Winona of the Camp Fire Part 26

"You do, if you want it," answered Winona. "I'll take the ap.r.o.n."

They both turned in the collars of their middy blouses, and rolled the cuffs under. Skirts over them, a bandanna apiece round their necks, and the checked shawl over Louise's head and a handkerchief on Winona's-and they were very convincing emigrants.

"Our shoes are rather too good," said Winona discontentedly, "but you mustn't ask too much in this world. Pin your hair up, Louise. It's too red for an Italian, or even a Syrian."

She managed to secure her own on top under her 'kerchief as she spoke.

They were both so brown that they looked like natives of somewhere else, and the dresses were very natural. The long skirts and fastened-up hair made them both look eighteen or twenty-for Winona was as tall as she would ever be, five feet six, and Louise, though shorter, was plump.

"We can buy long earrings at the ten-cent store on our way up," said Louise. "I always did want to."

"All right," said Winona.

"And, for goodness sake, Win, see if you can't get up some sort of an accent. Italian would be the easiest, I guess."

"Yes, kinda lady! Sella da fina things-real handa-made!" responded Winona, her white teeth flas.h.i.+ng.

Then they came to the Boy Scouts' camp, and they had to row very softly, and keep as far away from the bank as they could. But luck was still with them, and none of the Scouts happened to be fis.h.i.+ng that morning.

"If we'd remembered we might have brought back the mending," said Louise, with a half-concealed desire to go tell the Scouts about her prospective lark.

"Better not go in there!" said Winona. She had a brother in the camp, and she didn't care to risk being stopped in mid-career of what promised to be a very fine time. So they rowed down the river till they reached Wampoag, and tied their boat to the dock.

They took out the stretcher, put a suitcase on either end of it and piled the things that were too big for the suitcases in the middle. Then they each took an end and started bravely forth.

"Where da gooda hotel for sella da goods?" asked Louise, with a broad and friendly grin, of the interested dock-keeper.

"Any at all," he answered. "Just go straight down this road till you see a hotel. They're all together."

"Thank you, mister," Louise answered, and they trotted on.

The sight of two young Italian girls carrying a stretcher full of goods proved to be a little more of a sensation than the girls had bargained for. They felt as if they had never been so much stared at in their lives, and they were both grateful when they reached the shelter of the first hotel porch.

It was a big hotel that they had come upon, and its wide porches were full of women, young and old, rocking, and talking and embroidering, and willing enough to look at the things the girls had. The arrangement was that Winona should take care of the smaller things, the painted and embroidered linens and so forth in the suitcases, while Louise attended to the pottery and larger art-craft things, and a row of Adelaide's jellies. She didn't expect to sell the jelly to people who already had three meals a day, but she was agreeably surprised. Evidently they liked to have things to eat in their rooms.

The stretcher and suitcases were set on the porch and Louise, with an ingratiating grin under her shawl, went from woman to woman, holding up her wares.

"Look at da fine pot-native wares-very cheapa?" she asked. "You not have to buy. We lika show. Buy da fine pot cheapa? You nice lady-you take real Indian pillow-real pine pillow!"

"I believe I will," said an energetic-looking old lady with white hair and a black silk dress. "How much is that pillow, my dear? And aren't you pretty young to be out selling things this way? You don't look more than seventeen."

Louise swelled with pride at being taken for as old as that, but she managed to answer, "One dollar for pillow-very cheap-real hand work!"

and to the last question, "I lika sella da goods-four little poor ones younger as me home. I _very_ old!"

At which the elderly lady bought the pillow on the spot. Louise put the dollar in the pocket of her skirt, and went back to the stretcher after a big vase of Helen's, which was the pride of her heart, and for which she meant to ask at least one-fifty.

"Real pottery pot, lady!" she explained to the nearest woman to her.

"Real hand-made-see? Real hand-painted-only two dollar!"

Louise had spent a summer at a hotel herself, the year before, and she knew all the tricks and manners of the porch-peddlers. She let the woman who wanted the vase beat her down to one-sixty, and pocketed the extra dime that she hadn't thought she'd get with a sense of duty well done.

