Winona of the Camp Fire Part 54

"Oh, do stop!" said Louise indignantly, when the whining had gone on steadily for some minutes. But if you took any notice of Puppums he merely argued that a little more work would get him what he wanted, and went on begging. In the present instance he answered Louise by lifting his nose further up in the air, and howling, as if he wished to a.s.sure her that he felt for her.

"You mean old dog!" said Louise, jumping up. "I'll settle you!" Puppums was very much pleased. He had an optimistic disposition, and he thought it was a game. He ran around and around the porch, finally, when he began to see that Louise was in earnest, hiding under the ice-chest, where he knew n.o.body could follow him. Louise stopped short, and eyed the ice-box. It occurred to her that she was thirsty.

"This is what you might call being guided," said she, and opening the lid, looked in. She found a bag of lemons, a bunch of bananas, and she thought she remembered where Winona kept the bottled cherries and the cookies. She went into the kitchen and began work, and in a very little while was on her way back to the front porch with a tray, designed to show her remorse for being cross, piled with cookies and fruit lemonade.

Mrs. Merriam, to whom she offered the first gla.s.s, p.r.o.nounced it very good indeed, and sent her on her way. Puppums danced wildly about her, with the idea that she was clearing a table, and he might get bones.

Winona and Billy were still talking as placidly as if Tom had not been wrestling with a formal call, and Louise with a bad temper, for the last twenty minutes.

"Cookies-oh, and fruit lemonade! Louise, you dear!" cried Winona, while Billy took the tray and put it on a table.

"Won't you have some, Billy? I know you like it, and-and I _do_ like your Southern accent," she added in a rush.

"Thank you, Louise," said Billy. "I like your accent, too-and your fruit lemonade-very much."

They both laughed. "Let's bury the hatchet," he added. "Louise, these certainly are fine cookies."

The three were still sitting comfortably over their refreshments, even Puppums crunching cakes contentedly in a corner, when Tom hurried up the steps and banged himself down in a chair. His hat was jammed to one side in the old unceremonious fas.h.i.+on, his gloves had vanished, and even his cane was nowhere to be seen.

"Have some," said Billy tactfully before Tom could say anything. They pushed the cakes toward him, and poured him some lemonade in Winona's gla.s.s, and after he seemed less gloomy they got him to talk.

"Tell us all about it," said Winona soothingly.

"Nothing to tell!" said Tom in something rather like a growl.

"Have another cooky, and tell us all about it," repeated his sister in a persuasive voice. And after awhile, when he had had some more cookies and another gla.s.s of lemonade, he told them, gradually.

"Well, I sent in my card, of course," he began. "Asked for Miss Davis."

"Of course!" said Winona; for her brother's usual custom was to call up from the sidewalk, "I'm coming over to-night," and then to walk unceremoniously in whenever he thought of it, that evening.

"I did that all right, thank goodness!" said Tom. "The maid kept me waiting about a year, with a copy of s...o...b..und, and a Gems from Shakespeare, and a pug-dog made out of plaster, to amuse me. The Davises never seem to sit around in their rooms and on their porches like other people. Just as I got to the point of thinking I'd better go back home _Mrs._ Davis walked in. I was so surprised at seeing her, instead of Elsie, that I couldn't think of a blessed thing to say-so I fished up this!"

He jerked the tablets out of his pocket and threw them to Winona.

"Keep 'em away from me," he said. "I never want to see the blessed things again. First thing I found was 'Civil War.' I'd picked out that for a start anyway-thought it would be nice and general, and we had it in History last term, so I knew a lot about it. You'd have thought that would have lasted awhile, wouldn't you?"

"Seeing that the real thing lasted four years or so, I think it might have," answered Billy.

"Not a bit of it!" said Tom mournfully. "Mrs. Davis turned out to have had a grand-uncle or something in it, and she said it was a painful subject. I don't think she ever had a grand-uncle. I believe she didn't know anything about it, and just invented the old fellow to get out of talking about it!"

"Mercy, what suspicions!" said Winona, laughing. "You certainly have nearly ruined your lovely disposition. Never mind, Tommy, I sympathize with you. What did you tackle next?"

"Tariff-reform, I think," said Tom.

"What is tariff-reform?" asked Winona. "I never could understand it exactly."

"Don't ask me to say it all over again!" begged Tom. "I was getting anxious by that time for fear I wouldn't have subjects enough left to use on Elsie. You know she isn't much of a talker. But I had to say something, and Mrs. Davis didn't, and I couldn't think of anything but this foolish book. Mrs. Davis didn't seem to care much about tariff-reform, either, so I gave that up and looked at the list again, and chose 'Weather.' She did warm up a little at that. But the best weather won't last forever, and you could just hear the silence b.u.mp every little while.

"Then I got desperate, and used up Politics and Canoeing and the California Fair, and all the rest. Folks, I finished off every last thing I was going to talk to Elsie about, before she ever appeared!

