The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks Part 9

"Well, there's the Foreign Settlement," said Katherine. "I'm sure we could find something to do there. It's a grand and n.o.ble thing to show the foreigners how to live better." And she launched into such an eloquent plea in behalf of the poor overburdened washerwomen who had to neglect their babies while they went to work that the girls wiped their eyes and declared it was a cruel world and things weren't fairly divided, and surely they must do what they could to lighten the burdens of their sisters in the Settlement.

"What will we do, and when will we do it?" asked Hinpoha, all on fire to get the n.o.ble work started.

"Tomorrow's Sat.u.r.day," answered Katherine. "We ought to go out into the Settlement and see what's to be done. We'll make a survey, sort of, and then we'll step in and see where we're needed most."

Nyoda, appealed to for advice, told them to go ahead. She liked the idea of their trying to find out for themselves what needed a helping hand.

She could not go with them to the Settlement on Sat.u.r.day morning, but it was all right for them to go by themselves in daylight.

So, full of a generous desire to help somebody else, the Winnebagos followed Katherine's lead toward the Settlement the next day. The Settlement, as it was called, embraced some three or four square miles of land adjacent to several large factories. In it dwelt some few thousand Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, packed like sardines in narrow quarters.

The Settlement had its own churches, stores, schools, theaters, dance halls and amus.e.m.e.nt gardens, and looked more like an old world city than a section of a great American Metropolis, with its queer houses and signs in every language but English. The girls wandered up and down the narrow dirty streets, filled with chickens and children, and tried to decide what they should do first. They met the village baker, carrying a washbasket full of enormous round loaves of rye bread without a sign of a wrapping. He was going from house to house, delivering the loaves, and if no one came to the door he laid the loaf on the doorstep and went on.

Before one house, which had a small front yard, between twenty and twenty-five men were lounging on the steps, on the two benches and against the fence. "What do you suppose all those men are doing in front of that house?" whispered Hinpoha curiously.

Just then a woman came from the house carrying in her hand a huge iron frying-pan full of pancakes. She pa.s.sed it around and each man took a pancake in his hand and ate it where he stood.

"They're having their dinner!" exclaimed Gladys. "It's just a little past noon. That's one way of disposing of the dishwashing problem. I'll store up that idea for use the next time it's my turn to cook supper at a meeting. What a large family that woman has, though. I wonder if they are all her husbands?"

"Gracious no," said Katherine. "These people aren't poly-poly-you know what I mean, even if they are foreigners. Those men are boarders. Every family has some. Let's go into that big house over there and ask if there are any babies the mothers would like to leave with us while they go washing."

They picked their way across the muddy road toward a large building which opened right on to the sidewalk. The hall door stood open and they went in. There were more than a dozen doors leading from the hall on the first floor. "Gracious, what a number of people live here!" said Gladys, putting her arm through Katherine's.

While they stood there, trying to make up their minds at which door to knock, one was opened and a barefooted woman came out, carrying a pan of dishwater, which she threw out on the sidewalk. At the same time another door opened and out came another woman, who stopped short when she saw the first one, and began to talk in a harsh foreign tongue. The second woman replied angrily and the girls could see that they were quarreling.

Before long they were shaking fists in front of each other's noses and shouting at the tops of their voices. Doors everywhere flew open and the hall was soon filled with excited women who took sides with one or the other and shook fists at each other while the girls huddled under the stairway, expecting to be set upon and beaten. The quarrel was waxing more violent, when the girls spied a door at the end of a hallway which had been opened to let in some of the shouting women. As quickly and as quietly as they could they darted down this pa.s.sageway and out of the door which brought them into the back yard of the place. Terrified, they fled up the street and stood on the corner, discouraged and irresolute.

Hinpoha was for going home right away. But Katherine talked her out of it.

"Let's go up to the Neighborhood Mission on the hill and ask them for something to do," suggested Katherine, when the rest inquired what they should do next. So they turned their footsteps toward the white building at the end of the street.

"If you really want to do something," said the mission worker to whom they explained their errand, "come down here next Sat.u.r.day morning and help take care of the children that are left with us. Two of the nurses will be away and we will be short-handed."

The Winnebagos were charmed with the idea. "Oh, may we each take one home for the day?" begged Katherine, "if we promise to bring them back all right?"

Permission was granted for the next Sat.u.r.day and Katherine was jubilant over the good beginning of their work. "I thought it best that we each take one home and take care of it by ourselves," she explained. "We'll have such fun telling experiences and comparing notes afterward."

Promptly at nine o'clock the next Sat.u.r.day morning the four Winnebagos, Katherine, Gladys, Hinpoha and Sahwah, presented themselves at the Neighborhood Mission and drove away ten minutes later in Gladys'

automobile, each with a youngster in tow.

At eight that night there was a lively experience meeting in the House of the Open Door. "Oh, girls, you never saw such a dirty baby as the one I had," cried Gladys, with a little shiver of disgust at the remembrance.

"It couldn't have been any worse than the one I had," broke in Hinpoha.

