept through it,” he said simply, and followed it with such a large sigh of regret for what he had missed that Justice and I both had to smile.

“Well, there’s one thing about it,” said Justice, “and that is, if you didn’t set fire to it, you’d better streak it for home about as fast as you can and clear yourself up. Everybody thinks you did it and your running away made it look suspicious. Besides, one of your father’s men says he saw you coming out of the storehouse this afternoon. By the way, what were you doing in there?”

Absalom met his gaze unwaveringly. “Me? Why, I went in there to get my knife, that I’d left in there yesterday. I couldn’t go away without my knife, could I?” He pulled it from his pocket and gazed on it fondly,—an ugly old “toad stabber.”

“See here, you weren’t smoking any cigarettes in there, and dropped a lighted stub, perhaps?” asked Justice.

[202]

“No,” replied Absalom, “I wasn’t smokin’ to-day. I do sometimes, though,” he admitted.

“Well, you don’t seem to be the villain, after all,” said Justice, “and I’m mighty glad to hear it. So will a lot of people be. Things looked pretty bad for you this afternoon, Absalom.”

“Honest?” asked Absalom. “Do folks really think I set fire to it? What did pa say?”

Justice laughed. “What he isn’t going to do to you when he catches you won’t be worth doing,” he said.

Absalom began to look apprehensive. “I’m afraid to go back,” he said.

“What are you afraid of, if you didn’t do it?” asked Justice.

“Pa wouldn’t believe me,” said Absalom nervously.

“Oh, I guess he’ll believe you all right,” I said soothingly.

“You go with me,” begged Absalom, eyeing us both beseechingly. “He’ll believe you. He never believes me.”

“Maybe we had better,” said I. “He can stay here with you the rest of the night and we’ll drive over the first thing in the morning.”

[203]

The next morning bright and early found us again on the scene of the fire. Early as we were, we found Elijah Butts poking in the ashes of his cotton crop with a wrathful countenance. When he saw us coming he strode to meet us and without a word laid hold of Absalom’s collar. His expression was like that of a fox who has caught his goose after many hours of waiting.

“I’ve got you, you rascal,” he sputtered, shaking Absalom until his teeth chattered. “Where did you find him?” he demanded of Justice.

“In my bunk,” replied Justice, laying a hand on Mr. Butts’ arm and trying to separate him from his son. “He had been there all evening, and knew nothing about the fire. He didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do it!” shouted Mr. Butts. “Don’t tell me he didn’t do it. Of course he did it! Who else did?”

We weren’t prepared to answer.

“I’m sure Absalom didn’t do it, Mr. Butts,” said Justice earnestly. “I’d stake a whole lot on it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t, you can better believe!” answered Mr. Butts. “He did it, and I’m going to take it out of him.” He began to march Absalom off toward the house, urging him along with a box on the ear that nearly felled him to the ground.

[204]

Justice did it so quickly that I never will be able to tell just what it was, but in a minute there stood Elijah Butts rubbing his wrist and wearing the most surprised look I ever saw on the face of a man, and there sat Absalom on the ground half a dozen yards away.

“Beat it back to our shack, Absalom,” called Justice. “I guess the climate’s a little too hot around here for you just yet.”

Absalom needed no second bidding. He sped down the road away from his paternal mansion as if the whole German army was after him.

“When you can treat your son like a human being he’ll come back,” said Justice to Mr. Butts.

“He don’t need to come back,” said Mr. Butts sourly, but with fury carefully toned down. Justice’s use of an uncanny Japanese wrestling trick to wrench Absalom out of his vise-like grasp had created a vast respect in him. He wasn’t quite sure what Justice was going to do next, and eyed him warily for a possible attack in the rear. “He don’t need to come back,” he mumbled stubbornly, “until he either says he did it and takes what’s coming to him, or finds out who did do it.” Growling to himself he went toward the house and we drove off to overtake Absalom.

[205]

“Daggers and dirks!” exclaimed Justice. “Old Butts sure is some knotty piece of timber to drive screws into!”

It was a rather dejected trio that Sandhelo, frisking in the morning air, carried back to the house. Justice, I could see, was trying to figure out by calculus the probable result of having jiu-jitsu-ed the president of the school board; I was sorry for Absalom and Absalom was sorry for himself. Once I caught him looking at me pleadingly.

“You don’t think I done it?” he asked anxiously.

“Not for a minute!” I answered heartily, smiling into his eyes.

He looked down, in a shame-faced way, and then he suddenly put his arm around my neck. “I’m sorry I treated you so horrid,” he murmured. Think of it! Absalom, the bully, the one-time bane of my existence, the fly in the ointment, riding down the road with his arm around my neck, and me standing up for him against the world! Don’t things turn out queerly, though? Who would ever have thought it possible, six months ago?

