"Why not use our car?" said Gladys. The machine she had come in was still in the barn at Onoway House. "It"s a good thing I learned to run the big one-father said I might use it all summer if I would be a good girl and stay at home when they went out west."
"Could we get everything in?" asked Migwan.
"I think so," said Gladys, "if we arrange them carefully." The berries and asparagus were loaded into the back of the machine and Gladys and Migwan drove off.
"What shall we do now, Nyoda?" asked Hinpoha, after the two girls were gone.
"I know what I"m going to do," said Nyoda, moving in the direction of her bedroom. "Now," she said, as she threw herself on the bed with a great yawn and stretch, "if anyone asks you what kind of a farmer I am you may tell them that I"m a retired one!" Nyoda had been up since four o"clock that morning, and was unused to such early rising. Hinpoha drew down the shade to shut out the strong sunlight and tiptoed from the room.
Gladys and Migwan stopped first at a large grocery store to inquire the prices of strawberries and asparagus. The proprietor offered to buy the whole load, but they would not sell, as they could get more for them by peddling them at retail prices. Migwan examined the berries in the store, and mentally fixed her middle grade berries at the same price with them, and her finest grade ones at three cents higher.
"I"ve an idea," said Gladys, "that some of mother"s friends would take the berries at our own price." Thus it was that Mrs. Davis, whose speculations about the financial standing of the Evans family had resulted in Gladys"s mother giving her such an elaborate party the winter before, was surprised by a call from Gladys at ten o"clock in the morning.
"Ah, good morning, my dear," she said effusively, seating Gladys in the parlor, "you have come to spend the day, I hope? Caroline is not up yet-she was out late last night-but I shall make her get up right away."
"Please don"t call Caroline," said Gladys, "it"s you I came to see."
"Oh, yes," purred Mrs. Davis, "a message from your mother, I see."
Gladys came to the point directly. "Have you canned your strawberries yet, Mrs. Davis?"
"No," replied Mrs. Davis, a little puzzled by the question.
"Would you like to buy some extra fine ones?" continued Gladys.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," said Mrs. Davis, "who has any for sale?"
"I have," said Gladys, "right out here in the machine." Mrs. Davis bought the whole eight quarts of large berries, paying fifteen cents a quart straight, and ordered another eight quarts as soon as they should be ripe. She also took two bunches of asparagus.
"Whatever are you doing, Gladys Evans?" she asked, curiously. "Peddling berries?"
Gladys laughed at her evident mystification, and tingled with a desire to keep her guessing. "We decided that I had better work this summer,"
she said, gravely, "so I am peddling berries for a friend of ours who is a farmer. We will have to go on a farm ourselves, father said, if things to eat get much dearer, so I am getting the practice. Wouldn"t you like to be a regular customer, and have me bring you fresh vegetables and fruit three times a week all through the summer?"
"Why, yes," stammered Mrs. Davis in a daze, "of course, certainly."
"All right, then," said Gladys, "I"ll put you down." She drove off in high glee, and Mrs. Davis went into the house with a knowing smile on her face. So the Evanses were losing money after all, and Gladys was working this summer instead of traveling. Poor Gladys! She flew up-stairs to communicate the news to her energetic daughter Caroline who was just beginning to think about getting up. "I do feel so sorry for poor Gladys," she said. "You must be very kind to her whenever you meet her."
The rest of the berries and vegetables were disposed of to other friends of Gladys"s and Migwan"s, all for topnotch prices, and there were at least half a dozen names in the little note book when they started homeward, of people who wanted to be supplied regularly. To some of her friends Gladys told frankly whose fruit she was selling, and enlisted their sympathies in the enterprise, while to others, like the Davises and the Joneses, who were thorough sn.o.bs, she could not resist pretending that she was actually working for a farmer to earn money. She could not remember when she had enjoyed anything so much as the expressions on the various faces when she made her little speech at the door and offered her basket of fruit for inspection. "Wait until I tell dad about it," she chuckled to Migwan.
When they returned to Onoway House they found that during their absence the girls, with the help of Mr. Landsdowne, had constructed a raft about seven feet square, which they were setting afloat on the river. "Oh, what fun!" cried Migwan when she saw it. "We needed another rapid vessel to go boating in. There"s only one rowboat and we could never all go out at once. What shall we call it?"
"Let"s name it the Tortoise," said Hinpoha, "and call the rowboat the Hare."
"Oh, no," said Sahwah, "let"s call it the Crab, because it travels sort of sidewise." Hinpoha held out for her name and Sahwah would not yield hers.
"Contest of arms!" cried Nyoda. "Decide the question by a test of physical prowess. Whichever one of you can pole the raft straight across the river and back again without mishap in the shortest time may have the privilege of naming it. Is that fair?"
