The Camp Fire Girls' Larks and Pranks Part 20

"Captain did, the mean old thing!" sobbed Hinpoha.

"But the Key, and the Horoscope, and the Fortune Teller," continued Gladys, "they all said he would be the one. I don't see how it could have come out any other way."

Katherine rose from her knees and rapped on the table for attention.

"Girls," she said seriously, "I suppose you think it was a very unkind and low-down sort of joke I played on Hinpoha, getting her all worked up like that with those notes, and under ordinary circ.u.mstances it would have been. But isn't there a saying somewhere 'that awfully sick people need awfully strong medicine,' or something to that effect? Here you all were gone completely loony-excuse the expression, but it's just what you were-gone perfectly loony about this fortune-telling business. You did it so much that I actually believe you began to think it was true. Then that fool fortune-teller told Hinpoha about the light-haired man that was coming into her life soon, and when the new professor arrived you all thought he was the one. I just happened to find out soon after he came that he was engaged to Miss Snively. I knew if I told you then you wouldn't believe it, so I waited until it came out. But I was afraid Hinpoha would do something really silly before she got through, and decided to take a hand in the game myself. When I wrote that note about the hair I was sure she would see through it and come to her senses. The fact that she swallowed it shows how far out of her right mind she was. I never believed she would put a lock of hair into the dictionary. But when she seemed to take it all for gospel truth I couldn't resist the temptation to go on and have some more fun."

"But-his handwriting," said Hinpoha faintly.

"Easiest thing in the world to imitate," said Katherine, saying nothing about the weary hours it had taken her to accomplish that feat. "And I signed my own initial, 'K.,' which was certainly not taking the professor's name in vain. I never told a soul, so there's n.o.body to crow over you. You stand just exactly where you did at first with the professor."

"But," said Gladys, still not satisfied, "why did he always look at Hinpoha when he read the sentimental pa.s.sages?"

"Because he's built that way," answered Katherine scornfully. "There are plenty of men who will make eyes at every pretty girl they see, whether they have any right to or not. Besides I heard him tell one of the other teachers once that your red hair reminded him of the hair that belonged to a dear friend he 'lost in youth.'"

After hearing Katherine's clean-cut and sensible version of the affair the whole thing seemed unutterably ridiculous and one by one they began to think that she was right, and had played the part of the friend instead of the mischief-maker, in shocking Hinpoha back into common sense. Hinpoha advanced shakily and held out her hand. "I thank you, Katherine," she said, "for 'saving me from myself'!" And Katherine seized her hand in a crus.h.i.+ng grip, and soon they were hugging each other, and their friends.h.i.+p, instead of being shaken to its foundations, was cemented more strongly.

"I think he's horrid," said Gladys, "and if I were you, Hinpoha, I'd never look at him again-the way he treated you this morning, after you had taken the trouble to fish him out of the pool last night. He's an ungrateful wretch, and doesn't deserve to be rescued."

Katherine was looking at them with a queer expression. "There's something else I suppose I ought to tell you," she said, "although I wasn't going to at first. But now he's acted so you really ought to know. Miss Snively's falling into the pool wasn't exactly an accident."

"Did he push her in?" asked Gladys in a horrified tone.

"Goodness, no," said Katherine. Then she added: "Yes, in a way he did, too, for he was responsible for her falling in. You know what a dub the boys all think him; they never call him anything but 'that mutt,' or 'that cissy.' He couldn't help seeing it, and it bothered him that he wasn't a hero in their eyes. Besides," she continued shrewdly, "if he was thinking of getting married he probably was looking for promotion, and he never would get it as long as he couldn't control the boys. So he complained to Miss Snively about it and she obligingly offered to fall into the pool and have him rescue her, and so make a hero out of him overnight. I heard them planning it yesterday; they were on one side of a big pile of greens waiting to go up and I was on the other. She was to do it during the intermission when no one was in the pool. They didn't seem to know that you were going to be in then. But she did it anyway, thinking that the professor would reach her first. But you were too quick for them. That's why he's so furious with you; you kept him from being a hero, and got all the praise he expected to get. Then when he b.u.mped his head on the side of the tank and had to be rescued himself, it put the finis.h.i.+ng touch to the tragedy."

"Gee!" exclaimed Hinpoha and Sahwah and Gladys and the other two girls, all in a breath. In moments of great emotional stress refined language seems an utter failure as a vehicle of expression. Slang is the only thing that adequately expresses the feelings. They said it again, intentionally and emphatically-"_Gee!_"

"What a foolish thing to do," said Sahwah, when they had all recovered somewhat, "falling into the pool to give a man a chance to be a hero. She might have been drowned."

"She didn't run such an awful risk," observed Katherine, the all-knowing.

"She's a good swimmer herself; I've heard people say so."

And again the girls sought relief in the expression not sanctioned by the grammar.

"Going to the Lodge?" said the Captain's voice in Hinpoha's ear a few days later, as she swung along the street. The Captain's manner was decidedly diffident. He was not at all sure how she would treat him this time.

Hinpoha nodded companionably. "I'm going to practice with the handball,"

she said energetically. "Come on, I'll race you across the field."