Except about tr.i.m.m.i.n.g hats-that seemed such a foolish thing to ask a woman that old about."

"They discussed Measles and Mice, and Music, and everything else that began with an M," quoted Louise from her favorite Alice in Wonderland.

"Don't mind her," said Billy as soberly as he could. "Just go on. Did Elsie Davis ever come down at all?"

"Yes," said Tom, "she did. Just as I finished my last subject, if you please! She seemed to be dressed for a party, but she said she wasn't.

She sat down at the other end of the room, and tried to see if she couldn't keep as still as her mother. Mrs. Davis stayed right there, too, and smiled like an alligator-and there was I without an idea in my head or on the memorandum!"

"Didn't they even show you the photograph alb.u.m?" inquired Louise, forgetting to be offended.

"They wouldn't talk, I tell you!"

"Well, what _did_ you do?" asked Louise.

Tom grinned a little, shamefacedly.

"Well-I simply yanked out that old tablet, and began at Civil War again. I said 'As I was just saying to your mother!' and I gave her every subject over!"

His hearers howled, and after a minute Tom himself joined in. "Did it work better this time?" asked Winona at last, wiping her eyes.

"Not a work," said Tom cheerfully, reaching for the last cooky. "That is, all but the hat one. That was clever of you, Lou. She got almost human over that, and began to talk about how many engagements she had-had to break half of them. And I said 'I don't believe in breaking dates,' and suddenly I remembered the one with you to take the pictures-and I left then and there, like a streak of lightning. I left my cane-I don't care-she can have it to remember me by. Louise, I owe you an apology the size of the house. Why didn't you remind me about those snapshots?"

"It's not too late," said Louise amiably. "The moon's just about right, now."

Tom went into the house after the cameras, sending his hat flying up to the hat-tree, followed by his gloves.

"Let's go, too," said Billy.

"All right," said Winona. She leaned back, and laughed, as they waited for the others to come out.

"I don't believe Tom will try any more formal calls till he's eighteen, anyway," she remarked.

"It seems a pity, though," said Billy, getting up. "He wasted a perfectly good cane!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Louise went back to camp next day, and Winona went on with her work at home. Louise had left all sorts of presents and messages from the girls, and taken a great many from Winona away with her. Louise's visit cheered Winona up very much. There was only one hard thing about it-the news Louise had brought that the girls had extended the time of their stay again. The plan now was to stay in Camp Karonya till the fourteenth of September. School opened on the fifteenth. It seemed a long time to wait to see her friends again-for the doctor was certain that her mother would not be able to bear her weight on the injured ankle for a month to come.

Meanwhile Winona wrote to the girls, and her mother and Florence kept track, in what Winona considered a very wild way, of the things she did that should ent.i.tle her to honors. The honor-list and a sheet of blanks lived under her mother's pillow, Winona was sure. If it gave her mother pleasure she was glad to have her do it; but it occurred to Winona the day after Louise left that it mightn't be a bad scheme to collect a few honors herself, things that she was sure would count. Also she wanted some fun, and she had found that the acquiring of honors usually led to it. So Winona proceeded to "start something."

To begin with, next door lived Nataly Lee. Winona went over there the very afternoon of the day Louise left, and spent the most persuasive three hours of her life, explaining to Nataly that they, as the only two Camp Fire Girls in town, ought to start some good times for other people, who, not being Camp Fire Girls, probably didn't know how. And before she went back to get supper she had persuaded Nataly she was right.

Next day she and Nataly, cheerful and enthusiastic, made a canva.s.s of the girls in their cla.s.ses who were staying home. Winona had rather gone on the principle that nearly everyone was off somewhere else, but she found it wasn't so at all. There were six girls beside herself and Nataly who were ready and willing to join a Porch Club that was to meet once a week, and have a picnic one week and a party the next.

Winona and Tom and Billy, with Nataly, even, helping once in a while, spent some time in furnis.h.i.+ng the Merriam porch with chairs and hammocks and screens and lanterns. Then the boys went forth and invited their own friends with a lavish hand. The first porch party was a grand success, although there were about three boys to one girl. But that righted itself next time, which was three days later, for the Porch Club made an unanimous and prompt decision that it wanted to meet twice a week. And more girls wanted to join. So, although they were not like her own old comrades, Winona found that she was making friends whom she would never have had at all, if it had not been that she was cut off from her own set of girls, still having good times at Camp Karonya. As for Nataly, she was a marvellously different person. The work of management, of social entertaining, proved to be exactly what she could do best. And having to teach things to others (for the Porch Club added an afternoon session, devoted to hand-craft work and reading aloud), made her find that she could do things very well here that she hadn't liked doing in camp at all! As for Winona, she let Nataly run things as much as she wanted to. She herself was just what she had always been, Ray of Light, holding the girls and boys together by her brightness and her fondness for them. She was the centre of things, after all. Not that she realized it, particularly; she only thought how queer it was that there were so many nice, friendly people in the world, willing to do nice things and have nice times if you only suggested it. And there are, too.