[206]

Absalom and I had quite a few long talks in the days that followed. He confided to me his hatred of lessons and his ambition to raise horses. Father let him help him as much as he liked, and promised him a job on the place any time he wanted it. Absalom seemed utterly transformed. He fooled around the horses day and night and showed a knack of handling them that proved beyond a doubt that he had chosen his profession wisely. I did not insist upon his going to school and was glad I hadn’t; for in a day or two came the “visitation” of the Board, bringing Miss Fairlee to see my school.

[207]

She was absolutely enchanted with the way we conducted things; gasped with astonishment at the graphophone and the lantern slides; exclaimed in wonder at the library; listened approvingly to the reading lesson, which was from one of the current magazines; partook generously of our dinner, cooked and served in the most approved style, and laughed heartily at the stunts we did afterward by way of entertainment. I took a naughty satisfaction in showing off my changed curriculum for her approval and watching the effect it had on the august Board members. None of them knew exactly what I had been doing all this time, and their amazement was immense. Mr. Butts did not come with the board this time, so I was spared the embarrassment of meeting him. Without him the rest of the Board were like sheep that had gotten separated from the bell-wether; they didn’t know which direction to head into until Miss Fairlee expressed her unqualified approval of my methods; then they all endorsed it emphatically.

“I wish I were a pupil again, so I could have you for a teacher!” said Miss Fairlee when school was out, and I considered that the highest compliment I had ever received. I immediately invited her to attend our Ceremonial Meeting that night and she accepted the invitation eagerly. We held it on the old parade ground in front of the school. In honor of our guest we acted out the pretty Indian legend of Kir-a-wa and the Blackbirds and when we came to the place where we rush out looking for the two crows we found two real ones sitting on the fence, only, instead of attacking us as the ones did in the legend, these two applauded vigorously. They were Justice and Absalom, come with Sandhelo and the cart to take me home, or rather what was left of me after the blackbirds had picked me to pieces.

[208]

“Another day gone without mishap!” I said, as Justice slid back the stable door and I walked in with my arm around Sandhelo’s neck. “Sandhelo will have to have a lump of sugar and an extra soft bed to celebrate. Come on, Sandy, let me tuck you in.”

But Sandhelo would not enter his stall. He stuck his head in, sniffed the air, and then, with a squeal that always heralds an outbreak of temperament, he rose on his hind legs and began to dance.

“Whatever has gotten into him?” I began, tugging at his tail, which was the nearest thing I could get my hand onto, when suddenly a wild shriek rose up from under our very feet and in the dimness of the stall we saw something roll over and crouch in a corner.

“Quick, the lantern!” said Justice.

But we couldn’t find it.

[209]

Then from the depths of the stall there came a voice, crying in terrified tones, “Don’ take me, mister Debble; don’ take me, mister Debble, I done it, I done it; I set fiah to ’at ole cotton to get even with old Mister Butts fer settin’ de dawgs on me; I done it, I done it; go ’way, Mister Debble, don’ take me, I’ll tell dem; only don’ take me, Mister Debble!”

Justice and Absalom and I stood frozen to the spot, listening to this remarkable outcry. Then Justice raised the lantern, which he just spied on the floor, and lighting it held it in the stall. By its flickering rays we saw a negro crouching in the corner, whose rolling eyes and trembling limbs showed him to be beside himself with fright.

“Glory!” exclaimed Justice. “It’s the same old bird we saw in the road that day, the one I said looked like mischief!”

Here Sandhelo, nosing me aside, looked inquisitively over my shoulder and the darky immediately went into another spasm of fright, covering his face with his hands and imploring “Mister Debble” not to take him this time.

“Whee-e-e-e-!” said Justice, whistling in his astonishment. “He’s the one that fired the cotton and now he thinks Sandhelo is the devil coming after him!”

[210]

“Mercy, what an awful creature!” said I, shuddering and looking the other way. “If Sandhelo gets a good look at him I’m afraid he’ll return the compliment about taking him for His Satanic Nibs.”

“There’s only one way you can keep him from getting you,” said Justice to the darky gravely. “That’s by going to Mr. Butts and telling him yourself that you did it. Otherwise, it’s good-bye, Solomon.”

Here Sandhelo, as if he understood what was going on, suddenly snapped at the black legs stretched out across his stall.

“I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him!” shuddered Solomon, and with a prolonged howl of terror he fled from the stable and down the road in the direction of the Butts plantation.

“He’ll tell him all right,” chuckled Justice. “He’ll face a dozen Elijah Buttses, before he lets the devil get him. Poor Sandhelo! Rather rough on him, though, to have his name used as a terror to evil doers!”

Talk about nothing ever happening around here! O you darling Winnebagos, with your ladylike advantages, and your mildly eventful lives, you don’t know what real excitement is!

Worn out, but happily yours, Katherine.

