The Winnebagos have scored again, although it did take us nearly all year to make this particular basket. I know that if you had been here, you old miracle worker, you would have found the way before the first month had pa.s.sed, but, not having your gift for seeing right through people"s starched shirtwaists and straight into their hearts, we had to wait for chance to show us the way. And it turned out the way it usually does for the Winnebagos--we stooped to pick up a common little stone and found a pearl of great price. Of course, now there are lots of people who would like to be the setting for that pearl, but she belongs to the Winnebagos by right of discovery and we mean to keep her for our very own. For, after all, who but the Winnebagos could have discovered Sally Prindle, when up to that very week, day, hour and minute she hadn"t even discovered herself? The chances are that she never would have, either, and what a shame it would have been!
You remember my telling about Sally Prindle long ago, the time we tried to fix up her room for her and she wouldn"t let us? Of course she hurt our feelings, because we hadn"t been trying to patronize her and didn"t deserve to be snubbed, but we got over it in a day or two and saw her side of it. It probably _was_ annoying to have three separate delegations take notice of your poverty in one day, and there was no telling how tactless the first two had been. At the second meeting of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS, held on and around Oh-Pshaw"s bed, we formally decided, with much speechifying by Agony and Oh-Pshaw, that Sally would be the special object of our Give Service Pledge. We would make her feel that we didn"t care a rap whether she was poor or not; that it was she herself we cared about. We would ask her to share all our good times and would drop in to see her often, as good neighbors should, and would finally bring her around to the point where she would begin to Seek Beauty for herself, see that her bare room was too ugly for any good use, and gladly share our overflow with us. Oh, we planned great things that night!
"Let"s go over and call on her right away," suggested Hinpoha, who was fired with enthusiasm at the plan and couldn"t wait to begin the program of Give Service.
Off we went down the hall, filled with virtuous enthusiasm. Sally was at home because we could see the light shining through the transom.
"Wait a minute, don"t knock," whispered Agony with a giggle. "I know a lot more Epic way." She pulled a candy kiss from her pocket, scribbled an absurd note on a piece of paper about weary travelers waiting at the gate, tied it to the kiss and threw it through the transom.
We heard it strike the floor and heard Sally rise from a creaking chair and pick it up. Giggling, we waited for her to come and let us in. In a minute her footsteps came toward the door and with comradely smiles we stepped forward. The door was opened a very small crack, and out flew the kiss, much faster than it had gone in. It just missed Hinpoha"s nose by a hair"s breadth and fell on the floor with a spiteful thud. Then the door slammed emphatically. We looked at each other in consternation.
"Whee-e-e-e-e-!" said Agony in a long-drawn whistle.
"Horrid--old--thing!" said Hinpoha, picking up the kiss from the floor and holding it up for us to see that the note had never been opened.
Feeling both foolish and hurt we trailed back home and sadly gave up the idea of Giving Service to Sally Prindle.
"Let her alone, she isn"t worth worrying about," said Hinpoha, beginning to be just as cross as she had been enthusiastic before. "She hasn"t a spark of sociability in her."
"There are Hermit Souls----" began Oh-Pshaw, and Agony cut in with
"Twinkle, twinkle, little Sal, How we"d like to be your pal, But you hold your nose so high You don"t see us pa.s.sing by."
That ended Sally Prindle as far as the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS were concerned. But I had an uncomfortable feeling all the time that if Nyoda had been there she would have managed to become friendly with Sally in some way, and that we had failed to "warm the heart" of this "lonely mortal" who "stood without our open portal." Sally haunted me. How any girl could live and not be friendly with the people she saw every day was more than I could understand. She just grubbed away at her lessons, paid no attention to what went on around her, snubbed any girl who tried to make advances and lived a life of lofty detachment. She was a good student and invariably recited correctly when called upon, but beyond that none of the teachers could get a particle of warmth out of her, not even fascinating Miss Allison, who has all her cla.s.ses worshipping at her feet.
Sally worried me for a while; then she moved out of Purgatory and took a room with some private family in town and as I hardly ever saw her any more I forgot her after a time. Life is so _very_ full here, Katherine dear, that you can"t bother much about any one person.
