The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road Part 2

"Let's give them to her right away," said Hinpoha, beginning to gather things up in her arms. Hinpoha is just like a whirlwind when she gets enthusiastic about anything.

"But how shall we give them to her?" I asked. "We don't know her, and she might feel offended if she thought we had noticed how bare her room was and pitied her. How shall we manage it, Migwan?"

"Don't act as if you pitied her at all," replied Migwan. "Simply knock at her door and tell her you've got your room all furnished and there are some things left over and you're going up and down the corridor trying to find out if anybody has room to take care of them for you until the end of the year. Of course she has room to take them, so it will be very simple."

"Oh, Migwan, what would we do without you?" cried Hinpoha, and nearly dropped the Rookwood bowl trying to hug her with her arms full. "You always know the right thing to do and say."

Agony and Oh-Pshaw stopped into their room on the way up and came out with a leather pillow and an ivory clock to add to the collection. Their room wasn't too full, but they wanted to do something for Sally, too. We had to knock on Sally's door twice before she opened it and we were beginning to be afraid she wasn't at home. When she did come to the door she didn't ask us in; but just stood looking at us and our armful of things as if to ask what we wanted. She was a tall, stoop-shouldered girl with spectacles and a wrinkle running up and down on her forehead between her eyes. The room was just as bare as Agony had described; it looked like a cell.

"We're making a tour of Purgatory trying to dispose of our surplus furniture," I said, trying to be offhand, "Have you any room to spare?"

"No, I haven't," answered Sally with a snap. "You're the third bunch to-day that's tried to decorate my room for me. When I want any donations I'll ask for them." And she shut the door right in our faces.

We backed away in such a hurry that Agony dropped the clock and it went rolling and b.u.mping down the stairway.

"Of all things!" said Agony. "I wish poor people wouldn't be so disagreeable about it. I'm sure I'd be tickled to death to use anybody's surplus to make up what I lacked. Well, we've tried to 'Give Service'

anyway, and if it didn't work it wasn't our fault. I think there ought to be a law about 'Taking Service' as well as Giving. Now let's hurry up and go for our hike before the sun goes down."

We went out and had the most glorious tramp over the hills and found a tiny little village that looks the same as it must have a hundred years ago, and then we came back and had hot chocolate in a darling little shop that was just jammed with students. Agony and Oh-Pshaw know just quant.i.ties of girls, and introduced us to dozens, and we went back to Purgatory too happy to think.

"I told you so," said Migwan, as she came into the room with us for a minute to get a book.

"What did you tell us?" asked Hinpoha.

"I meant about us three trying to have meetings just by ourselves and trying to do exactly what we did when we were Winnebagos. It won't work.

You'll keep on making new friends all the time that you'll love just as much as the old ones. Don't forget the old Winnebagos, but don't mourn because the old days have come to an end. There's more fun coming to you than you've ever had before in your lives, so be on the lookout for it every minute. 'Remember!'"

Oh, Katherine, we just love college, and the only fly in the ointment is that you aren't here!

Your loving Gladys.

P. S. Medmangi writes that she has pa.s.sed her exams and entered the Medical School. Sahwah is going to Business College and having the time of her life with shorthand. P.P.S. Hinpoha is dying of curiosity to hear more about the sick man. Please answer by return mail.

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS

Nov. 1, 19--.

Dearest Winnies:

Well, Justice Sherman may be a sheep herder and a son of the pasture, but I hae me doots. I know a hawk from a handsaw if I was born and bred in the backwoods. I know it isn't polite to doubt people's word, and he seemed to be telling an absolutely straight story when he told how he beat his way across from Texas, but for all that there's some mystery about him. His manners betrayed him the first time he ever sat down to the table with us. Even though he limped badly and was still awfully wobbly, he stood behind my mother's chair and shoved it in for her and then hobbled over and did the same for me.

You can see it, can't you? The table set in the kitchen--for our humble cot does not boast of a dining room--father and Jim Wiggin collarless and in their shirtsleeves, and the stranded sheep herder waiting upon mother and me as if we were queens. For no reason at all I suddenly became abashed. I felt my face flaming to the roots of my hair, and absentmindedly began to eat my soup with a fork, whereat Jim Wiggin set up a great thundering haw! haw! Jim had been a sheep herder before he came to take care of father's horses, and it struck me forcibly just then that there was a wide difference between him and the stranger within our gates.

I said something to father about it that night when we were out in the stable together giving Sandhelo his nightly dole. Father rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, a sign that a thing is of no concern to him.

"Don't you get to worryin' about the stranger's affairs," he advised mildly. "If he's got something he doesn't want to tell, you ain't got no business tryin' to find it out. Tend to your own affairs, I say, and leave others' alone. There ain't n.o.body goin' to be pestered with embarra.s.sing questions while they're under my roof."

