Winona of the Camp Fire Part 2

"Oh, that's all right!" said Louise airily. She caught up the manual as she spoke, and ran her eye down the list of honors by the firelight.

"Wash and iron a shirtwaist-I love to wash things. Make a bed for two months-I'd be hung with beads if I had one for every two months I've made my bed. Abstain from gum, candy, ice-cream-oh, good gracious!"

"That counts as much as the rest," said Winnie mischievously, "and think how good it will be for you!"

"I'll get thin," Louise remarked thoughtfully. "What are you going to start with, Winnie?"

"Health-craft, I think." Winona had taken the book in her turn, and was looking through the pages. "I've always wanted to learn horseback riding, and I think perhaps father'll let me, now it's in a book as something you ought to do." Then she remembered what her brother had said about the flapjacks, and she shook her head as she pa.s.sed on the book. "No," she corrected herself, "I don't believe that will be the first thing I'll do. I think I need home-craft quite as much as I do learning to ride."

"What about you, Helen?" asked Louise.

"Why, clay-modelling and bra.s.s-work, or things like that," was the prompt answer. "I want to take up art-craft when I get older, and I might as well begin."

"Can you clay-model in camp?" asked Louise.

"Just as well as you can make a shirtwaist," replied Helen, unruffled.

"I like the hand-crafts, too," said Edith Hillis. "I think I shall specialize on fancy-work."

"Always a perfect lady!" teased Louise, who was something of a tomboy, and frankly thought it was silly of Edith to refuse to get her hair wet in the swimming-pool, and wear veils for her complexion.

The other three girls, Marie Hunter and Dorothy Gray and Adelaide Hughes, did not say what honors they were going to work for. Everybody was pretty sure that Marie was going to write a play, and Dorothy did beautiful needle-work. But as for Adelaide, silent in her place, n.o.body could guess.

"You mustn't any of you forget that there's sewing to do, right now,"

warned Mrs. Bryan. "And I want all of you to look at my dress, because each of you will have to make one like it."

She stood up again, and they all examined the straight khaki dress with its leather fringes.

"That won't be especially hard to make," concluded Marie, who did most of her own sewing. "There's a pattern, isn't there, Mrs. Bryan?"

"Oh, yes, and I have it. And there's one more thing, girls-two, rather.

We must each choose a name, and a symbol to go with the name. Then we have to name the Camp Fire."

"A name-how do you mean?" asked Winnie.

"I mean that, of course, our Camp Fire has to be called something.

Beside that, so does each Camp Fire Girl. I like birds and bird-study, so I am going to call myself 'Opeechee,' the Robin, and take a pair of spread wings for my symbol. It's to put on one's personal belongings like a crest-see? as I have it on this pillow-top."

The girls cl.u.s.tered around her to see the symbol, stencilled on the pillow-cover on her lap. She told them she was going to burn it on her shirtwaist box as well, and showed them where she had woven it into her headband, a gorgeous thing of brown and orange-red beads.

"It would go on a paddle-blade, too," said Helen thoughtfully.

"It shall on mine to-morrow," declared Marie. "That is, if I've thought of a symbol by then," she added prudently.

"I think this new name idea is perfectly gorgeous!" cried Louise enthusiastically. "I've always hated my name-you'd expect a Louise to be tall and severe and haughty-and look at _me!_"

She jumped up in the firelight and spread out her plump arms tragically.

"We see you!" nodded Helen calmly, and Louise sat down again.

"You'll be glad you have red hair when you're grown up," consoled Edith.

"It's supposed to be very beautiful."

"Well, it _isn't_," said Louise energetically, "with people always asking after the white horse. I wonder why red-haired girls and white horses are supposed to go together?"

But n.o.body could tell her. They were all cl.u.s.tered about Mrs. Bryan and the manual, choosing names, and planning symbols, and you couldn't hear yourself think. Winnie and Helen and Mrs. Bryan had planned to finish the evening by playing games, but all the girls were so busy talking that it was impossible to get a game in edgewise.

Presently Mrs. Merriam and little Florence came in with cocoa and sandwiches. And then, at about ten-thirty, the meeting broke up, after planning a bacon-bat for the next Sat.u.r.day.

Winnie Merriam sat, as she loved to sit, by the dying fire. Her mother began to clear away the dishes, but Winnie stopped her with:

"Please wait a little while, and talk to me, mother. I haven't had half enough sandwiches, and besides, the nicest part of a party is talking it over afterwards."

"Very well," said Mrs. Merriam, sitting down across from her daughter and helping herself to something to eat. "I didn't get much chance at the refreshments either, I was so busy helping you serve them. What was it you wanted to say particularly, dear?"

"I wanted to ask you about my name, mother. I wasn't christened 'Winnie,' was I?"

"Why, no, dear-you know that. You were christened 'Winona,' after your grandmother-only somehow, we never called you that."

"It's a real Indian name, isn't it?" asked Winnie.

"It certainly is," her mother a.s.sured her. "Why, dear, I've told you the story of it many a time."

"Not for a long time now," persuaded her daughter. "I think I've forgotten some of it. Didn't a real Indian give it to grandmother?"

"The Indian didn't exactly give it to her, it belonged to the Indian's baby."

"Oh, tell me the story!" urged Florence sleepily. "I want to hear, too!"

Mrs. Merriam made room for Florence in her lap, and went on above her with the sandwich and the story.

"Your great-grandfather was an Indian missionary, and when he and your Great-grandmother Martin went out to live among the Indians, they took with them their little baby daughter, so young they had not named her yet. Well, one day, while your grandmother was sitting on the steps of the log house where they lived with her baby on her lap, a squaw came along with _her_ baby. She had it strapped to her back, the way they carry them, you know. She was a stranger, not one of the mission Indians, and oh, so tired and ragged and dusty!

"Great-grandmother Martin couldn't understand her language, but she beckoned her into the house and gave her food for herself and milk for the baby. And then, by signs, she asked the baby's name. And the Indian woman said 'Winona-papoose Winona-yes.' It seemed she could speak a very little English. So then Great-grandmother Martin asked the woman what the name meant-for all Indian names have meanings, you know. But the woman hadn't enough English words to answer her. So she got up from the floor where she had been sitting and took the bright steel bread-knife that lay where great-grandmother had been cutting bread for her. She held it in a ray of sunlight that crossed the room, and shook it so the light flashed and was reflected, bright and quivering, in the room.

"'That Winona!' she explained.

"After she was rested she wouldn't stay. She went on her travels, wherever she was going,-great-grandmother never saw her again. But she didn't forget the name, and as soon as she could she asked the Indian interpreter what 'Winona' really meant. He told her that it was the name of another tribe for 'ray of light that sparkles,' or 'flashing ray of light.'

"So Great-grandmother Martin named her own little girl Winona. The name was pretty, and the meaning was prettier still. And she grew up and married Grandfather Merriam-and when you came we named you for her."

"Then it really is a sure-enough Indian name," said its owner. "And the meaning is lovely. 'A ray of flashing light'-you couldn't ask to be anything better than that, could you, mother? I believe if I can I shall keep my own name for the Camp Fire. It is prettier than anything I could make up or find."

"It certainly is," said her mother.

"Why didn't I have a Nindian name, too?" clamored Florence aggrievedly, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.