She frisked up and down the porch having a glorious time, while Winona, with her open suitcase, sat still by the top step. She did not need to move, for the women were as interested in her wares as they always are in table-linens. She sold a stencilled crash luncheon set of Marie's, five pieces, for five dollars, while Louise was haggling over the price for Helen's vase. Several of the bead bags and necklaces woven on the little looms went, too. The girls left that porch with nearly twelve dollars worth of goods sold.

The next hotel did not do so well by them, for the people there only bought a few handkerchiefs and bead chains. Still it was better than nothing. They had covered six hotels by one o'clock and made twenty-five dollars. The needle-work, much to the girls' surprise, went more quickly than anything else.

"It must be the wistful sweetness of your expression, or else they think I look too well-fed to be sorry for, Win," said Louise as they munched their sandwiches on the dock. The dock-keeper had given them permission.

"You just sit still and look pleasant, and the sales get made. I have to chase all over creation, and tease and joke and cheapen, to get them to buy mine."

"I'm afraid to talk much, for fear my accent will break through,"

explained Winona. "It's the goods, I think. They all seem crazy over those stencilled things. I could sell a lot more if I had them."

"Haven't you any more?" asked Louise between bites.

"Only one, and I promised that to your kinda lady that you sold the pine pillow to, and told you were the oldest of five. But I'm taking orders,"

finished Winona with a grin.

"Do you suppose Marie will stand for going on with it?"

"For what-this bandanna party? She needn't-I'll deliver them myself,"

stated Winona calmly.

"What about the carved frames Elizabeth made?" asked Louise, as they rose and took up the burden of life in the shape of their much lightened stretcher.

"Pretty well, but nothing like the way Florence's and Frances's little sweet-gra.s.s baskets went."

"If we sell enough to run the camp another two weeks, I don't see why the girls shouldn't keep any money over that they earn," said Winona thoughtfully. "The proprietor of that little boarding-house we went to last but one says she wants more jelly. _That's_ all gone, thank goodness-oo, but it was heavy!"

"The little baskets at a quarter apiece are going off fast, too," said Louise. "Hotel Abercrombie-by-the-Water. Don't forget your dialect, angel-child."

"E pluribus unum! Panama manana! Nux vomica!" answered Winona enthusiastically as they ascended the steps. "Buya da beada necklace, lady?"

"Good!" said Louise under her breath, and herself tackled dialect again.

"Buya da pot for poor woman, lady? Got thirteen children to keep-no money!"

"Thirteen children-really?" asked the woman in horror.

"Thirteen-all girls!" answered Louise mournfully, while Winona bent very low over her suitcase, and tried not to laugh. "Unlucky number, huh?"

"Very, for her!" said the woman. "Well, I really must buy something to help her."

Winona was going to stop her, for she thought it wasn't fair; although Louise evidently took it as a lovely joke. But as the woman did not feel that her duty to the thirteen went beyond buying one fifteen-cent sweet-gra.s.s napkin-ring-and she only wanted to give ten cents for it-Winona did not intervene. She only whispered, "Don't, Louise!" next time she pa.s.sed her. And Louise, though she laughed, said no more about the thirteen poor little Camp Fire Girls starving at home. Then towards evening it was Winona who got into trouble.

They had sold about forty-five dollars' worth of stuff in the course of the day, and were back at the first hotel, the one they had started from, to deliver the stencilled set Winona had promised to Louise's white-haired lady. Winona, who felt very tired after her long day of tramping and selling, was sitting on the top of the hotel porch in the shade of a pillar, her hands crossed on her lap. Her pretty face was pale with the long, tiring day, and her eyelids drooped. She was figuring out that, what with the Scouts' mending and this day's work, and the orders they had taken, the camp could go on three weeks more.

And she felt a touch on her shoulder.

"My dear," said the brisk voice of the lady who had bought the stencilled set, "you seem tired."

"Why, not so very," said Winona, coming out of her thinking-fit hastily, and forgetting her accent on the way.

"And don't you find this a hard life for so young a girl?" went on the lady. "Wouldn't you rather do something else?"