"It is!" cried all the girls. Hinpoha and Sahwah, dressed in their bathing-suits, prepared for the contest. Hinpoha had the first trial because she had spoken first. Getting onto the raft and seizing the stout pole, she pushed off from the sh.o.r.e. It was difficult to keep the unwieldy craft going toward the opposite bank, because it had a strong inclination to be carried down-stream with the current. Halfway across she grounded on a rock and stood marooned. Sahwah watched the moments tick off on Nyoda"s watch with ill-concealed delight while Hinpoha pushed and strained on the pole to set the raft free. Finally she leaned all her weight, which was no small item, on the pole and shoved with her feet against the raft. It freed itself and glided away under her feet, leaving her clinging to the pole in the middle of the river, while her solid footing of a few moments ago swung into the current and floated off beyond her reach. She looked so comical clinging to the pole, which was fast losing its upright position under her weight, that the girls were unable to help her for laughter, and a minute later she plunged into the river with a mighty splash and swam disgustedly to sh.o.r.e.
"Our new boat will not be called the TORTOISE, it seems," said Nyoda.
"Cheer up, Hinpoha, you have made yourself more immortal by the picture you presented hanging over the water than you would have by naming the raft. As Hinpoha, the Polehanger, you will have your portrait in the Winnebago Hall of Fame. Now then, Sahwah, show her how it should be done."
Sahwah, ever more skilful in watercraft than Hinpoha, poled the raft neatly across the stream to the opposite sh.o.r.e, paused a moment to see that the feat was properly registered by the judges, and then started back. Unlike Hinpoha, who forged blindly ahead, she felt carefully with her pole to locate the points of the rocks and then avoided them. "Here I come," she hailed, when she was nearly back to the starting point, "on my new raft, the CRAB." Striking a heroic att.i.tude with arms crossed and one foot out ahead of the other she stepped to the edge of the raft, when the floating floor tipped under her weight and she lost her balance and fell head first into the water. The raft, released from her guiding hand, went off with the current as it had done before. The look of stupefaction on her face when she came up out of the water was even funnier than the sight of Hinpoha marooned on the pole.
"The raft will not be named the CRAB, either, it seems," said Nyoda.
"I don"t care what it"s called," said Sahwah, her temper up, "I"m going to pole that raft across the river."
"So"m I," said Hinpoha, her eye gleaming with resolution.
"Let"s do it together," said Sahwah.
Thanks to Sahwah"s skill with the pole and Hinpoha"s judicious balancing of the raft at the right places, they made the trip over and back without mishap.
"Two heads are better than one," said Sahwah, as they landed, "what neither of us could do alone we can do in combination."
"Then why not combine the names?" said Nyoda. "You have each won equal rights in the contest."
"Good idea," said Sahwah. "We couldn"t find a better one than the Tortoise-Crab." So the name was painted across the floor of the raft, this being the only s.p.a.ce big enough.
Delighted with their new sport, the girls spent the whole evening on the river, all five Winnebagos and Betty and Tom on the raft at once, floating down-stream with the current and being towed up again by the rowboat. It was bright moonlight, and the air was full of romance. At one place along the riverbank there stood a high rock, grey on the moonlit side and black on the other. "It reminds me of the Lorelei Rock," said Nyoda.
"Let"s play Lorelei," said Sahwah.
"What do you mean?" asked Nyoda.
"Why," answered Sahwah, "let Hinpoha climb up on the rock and comb her hair and sing, and we come along on the raft and listen to her song and run into the rock and upset. We want to go swimming before we go to bed anyhow."
"I can"t sing," objected Hinpoha.
"That doesn"t make any difference," said Sahwah, "sing anyway."
So Hinpoha mounted the moonlit rock and shook her long, red hair down over her shoulders, combing it out with her sidecomb and singing "Fairy Moonlight," while the raft floated lazily down-stream toward the base of the cliff, its pa.s.sengers sitting in att.i.tudes of enraptured listening, and pointing ecstatically to the figure silhouetted against the moon.
Sahwah adroitly steered the raft toward the rock and it struck with a great jar. It disobligingly kept its balance, however, and refused to upset. Sahwah deliberately rolled off the edge, tipping it as she did so, and the rest went off on all sides, giggling and splashing in the water. Hinpoha on the rock above wrung her hands in mock horror at the effect of her song. That instant a figure came running at top speed along the river bank. "I"ll save you, girls," he shouted, jumping into the water with all his clothes on. Catching hold of Migwan, who was hanging on to the raft, he pulled her out of the water and set her on the sh.o.r.e. It was Calvin Smalley, their neighbor from the Red House.
"Oh," gasped Migwan, trying not to laugh at him, "I thank you ever so much, but we"re not really drowning. We upset the raft on purpose."
"Upset it on purpose!" said Calvin, in astonishment.
"Yes," answered Migwan, "we were playing Lorelei, you know."
Then Calvin noticed for the first time that the victims of the upset were all dressed in bathing-suits, and that they seemed to be very much at home in the water. "It looked like a dreadful smashup," he said, "and I forgot that the river isn"t very deep here. Do you generally play such quiet games?"
"Sometimes we play much more quiet ones," said Sahwah meaningly.
"It was too bad to frighten you so," said Nyoda. "We"ll have to warn spectators the next time we do anything. We"ll have to have a flag that says "Stunt coming; look out for the splash!" and whoever runs may read." At this moment Hinpoha jumped from the rock, out into the middle of the stream, where it was deep, swam under water toward the bank, and came up suddenly beside Calvin so that he was quite startled.