[211]

GLADYS TO KATHERINE

April 10, 19—. Dearest old K:

The Winnebagos have scored again, although it did take us nearly all year to make this particular basket. I know that if you had been here, you old miracle worker, you would have found the way before the first month had passed, but, not having your gift for seeing right through people’s starched shirtwaists and straight into their hearts, we had to wait for chance to show us the way. And it turned out the way it usually does for the Winnebagos—we stooped to pick up a common little stone and found a pearl of great price. Of course, now there are lots of people who would like to be the setting for that pearl, but she belongs to the Winnebagos by right of discovery and we mean to keep her for our very own. For, after all, who but the Winnebagos could have discovered Sally Prindle, when up to that very week, day, hour and minute she hadn’t even discovered herself? The chances are that she never would have, either, and what a shame it would have been!

[212]

You remember my telling about Sally Prindle long ago, the time we tried to fix up her room for her and she wouldn’t let us? Of course she hurt our feelings, because we hadn’t been trying to patronize her and didn’t deserve to be snubbed, but we got over it in a day or two and saw her side of it. It probably was annoying to have three separate delegations take notice of your poverty in one day, and there was no telling how tactless the first two had been. At the second meeting of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS, held on and around Oh-Pshaw’s bed, we formally decided, with much speechifying by Agony and Oh-Pshaw, that Sally would be the special object of our Give Service Pledge. We would make her feel that we didn’t care a rap whether she was poor or not; that it was she herself we cared about. We would ask her to share all our good times and would drop in to see her often, as good neighbors should, and would finally bring her around to the point where she would begin to Seek Beauty for herself, see that her bare room was too ugly for any good use, and gladly share our overflow with us. Oh, we planned great things that night!

[213]

“Let’s go over and call on her right away,” suggested Hinpoha, who was fired with enthusiasm at the plan and couldn’t wait to begin the program of Give Service.

Off we went down the hall, filled with virtuous enthusiasm. Sally was at home because we could see the light shining through the transom.

“Wait a minute, don’t knock,” whispered Agony with a giggle. “I know a lot more Epic way.” She pulled a candy kiss from her pocket, scribbled an absurd note on a piece of paper about weary travelers waiting at the gate, tied it to the kiss and threw it through the transom.

We heard it strike the floor and heard Sally rise from a creaking chair and pick it up. Giggling, we waited for her to come and let us in. In a minute her footsteps came toward the door and with comradely smiles we stepped forward. The door was opened a very small crack, and out flew the kiss, much faster than it had gone in. It just missed Hinpoha’s nose by a hair’s breadth and fell on the floor with a spiteful thud. Then the door slammed emphatically. We looked at each other in consternation.

[214]

“Whee-e-e-e-e-!” said Agony in a long-drawn whistle.

“Horrid—old—thing!” said Hinpoha, picking up the kiss from the floor and holding it up for us to see that the note had never been opened. Feeling both foolish and hurt we trailed back home and sadly gave up the idea of Giving Service to Sally Prindle.

“Let her alone, she isn’t worth worrying about,” said Hinpoha, beginning to be just as cross as she had been enthusiastic before. “She hasn’t a spark of sociability in her.”

“There are Hermit Souls——” began Oh-Pshaw, and Agony cut in with

[215]

That ended Sally Prindle as far as the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS were concerned. But I had an uncomfortable feeling all the time that if Nyoda had been there she would have managed to become friendly with Sally in some way, and that we had failed to “warm the heart” of this “lonely mortal” who “stood without our open portal.” Sally haunted me. How any girl could live and not be friendly with the people she saw every day was more than I could understand. She just grubbed away at her lessons, paid no attention to what went on around her, snubbed any girl who tried to make advances and lived a life of lofty detachment. She was a good student and invariably recited correctly when called upon, but beyond that none of the teachers could get a particle of warmth out of her, not even fascinating Miss Allison, who has all her classes worshipping at her feet.

Sally worried me for a while; then she moved out of Purgatory and took a room with some private family in town and as I hardly ever saw her any more I forgot her after a time. Life is so very full here, Katherine dear, that you can’t bother much about any one person.

[216]

Of course, the big thought that runs through everything this year, all our work and all our play, is the War and what we can do to help. At the beginning of the year Brownell pledged herself to raise five thousand dollars for the Red Cross by various activities; this was outside of the personal subscription fund. A big Christmas bazaar and several benefit performances brought the total close to four thousand, but the last thousand proved to be a sticker. Various committees were called to discuss ways and means of raising the money, but they never could agree on anything for the whole college to do together, and finally abandoned the quest for a bright idea and decided to let everybody raise money in any way they could think of and put it all together to make up the total. The Board of Trustees offered a silver loving cup to the individual, club, sorority, group or clique of any kind that raised the largest amount inside of a month.

The day that was announced there was a hastily called meeting of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS.

[217]

“We’re going to win that loving cup,” declared Hinpoha in a tone of finality. “This is our chance to show what we’re made of. Up until now we’ve been doing little easy ‘Give Services.’ At last we’re up against something big. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. The WINNEBAGOS have never fallen down on anything yet that they undertook and they’re not going to now. We’re going to win that contest. Won’t Nyoda be proud of us?”

