"I know who that is," said Gladys, when Migwan paused. "Mig is forever raving about Charlotte Bronte."
"The more I think about her the more wonderful she seems," said Migwan warmly. "How a girl brought up in such a dead, cheerless place as Haworth Churchyard, and knowing nothing at all about the world of people, could have written such a book as _Jane Eyre_, seems a miracle.
She was a genius," she finished with an envious sigh.
Miss Amesbury looked keenly at Migwan. "I think," she observed shrewdly, "that you like to write also. Is it not so?"
Migwan blushed furiously and sat silent. To have this successful, widely known writer know her heart"s ambition filled her with an agony of embarra.s.sment.
"Migwan does write, wonderful things," said Hinpoha loyally. "She"s had things printed in papers and in the college magazine." Then she told about the Indian legend that had caused such a stir in college, whereupon Miss Amesbury laughed heartily, and patted Migwan on the head, and said she would very much like to see some of the things she had written. Migwan, thrilled and happy, but still very much embarra.s.sed, shyly promised that she would let her see some of her work, and in the middle of her speech a potato blew up with a bang, showering them all with mealy fragments and hot ashes, and sending them flying away from the fire with startled shrieks.
Since the potatoes were so very evidently done, the rest of the meal was hurriedly prepared, and eaten with keen appet.i.tes. During the clearing away process somebody discovered that the rain had stopped falling, a fact which they had all been too busy to notice before, and that the mist was being rapidly blown away by a strong northwest wind. When they woke in the morning, after sleeping in the cave around the fire, the sun was shining brightly into the entrance and the birds outside were singing joyously of a fair day to come.
Overflowing with energy the late cave dwellers raced through the sweet smelling woods, indescribably fresh and fragrant after the cleansing, purifying rain, and launched the canoes upon a river Sparkling like a sheet of diamonds in the clear morning sunlight. How wonderfully new and bright the rain-washed earth looked everywhere, and how exhilarating the fresh rushing wind was to their senses, after the smoky, misty atmosphere of the cave!
Exulting in their strength the Winnebagos bent low over their paddles, and the canoes leaped forward like hounds set free from the leash, and went racing along with the current, shooting past islands, whirling around bends, whisking through tiny rapids, wildly, deliriously, rejoicing in the thrill of the morning and the call of a world running over with joy. Soon they came to the place where they had first planned to camp, and there were the primroses, a-riot with bloom, nodding them a friendly greeting.
"Aren"t you glad we didn"t stay here?" said Sahwah. "We"d have been soaked if we did, because we probably wouldn"t have found the cave. The primroses saved the day for us by growing where we wanted to lay our beds."
They sang a cheer to the primroses and swept on until they came to the place in the woods where the balsam grew. Dusk was falling when, with canoes piled high with the fragrant boughs, they rounded the great bend above Keewaydin and a few minutes later ran in alongside the Camp Keewaydin dock.
"I feel as though I had been gone for weeks," said Migwan, as they climbed out of the canoes.
"So do I," said Sahwah, dancing up and down on the dock to take the stiffness out of her muscles. "Doesn"t it look civilized, though, after what we"ve just experienced? I wish," she continued longingly, "that I could live in the wilds all the time."
"I don"t," replied Migwan, patting the diving tower as if it were an old friend. "Camp is plenty wild enough for me."
CHAPTER X
TOPSY-TURVY DAY
"Why, where _is_ camp?" asked Sahwah in perplexity, noticing that the whole place was dark and still. It was half past six, the usual after-supper frolic hour, when camp was wont to ring to the echo with fun and merriment of all kinds. Now no sound came from Mateka, nor from the bungalow, nor from any of the tents, no sound and no movement.
Before their astonished eyes the camp lay like an enchanted city, changed in their absence from a place of racket and bustle and resounding laughter, to a silent ghost of its former lively self.
"What"s happened?" exclaimed the Winnebagos to each other. "Is everybody gone on a trip?"
Mystified, they climbed up the hill, and at the top they found Miss Judy going from tent to tent with her flashlight, as if making the nightly rounds after lights out.
"O Miss Judy," they called to her, "what"s happened?"
"Shh-h-h!" replied Miss Judy, holding up her hand for silence and coming toward them. "Everybody"s in bed," she whispered when she was near enough for them to hear her."
"In bed!" exclaimed the Winnebagos in astonishment. "At half past six in the evening? What for?"
"It"s Topsy-Turvy Day," replied Miss Judy, laughing at their amazed faces. "We"re turning everything upside down tonight. Hurry and get into bed. The rising bugle will blow in half an hour."
Giggling with amus.e.m.e.nt the Winnebagos sped to their tents, unrolled their ponchos, made up their beds in a hurry, undressed quickly and popped into bed. Not long afterward they heard the dipping of paddles and the monotonous "one, two, one two," of the boatswain as the crew of the Turtle started out for practice. The Turtle"s regular practice hour was the half hour before rising bugle in the morning.
Tired with her long paddle that day Hinpoha fell asleep as soon as she touched the pillow, and was much startled to hear the loud blast of a bugle in the midst of a delightful dream. "What"s the matter?" she asked sleepily, sitting up and looking around her in bewilderment. "What are they blowing the bugle in the middle of the night for?"
"They aren"t blowing the bugle in the middle of the night," said Sahwah with a shriek of laughter at Hinpoha"s puzzled face. "This is Topsy-Turvy Day, don"t you remember? We"re going to have our regular day"s program at night time. It"s ten minutes to seven, and that"s the bugle for morning dip. Are you coming?"
Sahwah was already inside her bathing suit, and Agony had hers half on.