"That was great, wasn't it?" she cried laughingly, as she stopped before the door, breathless, with her hair flying around her face.

"Say, give us a curl, will you?" begged the Captain, tugging at one that hung over the collar of her coat.

"Don't be silly, Captain," she said reprovingly. "You know I hate people who are sentimental."

Hinpoha's romance was a thing of the past.

CHAPTER XIII RANDALL'S ISLAND

"I can't help it, it simply won't roll!" exclaimed Katherine in despair.

"I've tugged and tugged until my fingernails are all broken, and it just naturally won't turn over!" And Katherine sat down with a discouraged thud and fanned herself with a hair-brush.

"Well, we'll 'just naturally' have to stop and see what's the matter with it," said Nyoda soothingly. The Winnebagos were having a contest in poncho rolling to be in practice for the coming summer's camping trips.

The aim of each one just now was to accomplish this in two minutes. Two minutes to spread out a poncho, two blankets and enough clothes for an overnight trip, roll it up into a neat stove-pipe, bend it into a tidy horseshoe and fasten the ends together with a rope tied in square knots.

The record was held by Medmangi, quiet, neat Medmangi, who, while the others were working like mad, had serenely completed her task in a minute and three-quarters.

"She's a regular phenomenay, that woman," said Sahwah, who had thought she was doing wonders when she straightened up at the end of two minutes exactly. "She must have four hands, or else she packed with her feet. But what else could you expect of a girl who's going to be a doctor?"

Poor Katherine, alas, made no time at all that could be recorded in Nyoda's book. It was only her second attempt at poncho rolling, but it is doubtful whether it would have been any different if it had been her hundred and second. She simply was not built for order and speediness. At the end of ten minutes she still sat beside her pile of belongings, the poncho askew, the blankets askew on it and hanging over the edge, the extra middy bundled up into a wrinkled lump and the small articles sliding off on all sides. She had begun to roll it from the wrong end, and after one or two turns it absolutely refused to go any farther, in spite of forceful attempts.

"Here, spread your things out properly, and then it will go," said Nyoda patiently, picking up the blankets. Out rolled the object which had obstructed the wheels of progress-an umbrella, which had been tucked under the blankets lengthwise of the roll. "No wonder it wouldn't roll!"

exclaimed Nyoda, laughing aloud. "Did you expect the umbrella to bend round and round like a hose? Whatever would you want an umbrella for, anyway?"

"For rain," answered Katherine with touching simplicity. Nyoda and the other Winnebagos doubled up in silent mirth. Katherine's inspirations invariably left them without power of comment.

"Katherine, you're _positively_ hopeless," sighed Gladys affectionately.

"The only safe way is to divide your things up among the other ponchos; yours would never arrive at a journey's end, anyhow."

"Oh, if I had only been born neat instead of handsome!" said Katherine plaintively, and then joined heartily in the irresistible laughter that followed.

"Hush, girls!" said Nyoda. "There's somebody down at the door. Don't you hear somebody rapping?"

Hinpoha, who was nearest the window, peeped down. "It's a whole bunch of girls," she reported in an excited whisper. "All strangers. I don't know any of them. What can they want?"

"Want to see us, probably," said matter-of-fact Sahwah. "Isn't somebody going down to let them in?"

"The way this place looks!" sighed Nyoda, looking at the floor strewn with the contents of Katherine's poncho. "Gladys, you and Hinpoha go down and let them in and detain them downstairs until the rest of us can put this room in order. It's a disgrace to the Winnebagos."

Gladys and Hinpoha descended the ladder and threw open the door.

"Welcome," they cried, "whoever you are! Welcome to the House of the Open Door!"

The six strange girls came in. One who was tall and thin and had hair almost as red as Hinpoha's, stepped forward. "We are members of the San-Clu Camp Fire," she said. "We have heard quite a bit about you Winnebagos and thought we would come and call. Is this your famous Lodge?"

"It certainly is," said Gladys hospitably. "We are delighted to become acquainted with you. Make yourselves at home. This gymnasium outfit belongs to a club of boys who share our Lodge, and over there is Sandhelo's stall. Sandhelo is our pet donkey; you must see him right away." She led the girls to the stall and kept them there telling about Sandhelo's exploits until she was sure from the sounds above that the room was in order. Then she invited them to ascend the ladder.

"The San-Clu Camp Fire have come visiting," she announced, as she stepped out on the floor.

"All Hail to the San-Clu Camp Fire from the Winnebagos," chanted the hostess ceremoniously, and seven pairs of hands performed the fire sign.

"San-Clu returns All Hail," responded the guests with no less ceremony.

The newcomers were shown the beauties of the Winnebago Lodge, and it seemed they would never get done exclaiming over the rugs and skins and pottery, and most of all, the beds.

"They aren't so terribly hard to make," the Winnebagos a.s.sured them modestly, but at the same time glowing with a feeling of superiority. The San-Clu girls were plainly older than the Winnebagos; they all wore dresses down to their ankles and seemed quite grown up, almost enough to be guardians themselves; yet they did not appear to have won nearly so many honors as the younger Winnebagos.