We cheered until the windows rattled and then Migwan brought us to earth with a thud. “How are we going to do it?” she asked soberly. We all fell silent and donned our thinking caps. Minutes passed but nobody sprouted a bright idea. Suggestion after suggestion was made, only to be turned down flat.

“We might give a circus,” suggested Hinpoha rather doubtfully. “Remember the circus we gave at home last year?”

“There have been nine circuses of various kinds already this year,” wet-blanketed Agony. “You couldn’t hire anybody to attend another.”

“Masquerade as seeresses and give select parlor readings of people’s futures,” suggested Oh-Pshaw. “We could charge five dollars for a reading.”

[218]

“Been done already,” said Migwan. “Anyway, the faculty have forbidden it. The girls that did it last year scandalized a prominent Trustee’s wife by telling her that her daughter was going to elope with an Italian count before the month was out. The daughter had married a minister the week before, only the girls didn’t know it, and the Trustee’s wife got so excited she sat down on a two-hundred-dollar Satsuma vase and smashed it and tried to sue the seeresses for damages. Then, of course, she found out they were students and the faculty put an end to parlor seeresses.”

That’s the way it went. Not a plan was suggested but what turned out to be old stuff or not practicable.

“Oh, for an idea!” groaned Agony, beating her white brow with the palm of her hand.

“We might go round with a hand organ,” suggested Oh-Pshaw in desperation. “Gladys could be the monkey and pass around a tin cup.”

“Thanks, I wouldn’t think of aspiring to such an honor,” I replied modestly.

[219]

“What we want,” said Migwan decidedly, “is a fad—something that will take the college by storm and separate them from their cash. I remember last year some of the seniors started the fad of taking impressions of the palm of your hand on paper smoked with camphor gum and sending them away to have the lines read by some noted palmist, and they made oceans of money at twenty-five cents an impression.”

We talked possible fads until we were green in the face, but nobody got an inspiration and we finally adjourned with our heads in a whirl.

The next day I went into a deserted classroom for a book I had left behind and found Sally Prindle with her head down on one of the desks, crying. By that time I had forgotten how disagreeable she had been to us and hastened over to see what was the matter.

“What’s the trouble, Sally?” I asked, laying my hand on her shoulder.

Sally started up and tried to wipe the tears away hastily. “Nothing,” she answered in a flat voice.

“There is too something,” I said determinedly, and sat down on the desk in front of her.

[220]

She looked at me sort of defiantly for a minute and then she broke down altogether. Between sobs she told me that she wasn’t going to be able to come back to college next year because she hadn’t won the big Andrews prize in mathematics she had counted confidently on winning, and she had worked so hard for it that she had neglected her other work, and the first thing she knew she had a condition in Latin. Besides, she was sick and couldn’t do the hard work she had been doing outside to pay her board.

I never saw anyone so broken up over anything. I wouldn’t have expected her to care whether she came back to college or not; I couldn’t see what fun she had ever gotten out of it, but I suppose in her own queer way she must have enjoyed it. I tried to comfort her by telling her that the way would probably be found somehow if she took it up with the right people, but Sally wasn’t the kind of girl that took comfort easily. Life was terribly serious to her. She felt disgraced because she hadn’t won the prize and was sure nobody would want to lend her money to finish her course. I left her at last with my heart aching because of the uneven way things are distributed in this world.

[221]

Our room was a mess when I got back. Our floor was entertaining the floor below that night and Hinpoha was in the show. She was standing in the middle of the room draping my dresser scarf around her shoulders for a fichu, while Agony was piling her hair high on her head for her and Oh-Pshaw was pinning on a train made of bath towels.

“Have you a blue velvet band?” Hinpoha demanded thickly, as I entered, through the pins she was holding in her mouth.

“No, I haven’t,” I replied, retiring to a corner to escape the sweeping strokes of the hair brush in Agony’s hand.

“Why haven’t you?” lamented Hinpoha. “I just have to have one.”

“What for?” I asked.

“To put around my neck, of course,” explained Hinpoha impatiently. “It’s absolutely necessary to finish off this costume. Go out and scrape one up somewhere, Gladys, there’s a dear.”

I obediently made the rounds, but nowhere did I find the desired blue band. Not even a ribbon of the right shade was forthcoming.

“Paint one on,” suggested Agony, with an inspiration born of despair. “Then you’ll surely have it the right shade.”

[222]

“The paint box is in the bottom dresser drawer,” said Hinpoha, warming to the plan at once. “Hurry up, Agony.”

“Oh, I’ll not have time to do it,” said Agony, moving toward the door. “I’ve got just fifteen minutes left to sew the ruffle back on the bottom of my white dress to wear in chapel to-morrow when we sing for the bishop, and it’s really more important for the country’s cause that I have a white dress to wear to-morrow than that you have a blue band around your neck to-night. My green and purple plaid silk would look chaste and retiring among the spotless white of the choir, now, wouldn’t it?” And swinging her hairbrush she went out. Oh-Pshaw had already disappeared.

“Here, Gladys,” said Hinpoha, holding out the box to me, “mix the turquoise with a little ultramarine.”

