The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit Part 2

demanded Hinpoha, with rising excitement.

"We certainly would!" replied Sahwah, with a fine flash from her brown eyes.

"Well, if we'd be perfectly willing to die for _our_ country's cause, why wouldn't Veronica be willing to die for _hers_?" demanded Hinpoha triumphantly.

"What I meant mostly," said Sahwah, skillfully diverting a discussion that was becoming decidedly heated, "was that none of us are likely to get a chance to die for our country, and neither is Veronica going to get a chance to die for hers, or do anything else for it, even if she were willing to. She's just a schoolgirl like ourselves and n.o.body would think of asking her to do anything."

"That's the trouble," sighed Hinpoha discontentedly. "We're just girls, and the only thing we'll ever get to do is just knit, knit, knit, and there's no glory in that. That's the only 'bit' we'll ever be able to do."

The other three echoed her sigh and reflected sadly upon their circ.u.mscribed sphere, and Sahwah's dream of being another Joan of Arc flickered out into darkness. Then she brightened again as her thoughts took a new turn.

"Well, there's one thing we have to be thankful for," she said feelingly. "If we can't help to make history, we won't have to learn it, either. We're past the history part of school. But just think what the pupils will have to learn in the years to come--and the names of all those battles that are being fought every day now, and the unp.r.o.nounceable names of all those cities in Europe, and all the different generals. It was hard enough to keep the Civil War generals straight, and there were only _two_ sets of them--think of having to remember all the American and English and French and Italian and Russian ones, to say nothing of the German! Why, it will be such a ch.o.r.e to study history that the pupils won't have time to study anything else!

People always look at little babies and say how fortunate they are; when they grow up the war will be over and everything lovely again, but I always think, 'Poor things, wait until they have to study history!' How lucky we are to be living through it instead of having to learn it out of books!"

All the while Sahwah was talking, Hinpoha had been watching with undisguised interest a man who sat in the seat directly across the aisle from them, who, with an artist's sketching pad on his knee, was drawing caricatures with a thick black pencil. Hinpoha, clever artist that she was herself, took a lively interest in anyone else who could draw, and from the glimpses she could get of the sketches being made across the aisle, she recognized the peculiar genius of the artist. She attracted the attention of the other three, and they too watched in wonder and with ever-growing interest. The artist finally looked up, saw the four eager pairs of eyes fastened on him, and nodding in a friendly way, handed his sketch-book across the aisle.

"Would you like to see them?" he asked genially, his eye lingering on Hinpoha's glory-crowned head with artistic appreciation.

He himself looked like the typical artist one sees in pictures. His hair was long and wavy and his blond beard was trimmed in Van d.y.k.e fas.h.i.+on.

Hinpoha nearly burst with admiration of him, and when he became aware of her existence and offered to show his sketches she was in a flutter of joy.

"Oh, may we?" she exclaimed delightedly, taking the book from his hand.

"Oh, lookee!" she squealed in rapture to the other girls. "Did you ever see anything so quaint?"

The others looked and also exclaimed in wonder and delight. There were pictures of trains running along on legs instead of wheels, of houses and barns whose windows and doors were cunningly arranged to form features, of buildings that sailed through the air with wings like birds'; of drawbridges with one end sticking up in the air while an enormously fat man sat on the other end; of s.h.i.+ps walking along on stilts that reached clear to the bottom of the ocean!

"Oh, aren't they the most fascinating things you ever saw?" cried Sahwah, enraptured.

Utterly absorbed, she did not see the lieutenant of aviation gather up his things to leave the train at one of the way stations; was not aware that he paused on his way out and looked at her for a long, irresolute minute and then went hastily on.

The last page in the book of sketches had not been reached when the train came to a stop right out in the hills, between stations.

"What's the matter?" everybody was soon asking.

Heads were popped out of windows and there was a general rush for the platforms, as the sounds outside indicated excitement of some kind.

"Two freight trains collided on the bridge and broke it down," was the word that pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth. "The train will be delayed for hours."

Dismayed at the long wait in store for them, the Winnebagos sat down in their seats again, prepared to make the best of it, when the judicial-looking gentleman who had been sitting in front of them came up and said, "Pardon me, but I couldn't help overhearing you girls talking about going to Oakwood. I am going to Oakwood myself--I live there--and I know how we can get there without waiting hours and hours for this train to go on. We are only about twenty miles from Oakwood now and right near an interurban car line. We can go in on the electric car and not lose much time. I will be glad to a.s.sist you in any way possible. My name is Wing, Mr. Ira B. Wing."

"Not Agony and Oh-Pshaw's father!" exclaimed Hinpoha. "I knew they lived in Oakwood, but----"

"The same," interrupted Mr. Wing, smiling broadly. "Are you acquainted with my girls?"

"Are we?" returned Hinpoha. "Ask them who roomed next to them this last year at Brownell! Do we know the Heavenly Twins! Isn't it perfectly wonderful that you should turn out to be their father! We were having a discussion a while ago as to whether you were a lawyer or a professor, and Sahwah--excuse me, this is Miss Brewster, Mr. Wing, another one of the Winnebagos, that the Twins don't know--yet--Sahwah insisted that you were a lawyer and I insisted you were a professor, and now Sahwah was right after all. You _are_ a lawyer, aren't you? I believe Agony said you were."