So I promised not to ask any questions. Just about the time the stranger's foot was well enough to walk on, Jim Wiggin stepped on a rusty nail and laid himself up. Justice Sherman was a G.o.dsend just then because men were so hard to get, and father hired him to help with the horses until Jim was about again. Father begged me again at this time not to ask him anything about his past.

"Just as soon as he thinks we're gettin' curious he'll up and leave," he said, "and that would put us in a bad way. Help is so scarce now I don't know where I _would_ get an extra man. Seems almost as though the hand of Providence had sent him to us."

It was perfectly true. Since so many men had gone into the army it was next thing to impossible to get any help on the farms except good-for-nothing negroes that weren't worth their salt. It seemed, indeed, an act of Providence to cast an able man at our door just at this juncture. So I promised again not to bother the man with questions.

Indeed, it bade fair to be an easy matter not to ask him any questions.

Beyond a few polite words at meals he never said anything at all, and as he had moved his sleeping quarters to a small cabin away from the house I saw very little of him, and I suppose we never would have gotten any better acquainted if your letter hadn't come that Friday. Friday is the worst day of the week for me, because after five days of constant set-to-ing with Absalom b.u.t.ts my philosophy is at its lowest ebb. This week was the worst because I had a visitation from the school board to see how I was getting on, and, of course, none of the pupils knew a thing and most of them acted as if the very devil of mischief had gotten into them. Elijah b.u.t.ts gave me a solemn warning that I would have to keep better order if I wanted to stay in the school, and Absalom, who had been hanging around listening, made an impudent grimace at me and laughed in a taunting manner. If I hadn't needed the money so badly I would have thrown up the job right there.

Then, on top of that, came your letter describing the supergorgeousness of your college rooms, and when I thought of the room I had planned to have at college this winter, adjoining yours, my heart turned to water within me and melancholy marked me for its own. I wept large and pearly tears which Niagara-ed over the end of my nose and sizzled on the hot stove, as I stood in the kitchen stirring a pudding for supper. Get the effect, do you? Me standing there with the spoon in one hand and your letter in the other, doing the Niobe act, quite oblivious to the fact that I was not the only person in the county. I was just in the act of swallowing a small rapid which had gotten side-tracked from the main channel and gone whirlpooling down my Sunday throat, when a voice behind me said, "Did you get bad news in your letter?"

I jumped so I dropped the letter right into the pudding. I made a savage dab at my eyes with the corner of my ap.r.o.n and wheeled around furiously.

There stood the Justice Sherman person looking at me with his solemn black eyes. I was ready to die with shame at being caught.

"No, I didn't," I exploded, mopping my face vehemently with my ap.r.o.n, and thereby capping the climax. For while I had been reading your letter and absently stirring the pudding it had slopped over and run down the front of my ap.r.o.n, and, of course, I had to use just that part to wipe my face with. The pudding was huckleberry, and what it did to my features is beyond description. I caught one glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink and then I sank down into a chair and just yelled. Justice Sherman doubled up against the door frame in a regular spasm of mirth, although he tried not to make much noise about it. Finally he bolted out of the door and came back with a basin of water from the pump, which he set down beside me.

"Here," he said, "remove the marks of b.l.o.o.d.y carnage, before you scare the wolf from the door."

So I scrubbed, wishing all the while that he would go away, and still furious for having made such a spectacle of myself. But he stayed around, and when I resembled a human being once more (if I ever could be said to resemble one), he came over and handed me the letter, which he had fished out of the pudding.

"Here's the fatal missive," he said, "or would you rather leave it in the pudding?"

"Throw it into the fire," I commanded.

"That's the right way," he said approvingly. "I always burn bad news myself."

"It wasn't bad news," I insisted.

"Then why the tears?" he inquired curiously. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean----"

He was smiling, but somehow I had a feeling that he was trying to cheer me up and not making fun of me. I was so low in my mind that afternoon that anyone who acted in the least degree sympathetic was destined to fall a victim. Before I knew it I had told him of my shipwrecked hopes and how your letter had opened the flood gates of disappointment and nearly put out the kitchen fire.

"College--you!" I heard him exclaim under his breath. He stared at me solemnly for a moment and then he exclaimed, "O tempora, O mores! What's to hinder?"

"What's to hinder?" I repeated blankly.

"Yes," he said, "having the room anyway."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Why," he explained, "you have a room of your own, haven't you? Why don't you fix it up just the way you had planned to have your room in college?

Then you can go there and study and make believe you're in college."

I stared at him open-mouthed. "Make-believe has never been my long suit,"

I said.

"Come on," he urged. "I'll help you fix it up. If you have any more tears prepare to shed them now into the paint pot and dissolve the paint."