“I’m awfully sorry, ’Poha, but I can’t stop,” said I. “I’ve an interview with Miss Allison in five minutes. Get somebody else, dear.”

“Everybody’s rushed to death,” grumbled Hinpoha.

[223]

I went off to keep my appointment and Hinpoha took up her watch for a passer-by whom she could bully into painting a blue band on her neck. Being part of the surprise for the guests she couldn’t very well go out and risk being seen; she just had to stay in the room and wait for someone from our floor to come along. For a long while nobody came, and then, when she was about ready to give up, she did hear footsteps coming down the corridor. It was dark by that time and she couldn’t see who it was, but she pounced out like a cat on a mouse and dragged the girl into her room.

“Paint a blue band on my neck, quick!” she commanded, thrusting out the paint box and switching on the light.

Then she saw who it was. It was Sally Prindle. Hinpoha was a little taken aback, but she had about exhausted her patience waiting for someone to come by and help her.

“Will you, please?” she pleaded, holding out the paints enticingly.

“What is it?” asked Sally dully, looking at Hinpoha in that crazy costume as if she thought she was not in her right mind.

Hinpoha explained the urgent and immediate need of a blue band of a certain shade on her neck.

[224]

“But I never painted anything before,” objected Sally.

“You’ll never learn any younger,” said Hinpoha, jubilant that Sally hadn’t walked out with her nose in the air. “Here, take the brush, I’ll show you what to mix; see, this and this and this.”

Under Hinpoha’s direction Sally painted the blue band and then regarded her handiwork with critical eyes.

“Thanks, that’s fine,” said Hinpoha, holding out her hand for the paints.

“It needs something more,” said Sally slowly, squinting at Hinpoha’s neck. “Do you mind if I use any more paint?”

“Go as far as you like,” said Hinpoha, surprised into flippancy, “let your conscience be your guide!”

Sally made swift dabs at the little color squares, her face all puckered up in a deep frown of concentration.

“Now, how do you like it?” she asked anxiously, after a few minutes, leading Hinpoha to the mirror.

[225]

Hinpoha says she screamed right out when she looked, she was so surprised and delighted. For on the front of the band Sally had painted the most wonderful ornament. It was an enormous ruby, set in a gold frame, the design of which simply took your breath away. How she ever did it with the colors in Hinpoha’s box is beyond us.

“Oh, wonderful!” raved Hinpoha, hugging Sally in her extravagant way. “I can’t wait until the girls see it. Won’t I make a sensation, though! Come to the party, won’t you please, Sally? We’d love to have you.”

Sally shook her head and prepared to depart. “I have to go,” she said with a return to her old brusque manner. “I have another engagement.”

But Hinpoha saw the wistful look that came into her face and she knew that Sally’s “other engagement” was waiting on table in the boarding house where she lived.

Hinpoha’s painted jewelry created a sensation all right. Cries of admiration rose on every side, and the fact that the stony-faced Sally Prindle had done it only added to the sensation. Who would ever have suspected that the most inartistic-looking girl in the whole college had such a talent up her sleeve?

[226]

Two days later there was another excited meeting of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS.

“Our fortune’s made!” shrieked Agony joyfully, dancing around the room and waving a Japanese umbrella over her head.

“Why? How?” we all cried.

“The fad! The fad!” shouted Agony.

“What fad?” I asked. “Do stop capering, Agony, and put down that umbrella before you break the lamp shade. We’ve smashed three already this year.”

“Don’t you see,” continued Agony, breathless, dropping down on the bed and fanning herself with the handle of the umbrella. “Hinpoha’s started a fad with that painted jewelry—blessings on that fool notion of hers of painting a band on her neck, anyway! Half a dozen girls came to classes this morning with bands painted on their necks and ornaments in front that they’d gotten Sally to paint for them. In another day the whole college will be after her to paint ornaments on their necks. Don’t you see what I mean? We’ve got to join forces with Sally, set up in business for the Benefit of the Red Cross—and the cup is ours. Whoop-la! Oh, girls, don’t you see!”

[227]

We saw, all right. Inside of two minutes Sally was voted a member of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS and in a few hours business was in full swing. Sally, of course, was the star of the cast, but the rest of us worked just as hard as press agents. We placarded the whole college with posters announcing that Mme. Sallie Prindle, the distinguished painter of jewelry, would create, for the benefit of the Red Cross, any combination of precious stones desired by the paintee—charges twenty-five cents and up. Students were urged to show their patriotism by appearing in classroom adorned with one of the masterpieces of the above-mentioned Prindle.

It was a success from the word go. The fad spread like wildfire, and Sally spent all her waking hours that were not actually taken up with recitations painting jewelry on fair necks and arms. Lessons were almost forgotten in the fascinating business of admiring designs and comparing effects, and many were the wails because the wonderful things had to be washed off all too soon. We had offered our room as studio because Sally’s was too far away from the center of things, and most of the time it was so crowded with eager customers that we couldn’t get in ourselves. Prices rose as business increased, and the candy box we were using for a bank showed signs of collapsing.