"But I gave him a bath," said Gladys, with a satisfied air, "and put all new clothes on him, and he was as sweet as a rose when I took him home."

"Mine beat them all," said Katherine, when she was able to get in a word edgewise. "He had a little fur tail of some kind tied around his neck on a string. I suppose it was meant for a 'pacifier,' for he was sucking it all the while."

"Why, mine had one of those on, too," said Gladys.

"So did mine," said Hinpoha.

"There must have been a million germs on it," continued Katherine. "I took it off and burned it up."

"So did I," said Gladys.

"So did I," echoed Hinpoha.

After all things were talked over the Winnebagos decided that they had done pretty good work that day in cleaning up the dirty babies and unanimously voted to take them again the next Sat.u.r.day.

When they arrived at the Neighborhood Mission the next Sat.u.r.day morning they were met on the walk by half a dozen excited women with handkerchiefs on their heads, who formed a circle around them, shouting in a foreign tongue and making fierce gestures.

"What is the matter? What are they saying?" gasped Hinpoha in terror to Katherine, struggling to pull away from the hand that was clutching her coat lapel.

"I don't know," answered Katherine, completely at sea and vainly trying to understand the gibberish that was being uttered by the brown-skinned woman dancing up and down before her.

A startled group of workers ran from the Mission to see what the trouble was, and, forcing themselves through the circle, drew the frightened girls inside the fence of the Mission. Then from the group of women outside there arose a voice in broken English, demanding angrily: "Where is the charm that hung on the neck of my Stefan? The charm to keep away the fever and the sore eyes? I give you my boy to watch, you steal away the charm. Give it back! Give it back!" Here the angry shouting and gesticulating began again and threatening hands were waved over the fence.

"What does she mean?" asked Hinpoha. "What charm?"

"We didn't steal any charms," said Katherine indignantly. "We didn't take a thing off the babies except some dirty old rabbits' tails that were full of germs. We burned them up, and a good thing it was, too."

Here the angry shouts of the women gave way to wails of despair. "They burned the rabbits' tails!" groaned one woman, who could talk English, lifting her hands heavenward, "the rabbits' tails that the Wonder Woman tied about their necks on Easter Sunday! Now Stefan will get the fever and the sore eyes and the teeth will not come through!" And she beat her breast in despair. Then her anger blazed forth again and she fell to berating the girls in her own language, and the other women fell in with her until there was a perfect hubbub. The workers at the Mission hustled the girls inside the building and the women finally departed, shaking fists at the Mission and raging at all the dwellers.

"It was nothing but a dirty old rabbit's tail," declared Hinpoha tearfully, as the shaken Winnebagos hastened homeward. "I hate foreigners! I guess we'll never try to do anything for them again."

"Oh, yes, we will," answered Katherine optimistically; "we'll learn not to make mistakes in time."

"Look at that donkey over there," said Sahwah. "Doesn't he remind you of Sandhelo?"

"Poor old Sandhelo," mourned Hinpoha. "I wonder what became of him? We certainly had fun with him, even if he never would go unless he heard music."

"Seems to be characteristic of the donkey tribe not to want to go,"

observed Katherine. "That one over there is balking, too. Doesn't the fellow that's trying to drive him look like a pirate, though? I wouldn't go for him either, if I were a donkey."

"O look!" cried Sahwah in amazement, and they all stopped still.

A small boy was coming down the street blowing l.u.s.tily on a wheezy horn, and as soon as the donkey heard it he wheeled around, facing the music, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, uttered a squeal of rapture and rose up on his hind legs, almost upsetting the queer little cart to which he was harnessed.

"Katherine! I do believe it _is_ Sandhelo," cried Sahwah, excitedly gripping Katherine's arm.

The man sprang from the cart and seizing the donkey by the bit brought him down to earth with a rough pull that almost jerked his head off, shouting abuse at him in a foreign tongue. The little boy, frightened at the uproar, ran away, taking his music with him. The man got into the cart again and tried to drive away. The donkey refused to move. The man began to beat him unmercifully.

"Oh, girls, we must do something to stop him!" cried Hinpoha, hopping up and down in distress.

"Here, you, stop that!" shouted Katherine, running forward and waving her m.u.f.f at him threateningly. "I'll have the law on you!" The man either did not understand, or did not care, for he paid not the slightest heed to her words. "Stop it, stop it, I say!" she commanded, stamping her foot angrily and wildly wishing she were a man, that she might beat this bully even as he was beating the poor little beast.

The man looked at her and grinned derisively. "Who says so?" he growled.

"I say so!" said a voice behind Katherine, and she turned to see the Captain standing beside her. "You stop beating that donkey or I'll punch your head." He put his fingers to his lips and uttered a long shrill whistle which the girls recognized as the call of the Sandwiches, and the next minute the other boys came running up the side street, Bottomless Pitt, Monkey, Dan, Peter and Harry, with Slim trailing along in the rear, puffing violently in his efforts to keep up with the rest. They surrounded the cart threateningly and the man sulkily left off beating the donkey.

Sahwah went forward and stroked the little animal's head and then she uttered a triumphant cry.