Winona of the Camp Fire Part 11

"You certainly are taking it easy, considering there's going to be a dance!" declared Tom. "Usually when anything like that is going to happen you run around like a hen with its head cut off!"

"No reason why I should, this time," said Winona, laughing. "You Scouts are giving the dance, not we. Though perhaps it's because my dress is off my mind. You always have to press a frock out and clean your white shoes, and be sure your sash is all right, when you're wearing anything festive. But thanks to your suggestion about wearing the ceremonial dress, you'll see 'ten little Injuns' walking in to-night, headbands, moccasins and all-and I have nothing to worry about."

Winona stretched herself out in the Morris-chair and looked provokingly comfortable and unoccupied.

"I heard about it," said Tom.

Winona flushed.

"What did you hear?"

"About you and your ceremonial dresses. But I guessed, too."

"Who told you-and what did they tell?" demanded Winona, sitting up and looking ruffled.

"Marie-that all the girls mightn't have party clothes," Tom placidly replied.

"Marie hadn't any business to!" said Winona.

"Well, I guessed the rest. You see, Lonny Hughes is in the Scouts, too, and he-well, he tells me things sometimes. And I know Adelaide felt pretty badly for awhile because she couldn't keep up with some of you-Edith mostly, I guess. He said he had to fairly bully his sister into joining you girls, even after Nannie'd coaxed her. You certainly were a good sport, Win! You know, there's just Lonny and Adelaide and a younger sister, and the father. They have one of those little flats over James's drug-store, in the Williamson Block, and Mr. Hughes doesn't get an awful lot of salary. Anyway, the kids keep house, and Adelaide has to look after herself all the way round. So she takes this hard, the money end, I mean."

"I think she's silly!" said downright Winona.

"Maybe!" said Tom wisely, and went on bestowing loving care on his repeating rifle, the joy of his life.

Winona retired into a book, and Tom, looking up a second later, caught sight of its cover.

"Great Scott!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, eying it. "Where did you get _that?_"

"Where did she get what?" asked Louise, walking unceremoniously in.

"h.e.l.lo, Tom. Oh, Winnie, I want you to show me about this headband. I can't get the colors matched right-you know you have to be rather kind to beautiful golden hair like mine. It won't stand every color there is."

"No rest for the wicked!" said Winona cheerfully, sitting up and abandoning her book. "You don't mean you're going to try to get this done for to-night?"

"I certainly am," said Louise doggedly.

"All right." And Winona, pulled up a little table between them.

"Here-this is the way."

The two girls bent over the little loom, their heads close together.

Tom, meanwhile, finished cleaning his gun, wrapped it carefully in oiled red flannel, and looked around for more worlds to conquer.

The first thing his eyes lighted on was the paper novel Winona had reluctantly laid down-the one Nataly had loaned her.

"For the love of Mike, where did you get this?"

"Your friend's sister, next door," said Winona mischievously. "Don't you like her taste in books?"

"Crazy about it!" said Tom. "'Beautiful Coralie's Doom; or, Answered in Jest,'" he read from the vivid cover. "Say Louise, this hero was a dream. You ought to hear the amount of things he's called the heroine, and this is only the first chapter!"

"Go ahead," urged Louise, while Winona tried vainly to get the book away from her brother, "I guess I can bear it!"

"Let's see. Child, sweetheart, angel, cara-mia, little one-I'll have to start on the other hand, I've used up all my fingers on this one-loved one, pet.i.te, schatzchen-wonder what that is? The only thing he's left out so far is 'kiddo.' I suppose we'll come to that further on.

'Lancelot looked down at her through his long, superfluous eyelashes,'"

Tom went on, reading at the top of his strong young voice. "Those were well-trained eyelashes all right. I'll bet he hung by 'em every day to get 'em in shape to use so much. I've found six sentences about those lashes on one page, and every one the same."

"You wouldn't expect him to have a new set every time, would you?"

inquired Louise sarcastically.

"It's a wonder he didn't have to. One set must have been pretty well worn out by the end of a chapter. 'Ah, you wicked fellow,' Coralie said archly," he went on, sitting down on the floor with the book. Winona made a dive for it, but she wasn't quick enough. "This wicked part's what gets me. There's an average of twenty-five 'wickeds' to every chapter, and the poor fellow's never even forgotten to return an umbrella!"

"Or a book his sister was reading," suggested Louise.

"And what's a 'saucy meow,' Winona? Coralie did 'em all the time. Can you?"

But here Winona threw herself bodily on him, and this time she managed to recover her book, which she sat on.

"Well, this literature cla.s.s is very interesting, but my happy home wants me," said Louise, rising and taking up her loom and the headband, which was in a fair way to be properly finished now. "Thanks, ever so much, Ray of Light. You're the best girl as ever-ever-was. See you to-night, Tommy."

"Now, _that's_ some girl," said Tom admiringly. "No nonsense about her.

Do you want me to take you over, Winnie?"

"That would be awfully nice of you, but we thought we'd 'attend in a body,' as the papers say," answered Winona. "Aren't you boys going to?"

"Well, you see, there are extra girls," explained Tom. "There aren't enough of you Scoutragettes to go round, so we've asked some other girls, and we have to go after them. But we'll get them early, and be there to meet you when you get there."

"Well, I don't want to croak." And Winona arose to go into the kitchen, for that way lay an honor bead, and it was nearly supper-getting time.

"But I think the boy who goes after Nataly Lee _won't_ be drawn up to meet us, unless we kindly hold back the order of march for him."

"Shouldn't wonder," called Tom after her. "Get something good for supper, there's a useful sister!"

But though there was a slight delay in the order of march, it was Louise Lane, of all unexpected people, who was responsible for it: her headband went wrong after all, she explained when, flushed and panting, she appeared in her other one at the meeting-place.

The girls fell into step and marched, two and two, out into the street up the short block to the school-house, where most of the public affairs in the town were held.

"Oh, isn't it gorgeous?" whispered Winona irrepressibly as they came steadily and lightly up the centre of the hall, till they faced the Scouts.

These last were drawn up in a military formation, in the order of their seniority, with the Scoutmaster at their head. He was a plump, cheerful, middle-aged man, the father of three of the Scouts, and vice-princ.i.p.al of the High School. But you would never have thought he had seen a cla.s.s-room, he looked so military and colonel-fied, there at the head of his line of erect, soldierly-looking boys.

"It's like real receptions!" whispered Helen to Winona, as the orchestra blared out "Hail to the Chief!" which was as near to "Welcome to the Camp Fire Girls" as the orchestra's resources could come. Then Mrs.

Bryan and Mr. Gedney gave the order to break ranks, and the orchestra slid with surprising ease into a Paul Jones. So did the boys and girls.

"We got here first, you see," whispered Tom to Winona as he crossed her.

The round went on for quite a little while before the whistle blew for the breaking up into twos, so Winona was able to question and answer bit by bit as she and her brother met and parted.

"What about the extra girls?" she whispered, for no extra girls were to be seen.