[228]

The next week the juniors gave a dance and they all ordered dog collars for the occasion. Everybody else had to stand aside. Prices for these were to be one dollar and up, according to how elaborate they were. How Sally ever got them all on without fainting in her tracks will always be a mystery. She did a lot of them the night before and then the girls wound their necks with gauze bandages to keep them clean. Miss Allison, who dropped in during the performance, folded up on the bed and laughed until she was weak.

“I never saw anything to equal it, never,” she declared. “There’s never been such a fad in the history of the college.” Then she sat up and demanded a dog collar herself.

“Why on earth didn’t you tell us you could paint jewelry, Sally Prindle?” she asked, as she watched those swift fingers doing their wonderful work. “Of all things, wasting your time specializing in mathematical figures, when all the time you had designs like these in your head!”

[229]

“I never knew I could do it,” said Sally in a funny, bewildered fashion that set the girls all a-laughing. “I never had a paint brush in my hand before. She,”—pointing to Hinpoha—“put the things into my hands and ordered me to paint, and I painted. It came to me all of a sudden.”

Did we get the loving cup? I should say we did! By the end of the month we had raised five hundred and some odd dollars, more than half of the total, and by far the largest amount raised by any group. We were all wrecks by the time it was over, because we had to take turns waiting on table down at Sally’s boarding house to hold her job for her while she worked up in our room; besides getting the paint off the girls’ necks again. That wasn’t always an easy job because sometimes she had to use things beside water colors to get certain effects.

But it was well worth our while, for the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS have achieved undying fame. Migwan started it with her fake Indian legend and the rest of us surely carried it to a grand finish. The best of the whole business, though, was getting Sally.

[230]

Do you know why she was so queer and stand-offish to people all this while? She told us in a burst of confidence that night after we had been given the loving cup. O Katherine, it would almost break your heart. It seems she has a brother who forged a note last year and was sent to prison. She considered that money a debt of honor which she must pay back, and so she came away to college, planning to work her way through and become a teacher of mathematics, which was her strong subject. But she had taken her brother’s disgrace so to heart that she thought the people in college would consider her an outcast if they found it out, and, rather than go through the misery of having people drop her after they had been friendly with her she made up her mind to make no friends at all, and then she didn’t need to worry about their finding it out and cutting her. It broke her all up to turn down our offers of friendship last fall and she left Purgatory because she couldn’t bear to see us after that.

[231]

Think of it, Katherine, what she must have suffered, and nobody to tell it to! And everybody calling her a prune! We all cried over her and assured her a million times we didn’t care a rap what her brother had done; we loved her and were proud to have her for a friend. She was a different girl after that. All the stiffness came out of her like magic and she looked like a person who has been let out of prison after being shut up for years. Her great dread all the time had been that somebody would find out about her brother; now that we actually knew it and it didn’t make a bit of difference, the big load was off her spirits. From being the most unpopular girl in the class she suddenly became one of the most popular.

All her money troubles faded too, because she got work making designs for a big Art Craft jewelry shop that paid her enough so she didn’t have to borrow any more money.

The nicest part of it all, though, was what Agony did. The night that Sally Prindle told us about her brother Agony wrote to her father, who, I imagine, must be a very influential man, and asked if he could get Sally’s brother pardoned. Just how Agony’s father went about it we will never know, but not long afterward Sally got a letter from her brother saying that he had been pardoned on the condition that he would enlist in the army, which he had done.

[232]

Think what that meant to Sally! Instead of being afraid anyone would find out she had a brother she could now speak of him as proudly as the other girls did who had brothers in the army; could take her place with the proudest of them.

Oh, Katherine, if we could only see right through people and know just why they do things the way they do, what a wonderful world this would be!

Lovingly yours, Gladys.

[233]

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

April 25, 19—. Dearest Winnies:

I thought it had all happened, that is, everything that was going to happen for the next ten years, but it seemed that the excitement of the last few weeks was but a beginning, and a very humble beginning at that! We had just gotten over the sensation of the fire and the arrest of the negro, and school was in running order again and life in general had resumed the even tenor of its ways, when, without warning, the sky fell on the house of Adams. They say that coming events cast their shadows before, and that everything works out according to a fixed rule, but this could only have been the exception that proved the rule. Having battered around this wicked world for twenty years I thought I was prepared for all the shocks that human flesh is heir to, and that no matter what happened there was a special rule of etiquette to fit it, but there was nothing in all my experience, nor in the Ten Commandments, nor Hoyle, nor Avogadro’s Hypothesis, nor Grimm’s Law, that prepared me for what happened next.

[234]

Saturday was the fateful day. Saturday is the day on which everything happens to me. I was born on Saturday; it was on Saturday I met you and landed headfirst into the Winnebago circus; it was on Saturday I heard the news that I was not to go to college, and, I suppose, in the order of human events, I shall die on Saturday.