"I am," replied Mr. Wing with a twinkle in his eye, "and I'm more than delighted to meet you. Come along, and we'll see if we can't get to Oakwood before dark."

Then the whimsical artist came up and addressed Mr. Wing. "Did I hear you say you could get to Oakwood on the electric?" he inquired. "I'm going there too. My name is Prince, Eugene Prince."

"Glad to meet you," replied Mr. Wing heartily. "Come along." He summoned the porter to carry out the various suitcases.

Before long the little party were aboard the electric car, and reached Oakwood almost as soon as they would have if the train had not been held up. The electric car went by the railway station and the Winnebagos got off, because Nyoda would be waiting for them there. Mr. Wing and the artist went on to the center of the town.

CHAPTER III

CARVER HOUSE

Nyoda was waiting for them on the platform, looking just as she used to, radiant, girlish, enthusiastic, bubbling over with fun. Not a shade of sadness or anxiety in her face betrayed the loneliness in her heart and her longing for the presence of the dear man she had sent forth in the cause of liberty. In respect to sorrows, Nyoda's att.i.tude toward the world had always been, "Those which are yours are mine, but those which are mine are my own."

Encircled by four pairs of Winnebago arms and with eager questions being hurled at her from all sides, it seemed as if the old times had come again indeed.

"Sahwah! Migwan! Hinpoha! Gladys!" she exclaimed joyfully, looking at them with beaming eyes. "My own Winnebagos! But come, I'm dying to show you my new playhouse," and she led the way across the station platform to where her automobile stood waiting.

A swift spin along a quiet avenue bordered with immense old oaks that stood like rows of soldiers at attention, and up quite a steep hill, from which they could look back upon the houses and buildings cl.u.s.tering in the valley, which was the heart of the town, and then they drew up before a very old brick house which stood on the summit of the hill. It had green blinds and a fanlight over the front door, and a brick walk running from the front steps to the street, bordered on each side by a box hedge in a prim, Ladies' Garden effect like one sees in the ill.u.s.trations of children's poems.

"Oh, Nyoda, how splendid!" cried Hinpoha, her artistic soul delighted beyond measure at the hedge and the walk and the white door with its quaint knocker.

"Wait until you see the inside," replied Nyoda, throwing open the door with the pleased air of a child exhibiting a new and cherished toy.

Cries of admiration and delight filled the air as the Winnebagos entered. The whole house was furnished just as it might have been in the old Colonial days--braided rugs on the floor, candlesticks in gla.s.s holders, slender-legged, spindle-backed chairs, quaint mahogany tables, a huge spinning wheel before the fireplace, and, wonder of wonders!

between the two end windows of the stately parlor there stood a harp, the late suns.h.i.+ne gleaming in a soft radiance from its gilded frame and slender wires like the glory of a by-gone day. Hinpoha stood enraptured before the instrument.

"I've always been wild to learn to play on a harp," she said, drawing her fingers caressingly over the strings and awaking faint, throbbing tones, too soft to be discords, that echoed through the room like the ghost of a song played years ago, and trembled away until they seemed to mingle with the golden light that flooded the room through the west windows.

"If I had my choice of being any of the fabulous creatures in the mythology book," said Hinpoha musingly, "I think I'd choose to be a harpy."

"A what?" asked Nyoda quizzically.

"A harpy," repeated Hinpoha, touching the strings again. Then, looking up and seeing the twinkle in Nyoda's eye, she added, "Weren't the Harpies beautiful maidens that sat on the rocks and played harps and lured the sailors to destruction with their ravis.h.i.+ng songs? Oh, I say, they were too," she finished feebly, amid a perfect shout of laughter from the girls. "Well, what _were_ they, then? Horrible monsters? Oh, what a shame! What a misleading thing the English language is, anyway!

You'd naturally expect a harpy to play on a harp. Anyway, you needn't laugh, Sahwah. I remember once you said in cla.s.s that a peptonoid was a person with a lot of pep, so there!"

Sahwah joined gaily in the laugh that followed at her expense. "So I did," she admitted unblus.h.i.+ngly, "and what's more, I only discovered day before yesterday that a trapezoid wasn't a trapeze performer!"

"Oh, Sahwah, you imp, you're making that up," said Gladys in a skeptical tone.

"Nice child," said Nyoda, patting Sahwah approvingly, trying to turn the laugh upon herself, on the principle that the hostess should always break another cut gla.s.s tumbler when the guest breaks one."

"Oh dear," said Migwan regretfully, "why did you say that about Harpies, Hinpoha, and make us laugh? I was just thinking how beautiful you looked, leaning over that harp, just like that oil painting in the gallery at home, and was getting into quite a poetical mood over it, when you had to make us laugh and spoil it all. I declare, that was too bad!"

"Serves you right for getting poetical about me," retorted Hinpoha.

"But Nyoda," said Gladys, whose eyes had been feasting on the details of the house with every increasing wonder and pleasure, "how does it come that you moved into this little town from Philadelphia, and how do you happen to be living in this wonderful old house?"