Part 11 (2/2)

A dozen new admirers flocked around her as she walked back to Gitchee-Gummee at the close of the Swimming hour, all begging to be allowed to sew up the tear in her bathing suit, or offering to lend her the prettiest of their bathing caps. What touched Agony most, however, was the pride which the Winnebagos took in her exploit.

”We knew you would do something splendid sometime and bring honor to us,” they told her exultingly, with s.h.i.+ning faces.

”I'm going to write Nyoda about it this minute,” said Migwan, after she had finished her words of praise. ”What's the mater, Agony, have you a headache again?” she finished.

”No,” replied Agony in a tone of forced carelessness.

”I thought maybe you had,” continued Migwan solicitously. ”Your forehead was all puckered up.”

”The light is so bright on the river,” murmured Agony, and walked thoughtfully away.

Days pa.s.sed in pleasant succession; Mary Sylvester's name gradually ceased to be heard on all sides from her mourning cronies, who at first accompanied every camp activity with a plaintive chorus of, ”Remember the way Mary used to do this,” or ”Oh, I wish Mary were here to enjoy this,” or ”Mary had planned to do this the first chance she got,” and so on. Life in camp was so packed full of enjoyment for those who remained behind that it was impossible to go on missing the departed one indefinitely.

The first camping trip was a thing of the past. It had been a twenty-mile hike along the river to a curious group of rocks known as ”Hercules' Library,” from the resemblance which the granite blocks bore to shelves of books. Here, among these fantastic formations, the camp had spread its blankets and literally snored, if not actually upon, at least at the base of, the flint.

When bedtime came Katherine had found herself without a sleeping partner, for she had forgotten to ask someone herself, and it just happened that no one had asked her. She was philosophically trying to make her bed up for a single, by doubling the poncho over lengthwise into a coc.o.o.n effect, when she heard a sniffle coming out of the bushes beside her. Investigating, she found Carmen Chadwick sitting disconsolately upon a very much wrinkled poncho, her chin in her hands, the picture of woe.

”What's the matter, can't you make your bed?” asked Katherine, remembering Carmen's helplessness in that line upon a former occasion.

”I haven't any partner!” answered Carmen, with another sniffle. ”I had one, but she's run away from me.”

”Who was it?” asked Katherine.

”Jane Pratt,” replied Carmen. ”I asked her a long time ago if I might sleep with her on the first trip, and she said, certainly I might, and she would bring along enough blankets for the two of us, and I wouldn't need to bother bringing any. So I didn't bring any blankets; but when I asked her just now where we were going to sleep, she said she hadn't the faintest notion where _I_ was going to sleep, but _she_ was going to sleep alone in the woods, away from the rest of us. She laughed at me, and said she never intended to bring along enough blankets for the two of us, and that I should have known better than to believe her. What shall I do?” she wailed, beginning to weep in earnest.

Katherine gave vent to an exclamation that sent a nearby chipmunk scampering away in a panic. She looked around for Miss Judy, but Miss Judy was deep in the woods with the other councilors getting up a stunt to entertain the girls after supper. ”Where's Jane Pratt?” asked Katherine.

”I don't know,” sniffled Carmen.

”Didn't you bring any blankets at all?”

”No.”

”Carmen, didn't it ever occur to you that Jane was making fun of you when she said she would bring blankets for two? n.o.body ever does that, you know, they'd make too heavy a load to carry.”

Carmen shook her head, and gulped afresh.

”No, I never thought of that. I wanted a sleeping partner so badly, and everyone I asked was already engaged, and when she said yes I was _so_ happy.”

”Of all the mean, contemptible tricks to play on a poor little creature like that!” Katherine exclaimed aloud.

”What's the matter?” asked Agony, appearing beside her.

Katherine told her.

Agony's eyes flashed. ”I'm going to find Jane Pratt,” she said in the calm tone which always indicated smouldering anger, ”and make her share her blankets with Carmen.”

Jane, who, with the practised eye of the old camper, had selected a smooth bit of ground thickly covered with pine needles and sloping gently upward toward the end for her head, and had arranged her two double blankets and her extra large sized poncho into an extremely comfortable bed for one, looked up from her labors to find Agony standing before her with flushed face and blazing eyes.

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