On this Saturday morning—can it be only yesterday?—I sat in the doorway peacefully knitting and occasionally gazing off into space as my thoughts wandered, flitting from subject to subject like the yellow butterflies that flashed from flower to flower. The sunshine sprayed over the roof and glinted on my amber needles, until it seemed that I was knitting sunshine right into the socks. I was filled with a vast contentment that throbbed in my temples and quivered in my toes; from head to foot I was “in tune with the infinite.” That morning father and I had gone over our accounts and our balance was so satisfactory that we figured in another year we could finish paying off the mortgage.

[235]

When I complimented father on his talent for stock farming, he said simply: “It’s all owing to you. You put new life into us again. We never could have done it alone. Besides, I reckon most of the sharp bargaining in horseflesh was done by you. You got more out of people than I ever did. You’ve kept up the collections, too. You never got cheated once. You’re certainly worth your salt as a business manager, child.”

Imagine it! Calling me his business manager! I wasn’t an absolute good-for-nothing, then.

[236]

All these things went serenely through my mind as I sat there knitting in the sunshine, and laying my plans for summer pleasures. I would take the Wenonahs and go off camping somewhere in the woods for a week or two and give them a taste of real life in the open. The picture of that little camp rose vividly before me, and I planned out the details minutely. We would have to have a tent—somewhere or other I must acquire this necessary article. A humorous thought came to me of moving the schoolhouse out into the woods for a camper’s dwelling, and in imagination I saw it bumping along behind us on our journey, with Justice walking along beside it, carrying the chimney in his arms. I laughed aloud at my incongruous fancies, startling a hen that was clucking at my feet so that she fled with a scandalized squawk, stopping a few yards away to look around at me inquiringly, as if trying to figure out what was coming from me next. The hen broke up my fancies and I returned to my knitting with a start to find I had dropped several stitches and had a place in the heel of my sock that looked like the stem end of an apple. I raveled back and painstakingly re-knitted the heel, then I laid my knitting in my lap and gazed dreamily up the road, resting my eyes on the tender greenness of the fields.

Sitting thus I saw an automobile coming into view along the road. I watched it idly, glittering in the sunlight. To my surprise it turned into our lane and approached the house. I went down to the drive to meet it; tourists frequently stopped at the houses for water or for directions, and I would save these people the trouble of getting out of the car. The big machine rolled up to the drive and came to a standstill with a soft sliding of brakes.

[237]

Then a loud, hearty voice called out, “Why here she is now! Katherine Adams, don’t you know me? Don’t suppose you do, with these infernal glasses on.”

I looked hard at the man in the long linen dust coat and tourist cap who sat alone in the car; then my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“Why, Judge Dalrymple!” I exclaimed, starting forward with a cry of joy and seizing the outstretched hand. “Where did you come from? Are you touring? How did you ever happen to stop here?” I tumbled the questions out thick and fast.

“I didn’t ‘happen’ to stop here,” said the Judge in his decisive way. “I’ve been rolling over these endless roads for three days on purpose to get here. Lord, what a God-forsaken country! And now that I am here at last,” he added, “aren’t you going to ask me in? Where’s your father?”

“Excuse me,” said I, blushing furiously. “I was so taken by surprise at seeing you that I even forgot my own name, to say nothing of my manners. Come right in.”

[238]

I settled him in the best chair in the house, brought him a glass of water and left him talking to mother in his hearty way while I went out in search of father. Father was painting a shed when I found him, and he came just the way he was, with streaks of paint on his jumper and overalls. If he had had any inkling of what he was being summoned to——!

Judge Dalrymple was just as pleased to meet father in his paint-streaked jumper as if he had been a senator in a silk hat, and after the first moment of embarrassment father felt as if the Judge were an old-time friend.

Then the Judge began to explain why he had come, and the bomb dropped on the roof of the house of Adams. I couldn’t comprehend it at first any more than father could. It sounded like a page out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But it seemed that he knew all about the company my father had lost his money in last summer, and he and some other men bought it up and set it on its feet again. War orders had suddenly boomed it and it was now solid as a rock. The original stockholders still held their shares and would draw their dividends as soon as they were declared, which Judge Dalrymple prophesied would be soon. Our days of struggling were over. We were “hard-uppers” no longer; we were “well off” at last. I left the Judge and father talking over the details of the business and wandered aimlessly around the dooryard, trying to comprehend the meaning of what had happened to us, and capering as each new thing occurred to me. My narrow horizon had suddenly rolled back and the whole world lay before me. College—travel—study—return to my beloved friends in the east—best doctors for mother—all those things kaleidoscoped before me, leaving me giddy and faint. I seized a hoe and began to demolish an ant hill for sheer exuberance of spirits.

[239]

“What’s the matter, have you had a sunstroke?” asked Justice Sherman, suddenly appearing beside me from somewhere.

“Worse than that, it’s an earthquake,” I replied. “Take a deep breath, Justice Sherman, because you’re going to need it in a minute.”