Hinpoha replied with an unintelligible sound, one-eighth grunt and seven-eights yawn, and rising tipsily from her bed she looked around for her bathing suit with eyes still half sealed by sleep. Sahwah helped her into the suit and seizing her hand led her down to the water, where half the camp, shaking with convulsive merriment at the absurdity of the thing, were scrupulously taking their "morning dip," with toothbrush drill and all the other regular morning ablutions.
The rising bugle blew while they were still at it and they sped back to the tents to get dressed, making three times as much racket about this process as they ever did in the morning. Most of the tents had no lights, because ordinarily no one needed a light to undress by and so the lanterns which had been given out at the beginning of the season were scattered everywhere about camp as especial need for them had arisen upon various occasions. But getting dressed in the dark is harder than getting undressed, and most of the tents were in an uproar.
"I can only find one stocking," wailed Oh-Pshaw, after vainly feeling around for several minutes. "Where"s my flashlight, Katherine?"
"I"m sorry, but I just dropped it into the water jar," replied Katherine, "and it won"t work any more." Katherine herself was hopelessly involved in her bloomers, having put both feet through the same leg, and was lying flat on the floor trying to extricate herself.
"Can I go with only one stocking on?" Oh-Pshaw persisted plaintively. "I haven"t another pair here in the tent."
"_I_ can"t find my middy," Jean Lawrence was lamenting, paying no heed to Oh-Pshaw"s troubles in regard to hosiery.
Tiny Armstrong, reaching down behind her bed for some missing article of her costume, gave the bed such a shove that it went flying out of the tent carrying the rustic railing with it, and they heard it go b.u.mping down the hillside.
"Strike one!" called Tiny ruefully. "That"s what comes of being so strong. I"ll knock the tent down next."
"Will somebody please tell me where my middy is?" Jean cried tragically.
"I can"t find it anywhere."
"Will someone tell _me_ where the other leg of my bloomers is?"
exclaimed Katherine. "I"ve shoved both feet through the same leg three times, now. There goes the breakfast bugle!"
"Oh, where is my other stocking?"
"Where is my middy?"
"Who"s gone south with my shoes?"
The threefold wail floated down on the breeze as footsteps began to run down the Alley in the direction of the bungalow. A few minutes later the occupants of Bedlam slid as un.o.btrusively as possible into the lighted bungalow; Oh-Pshaw with her bloomers down around her ankles in a Turkish effect, to hide the fact that she had on only one stocking; Jean with her sweater b.u.t.toned tightly around her, Katherine with her red silk tie bound around one knee to gather up the fullness of her bloomer leg, for the elastic band had burst from the strain of accommodating two feet at once; and Tiny had one white sneaker and one red Pullman slipper on.
Glancing around at the rest they saw many others in the same plight--middies on hindside before, odd shoes and stockings, sweaters instead of middies, and various other parodies on the regular camp uniform--and immediately they ceased to feel conspicuous. Taking their places around the table the campers proceeded to sing one of the morning greetings:
"Good morning to you, Good morning to you, Good morning, dear comrades, Good morning to you!"
"Did you have a good night"s sleep?" was a question that made the rounds of the table, with many droll replies, as the cereal was being pa.s.sed. Hilarity increased during the meal, as the absurdity of eating cereal and fruit and toast at eight o"clock in the evening overcame the girls one after the other, and the room rang with witty songs made up on the spur of the moment.
At "Morning Sing" which followed breakfast, they solemnly sang "When Morning Gilds the Skies," "Awake, my soul, and with the sun," "Kathleen Mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking," and other morning songs; the program for the day was read, and Dr. Grayson gave a fatherly lecture on the harmfulness of staying up after dark. Getting the tents ready for tent inspection without lights was a proceeding which defies description. Tiny Armstrong was still on the hillside searching for her runaway bed when the Lone Wolf reached Bedlam in her tour of inspection, and was given a large and black zero in consequence. She finally gave up the search and wandered into Mateka, where, with lanterns hanging above the long tables, Craft Hour was in full swing, the girls busily working at clay modeling, wood-blocking and paddle decorating, while the moon, round-eyed with astonishment, peeped through the doorway at the singular sight. Still more astonished, the same moon looked down on the tennis court an hour later, where a lively folk dance was going on to the music of a graphaphone; couples spinning around in wild figures, stepping on each other"s feet and every now and then dropping down at the outer edge of the court and shrieking with laughter, while the dance continued faster and more furiously than before, till the sound of the bugle sent the dancers flying swiftly to their tents to wriggle into clammy, wet bathing suits that seemed in the dark to be an altogether different shape from what they were in the daylight.
Standing on top of the diving tower when Tiny"s cry of "All in!" rang out, Sahwah leaped down into the darkness and had a queer, thrilling moment in mid air when she wondered if she would ever strike the water, or would go on indefinitely falling through the blackness. Laughing, shouting, splashing, the campers sported in the water until all of a sudden a red canoe shot into their midst and the director of Camp Altamont, accompanied by two a.s.sistants, came in an advanced stage of breathlessness to find out what the matter was. They heard the noise and the splashing of water and thought some accident had occurred.
"No accident, thanks, only Camp Keewaydin stealing a march on old Father Time and turning night into day," Dr. Grayson called from the dock, and amid shouts of laughter from all around the messengers paddled back to their camp to a.s.sure the wakened and excited boys that nothing had happened, and that it was only another wild inspiration of the people at Camp Keewaydin.
At midnight, when the bugle blew for dinner, everyone was as hungry as at noon, and the kettle of cocoa and the trays of sandwiches were emptied in a jiffy.