Winona of the Camp Fire Part 3

"Because your other grandmother didn't," said her mother, kissing her.

"One Indian maiden in a family is enough. What names have the other girls chosen, Winnie?"

Winona began to laugh.

"Louise says she is going to call herself 'Ishkoodah'-don't you remember, in Hiawatha, 'Ishkoodah, the Comet-Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses?' she says she thinks she can make a lovely symbol out of it.

It's funny, but Louise is always doing funny things. I think she's really in earnest about this. And Helen says she's going to call herself 'Night-Star.' We don't know the Indian for that yet, but we're going to hunt it up at the library. She thinks she will specialize on astronomy-learn what the constellations are, you know. I'd like to do that, too. All I know is the Big Dipper, and that the slanty W set up sidewise is Ca.s.siopea's Chair. I learned that from the little Storyland of Stars you gave me when I was seven."

"I want to know chairs, too," said Florence drowsily.

"All right, dear, you shall," soothed Winona. Then she went on talking to her mother.

"So all the girls said they'd take sky names, and we decided to call our camp by the Indian name for the sky, because we want to camp out as much as we can."

"I think that is a good idea," said Mrs. Merriam.

"It was mine," said Winona. "But Mrs. Bryan remembered an Indian name for it-Karonya. We're Camp Karonya-isn't that pretty? And then Marie remembered the Indian name for South-Wind, one of them, Shawonda.s.see, and took it. But the rest couldn't think of Indian names, so we waited to hunt some."

"Do the names have to be Indian?"

"Oh, no," Winnie answered sleepily, "but it's better."

"Come!" said her mother, setting Florence, who was fast asleep, on her feet. "We'd all better go to bed, or we'll be too sleepy to go to church to-morrow."

"And the sooner I go to sleep the sooner next Sat.u.r.day will come, as you used to say when I was a little girl," added Winona. "Oh, I can scarcely wait to find out what a bacon-bat really is on its native heath-or anywhere, for that matter."

"Didn't they tell you what it was?"

"No-Marie is planning it, and she wouldn't say, except that it would be heaps of fun, and I was to bring a dozen rolls and some salt and a jack-knife. I'll have to borrow Tom's. Good-night, mother dear."

CHAPTER THREE

"Have you got everything, Winnie?" asked Helen anxiously, as they met half-way between Winnie's gate and Helen's, about ten o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning.

"I think so," answered Helen a little uncertainly. "Marie told me to bring a pound of bacon-that's all. What are you bringing?"

"Two dozen humble, necessary rolls," said Winnie, "and salt. I had to buy a knife, because Tom lost his yesterday. He loses it regularly, once a week."

"Pity he picked out to-day," commented Helen as they fell into step. "Do you suppose we'll be late?"

"Mercy, no!" said Winnie, "We're more likely to be the first!"

"We won't be"-and Helen laughed-"Louise is always the earliest everywhere. She says she's lost more perfectly good time being punctual than any other way she knows."

"Well, we'll be ahead of Edith, anyway," Winnie remarked cheerfully. She adjusted the two dozen rolls more easily, for that many rolls, when you have far to carry them, have a way of feeling lumpy.

"It's a good thing it isn't far to the trolley!" said Helen. "I didn't know how nubbly this bacon was going to be."

"So are my rolls! Let's trade," suggested Winnie brilliantly.

"Almost human intelligence!" gibed Helen; so they traded, and each found her load much more comfortable than the one she'd had before-which says a good deal for the powers of imagination.

"Don't let's sit up on the benches of that trolley-station-they're the most uncomfortable things in town!" objected Winnie. "Come on, Helen.

Let's be real sports, and sit on the gra.s.s."

"I do believe we're the first!" was Helen's sole reply, as she eyed the little trolley-station worriedly.

"Oh, we _can't_ be," said Winnie confidently, "unless Louise has died or gone West. If she's in the land of the living I know she's here. Once I asked the crowd over in the afternoon to make fudge, and she got there just as I was in the middle of sweeping out the kitchen, at one o'clock!"

"You never told me about that!" reminded Helen interestedly. "What did you do?"

Winona laughed. "Do! I didn't have to do anything. Louise did the doing-she took the broom out of my hands, and sent me flying upstairs to dress, and did the sweeping herself! Oh, and there she is!

Lou-i-ise!"

"Here I am!" Louise answered placidly, rising up in her white blouse from the very centre of the field by the station, and looking, with the sun s.h.i.+ning on her brilliant hair, like a large white blossom with a red centre. "I got here long ago. Come on over here on the gra.s.s. It's horrid on the benches, and I'm making friends with the nicest little brown hoptoad."

"Ugh-no!" shuddered Helen, who did not care for hoptoads. "Here's Nannie, with Adelaide and Dorothy."

So the girls ran over to meet their Guardian, and the hoptoad was averted. Just behind the newcomers arrived Marie and Edith, Marie dignified and neat, as usual, in her dark-blue sailor-suit, and Edith in a fluffy pink dress that did not look as if it could stand much strenuous picnicking.

"Did you bring the rolls, Winnie?" called Marie.

"Certainly I did, and Helen has the bacon."

"And I have the hard-boiled eggs," said Louise gayly, "and here is the trolley-it sounds like a French lesson. We mount the trolley that we may go to the picnic. Come on, girls."

The girls were bound for a little wood, five miles out, where nearly everybody that went on picnics had them. They sat down on a rear seat in a giggling row, while Marie went ruthlessly on counting supplies.

"Adelaide, did you bring condensed cream? And who was to bring cake-were you, Edith? Dorothy has knives and forks and a kettle."

"Cake?" from Edith blankly. "Why, no, Marie, I brought eggs. I thought you said to-I thought we were going to fry them with the bacon."

A howl of laughter went up, in which Edith joined in spite of herself.

"How did you think we'd do it, dear?" Mrs. Bryan asked at last, trying to straighten her face.

"That's easy," promised Louise cheerfully. "You just peel the eggs carefully, throw away the sh.e.l.l, poke the raw egg on the point of a stick, and toast it over the fire till it's all gone."

Edith giggled. "Well, I don't see how you could expect me to get it straight over the 'phone, anyway. If I'd known you expected me to bring a cake-I don't believe it was me you-ow!"

For a lurch of the car had sent the satchel in which Dorothy had the knives and forks smas.h.i.+ng against the raw eggs they had been talking about; and as Stevenson said of the cow when they asked him the immortal question about the cow meeting the locomotive-it was "so much the worse for the eggs." They broke promptly, and one fatal corner of the bag that held them began to leak on Edith's pretty pink dress.

Dorothy tried to repair damages with her handkerchief, but there was a yellow smear on the front breadth, for all they could do. As it proved afterwards, it was poor Edith's hoodoo day.

"Poor little eggs!" Louise lamented pensively. "n.o.body's wasting any sympathy on them-and they're all broken up."