Then I told him about father’s investing his money in the western oil company last summer and apparently losing it, and how the company had unexpectedly come to life again.

[240]

“Whew!” said Justice, looking dazed for a minute; then he expressed the sincerest joy at our good fortune I have ever heard one mortal express at the prosperity of another. But after his congratulations were all made he stopped short as if he had just thought of something and then he said slowly, “I suppose you’ll be going away from here now; moving out west, possibly to San Francisco?” It seemed to me that he looked very sober at the thought.

“Not if I know it,” I replied decisively. “It’ll be the east for me, if I go anywhere, where the Winnebagos have their hunting grounds.”

“You are going away then?” asked Justice composedly.

“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “Nothing is settled yet. Give us time to catch our breath. In the meantime, come in and meet our guest, the new president of the Pacific Refining Company, who came to tell us the good news.”

Justice assumed an exaggerated air of dignity and formality that upset my composure so I could hardly keep my face straight as I walked into the house.

“Oh, Judge,” I called blithely, “here is the rest of the happy family. Justice, this is Judge Dalrymple.”

Then the second bomb dropped.

[241]

For, at the sight of Justice, Judge Dalrymple sprang out of his chair with a hoarse sound in his throat as if he were choking, and stood staring at him as if he had seen a ghost. Justice looked fit to drop.

“Father!” he said weakly.

“Justice!” said Judge Dalrymple with dry lips. “How did you get here? Where have you been all this time?”

“Out west,” replied Justice.

“Why didn’t you tell us where you were??” asked the Judge, sitting down heavily again.

“I merely followed your instructions,” replied Justice with dignity. “You told me to get out; that you didn’t ever want to hear from me again, and I took you at your word.”

“I was a fool, a blind fool, and in a great rage when I said that. I didn’t mean it,” said the Judge, in a choking voice.

“But you said it, nevertheless,” replied Justice, “and I was hot-headed and went.”

“What have you been doing all this time?” asked the Judge curiously.

“Roughing it,” replied Justice, in the tone of one who has great adventures to tell, “until I came here and turned into a professor.” A humorous twinkle lit up his eye as he mentioned the word “Professor.”

[242]

In a daze of astonishment father, mother and I watched this unexpected meeting and reconciliation between father and son. In due time we had all the story. Judge Dalrymple had set his heart on having his oldest son, Justice, become a lawyer like himself, and go into his law firm as junior partner. But Justice had no liking for the law. All he wanted to do was tinker with electrical things. It was the only thing in the world he cared for. When he got through college and his father insisted upon his entering the law school he flatly refused. There was a scene and he and his father quarreled bitterly. His father told him he could either go to law school or get out and hoe for himself and he chose the latter. He left home. All the while he had been in college he had been working on an electrical device to enable deaf men to receive wireless messages. He now went to work on this and finished it, and, boylike, thought his fortune was made. But it seemed fortune had turned her back on him. He had no money himself to market the device and he could not succeed in interesting anyone with capital. He spent many weary days, going from one place to another with his invention, only to meet with failure on all sides. He had always had delicate health and the long hours he had spent indoors working on his beloved experiments finally told on him and he developed a throat trouble which made it impossible for him to stay in the north. One day, in a moment of great discouragement, he threw his invention into the New York harbor and sorrowfully gave up his dream of being an inventor. He was down and out but still too proud to write home and ask help from his father. He had a chance to act as chauffeur for a party of ladies who wanted to tour the west and in this manner he made his way to Texas. He worked there on a sheep ranch for a number of months; then, seized with a desire to see the country, he worked his way through the Territory and into Arkansas, and finally into the township of Spencer, where he was attacked by robbers one night on the road, robbed of all his belongings and left lying there with his head cut open. Then it was that he had wandered into our stable, was found, and nursed back to health.

[243]

Our climate agreed with him so well that he decided to stay for a while, and got the position of teaching in the high school at Spencer, which wasn’t very hard work. The long walk or drive in the open, back and forth every day, and his sleeping in the airy shack, gradually worked a cure to his throat, and brought back the health he had lost through overwork and disappointment.

[244]

Besides—just listen to this, will you—he said that I had given him such an amazing new outlook on life that he wanted to stay as near to me as he could and learn my philosophy. He had been utterly discouraged when he came, had lost his grip on things, and didn’t care a hang what became of him, but I had put new life and ambition back into him. Imagine it! My philosophy!

He had resolved to have nothing more to do with his father after he had turned him out, and dropped the name of Dalrymple, going by the name of Justice Sherman. His full name was Justice Sherman Dalrymple.

Thus ended the mystery of the scholarly sheep herder. The son of my Judge Dalrymple! I couldn’t believe it, but it was true beyond a doubt. I did know a hawk from a handsaw, after all. No wonder he had looked so sad sometimes when he thought no one was watching him, with such memories to brood over! No wonder he had acted so queerly when I told him what we had done to Antha and Anthony up on Ellen’s Isle. They were his younger brother and sister!