Part 1 (2/2)

”Pursuing knowledge,” replied Sahwah merrily, settling herself in the seat beside Hinpoha, facing Migwan and Gladys.

The four girls were on their way to spend the summer vacation with their beloved Guardian, Nyoda, at her home in Oakwood, the little town in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania where she had lived since her marriage to Andrew Sheridan--”Sherry”--the summer before. Sherry was in France now with the Engineers, and Nyoda, lonesome in the huge old house to which she had fallen heir at the death of her last relative, old Uncle Jasper Carver, had invited the Winnebagos to come and spend the summer with her.

Vacation had begun inauspiciously for the Winnebagos. To their great disappointment Katherine wrote that she was not coming east after all; she was going to remain in Chicago with Miss Fairlee and help her with her settlement work there. They had rejoiced so at the first news of her coming and had so impatiently awaited the time of her arrival that the disappointment when it came was much harder to bear than if they had never looked forward to her coming. As Sahwah remarked, she had her appet.i.te all fixed for Katherine, and nothing else would satisfy her.

The news about Katherine had only been one of a series of disappointments.

Hinpoha had been called home the week before college closed officially, to attend the funeral of Dr. Hoffman, Aunt Phoebe's husband, whose strenuous work for his ”boys” in the military camp during the past year had been too much for his already failing strength, and Aunt Phoebe, worn out with the strain of the last months, had announced her intention of closing the house and going to spend the summer with a girlhood friend on the Maine coast. Hinpoha had the choice of going with her or spending the summer with Aunt Grace, who had a fractured knee and was confined to an invalid's chair.

Migwan had come home from college with over-strained eyes and a weak chest and had been peremptorily forbidden to spend the vacation devouring volumes of Indian history as she had planned, and had a lost, aimless feeling in consequence.

Sahwah, thanks to the unceasing patriotic activities of Mrs. Osgood Harper during the previous winter, found herself unexpectedly in possession of a two months' vacation while her energetic employer recuperated from her season's labors in a famous sanatorium. As Sahwah had not expected a vacation and had made no plans, she found herself, as she expressed it, ”all dressed up and no place to go.”

For Gladys's father, head over heels in the manufacture of munitions, there would be no such glorious camping trip as there was the summer before, and Mrs. Evans refused to go away and leave him, so Gladys had the prospect of a summer in town, the first that she could recollect.

”I can't decide which I shall do,” sighed Hinpoha plaintively to the other three, who had foregathered in the library of the Bradford home one afternoon at the beginning of the summer. ”I know Aunt Phoebe would rather be alone with Miss s.h.i.+rley, because her cottage is small, and it would be dreadfully dull for me besides; but Aunt Grace will be laid up all summer and she has a fright of a parrot that squawks from morning until night. Oh, dear, why can't things be as they were last year?”

Then had come Nyoda's letter:

DEAREST WINNEBAGOS:

Can't you take pity on me and relieve my loneliness? Here I am, in a house that would make the ordinary hotel look like a bandbox, and since Sherry has gone to France with the Engineers it's simply ghastly. For various reasons I do not wish to leave the house, but I shall surely go into a decline if I have to stay here alone. Can't you come and spend your vacations with me, as many of you as have vacations? Please come and amuse your lonesome old Guardian, whose house is bare and dark and cold.

Sahwah tumbled out of her chair with a shout that startled poor Mr. Bob from his slumbers at her feet and set him barking wildly with excitement; Migwan and Gladys fell on each other's necks in silent rapture, and Hinpoha began packing immediately. Just one week later they boarded the train and started on their journey to Oakwood.

Sahwah sat and looked at the soldiers in the car with unconcealed envy.

Her ever-smouldering resentment against the fact that she was not a boy had since the war kindled into red rage at the unkindness of fate. She chafed under the restrictions with which her niche in the world hedged her in.

”I wish I were a man!” she exclaimed impatiently. ”Then I could go to war and fight for my country and--and go over the top. The boys have all the glory and excitement of war and the girls have nothing but the stupid, commonplace things to do. It isn't fair!”

”But women _are_ doing glorious things in the war,” Migwan interrupted quickly. ”They're going as nurses in the hospitals right at the front; they're working in the canteens and doing lots of other things right in the thick of the excitement.”

”Oh, yes, _women_ are,” replied Sahwah, ”but _girls_ aren't. Long ago, in the days before the war, I used to think if there ever _would_ be a war the Camp Fire Girls would surely do something great and glorious, but here we are, and the only thing we can do is knit, knit, knit, and fold bandages, and the babies in the kindergarten are doing _that_.

We're too _young_ to do anything big and splendid. We're just schoolgirls, and no one takes us seriously. We can't go as nurses without three years' training--we can't do _anything_. There might as well not _be_ any war, for all I'm doing to help it. Boys seventeen years old can enlist, even sixteen-year-old ones, and go right to the front, but a girl sixteen years old isn't any better off than if she were sixteen months. I'm nearly nineteen, and I wanted to go as a stenographer, but they wouldn't consider me for a minute. Said I was too young.” Sahwah threw out her hands in a tragic gesture and her brow darkened.

”It's a shame,” Hinpoha agreed sympathetically. ”In books young girls have no end of adventures in war time, girls no older than we; they catch spies and outwit the enemy and save their lovers' lives and carry important messages, but nothing like that will ever happen to us. All we'll ever do is just stay at home peacefully and knit.”

Hinpoha gave an impatient jerk and the knitting fell into her lap with a protesting tinkle of needles, while the st.i.tch which she was in the act of transferring slipped off and darted merrily away on an excursion up the length of the sock. Hinpoha threw up her hands in exasperation.

”That's the third time that's happened in an hour!” she exclaimed in a vexed tone. ”I hope the soldiers appreciate how much trouble it is to keep their feet covered. I'd rather fight any day than knit,” she finished emphatically.

”Here, let me pick up the dropped st.i.tches for you,” said Migwan soothingly, reaching over for the tangled mess of yarn. ”You're getting all tired and hot,” she continued, skilfully pursuing the agile and elusive dropped st.i.tches down the grey woolen wake of the sock and bringing them triumphantly up to resume their place in the sun.

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