Of course, the big thought that runs through everything this year, all our work and all our play, is the War and what we can do to help. At the beginning of the year Brownell pledged herself to raise five thousand dollars for the Red Cross by various activities; this was outside of the personal subscription fund. A big Christmas bazaar and several benefit performances brought the total close to four thousand, but the last thousand proved to be a sticker. Various committees were called to discuss ways and means of raising the money, but they never could agree on anything for the whole college to do together, and finally abandoned the quest for a bright idea and decided to let everybody raise money in any way they could think of and put it all together to make up the total.
The Board of Trustees offered a silver loving cup to the individual, club, sorority, group or clique of any kind that raised the largest amount inside of a month.
The day that was announced there was a hastily called meeting of the LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS.
"We"re going to win that loving cup," declared Hinpoha in a tone of finality. "This is our chance to show what we"re made of. Up until now we"ve been doing little easy "Give Services." At last we"re up against something big. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. The WINNEBAGOS have never fallen down on anything yet that they undertook and they"re not going to now. We"re going to win that contest. Won"t Nyoda be proud of us?"
We cheered until the windows rattled and then Migwan brought us to earth with a thud. "How are we going to do it?" she asked soberly. We all fell silent and donned our thinking caps. Minutes pa.s.sed but n.o.body sprouted a bright idea. Suggestion after suggestion was made, only to be turned down flat.
"We might give a circus," suggested Hinpoha rather doubtfully. "Remember the circus we gave at home last year?"
"There have been nine circuses of various kinds already this year,"
wet-blanketed Agony. "You couldn"t hire anybody to attend another."
"Masquerade as seeresses and give select parlor readings of people"s futures," suggested Oh-Pshaw. "We could charge five dollars for a reading."
"Been done already," said Migwan. "Anyway, the faculty have forbidden it.
The girls that did it last year scandalized a prominent Trustee"s wife by telling her that her daughter was going to elope with an Italian count before the month was out. The daughter had married a minister the week before, only the girls didn"t know it, and the Trustee"s wife got so excited she sat down on a two-hundred-dollar Satsuma vase and smashed it and tried to sue the seeresses for damages. Then, of course, she found out they were students and the faculty put an end to parlor seeresses."
That"s the way it went. Not a plan was suggested but what turned out to be old stuff or not practicable.
"Oh, for an idea!" groaned Agony, beating her white brow with the palm of her hand.
"We might go round with a hand organ," suggested Oh-Pshaw in desperation.
"Gladys could be the monkey and pa.s.s around a tin cup."
"Thanks, I wouldn"t think of aspiring to such an honor," I replied modestly.
"What we want," said Migwan decidedly, "is a fad--something that will take the college by storm and separate them from their cash. I remember last year some of the seniors started the fad of taking impressions of the palm of your hand on paper smoked with camphor gum and sending them away to have the lines read by some noted palmist, and they made oceans of money at twenty-five cents an impression."
We talked possible fads until we were green in the face, but n.o.body got an inspiration and we finally adjourned with our heads in a whirl.
The next day I went into a deserted cla.s.sroom for a book I had left behind and found Sally Prindle with her head down on one of the desks, crying. By that time I had forgotten how disagreeable she had been to us and hastened over to see what was the matter.
"What"s the trouble, Sally?" I asked, laying my hand on her shoulder.
Sally started up and tried to wipe the tears away hastily. "Nothing," she answered in a flat voice.
"There is too something," I said determinedly, and sat down on the desk in front of her.
She looked at me sort of defiantly for a minute and then she broke down altogether. Between sobs she told me that she wasn"t going to be able to come back to college next year because she hadn"t won the big Andrews prize in mathematics she had counted confidently on winning, and she had worked so hard for it that she had neglected her other work, and the first thing she knew she had a condition in Latin. Besides, she was sick and couldn"t do the hard work she had been doing outside to pay her board.
I never saw anyone so broken up over anything. I wouldn"t have expected her to care whether she came back to college or not; I couldn"t see what fun she had ever gotten out of it, but I suppose in her own queer way she must have enjoyed it. I tried to comfort her by telling her that the way would probably be found somehow if she took it up with the right people, but Sally wasn"t the kind of girl that took comfort easily. Life was terribly serious to her. She felt disgraced because she hadn"t won the prize and was sure n.o.body would want to lend her money to finish her course. I left her at last with my heart aching because of the uneven way things are distributed in this world.
Our room was a mess when I got back. Our floor was entertaining the floor below that night and Hinpoha was in the show. She was standing in the middle of the room draping my dresser scarf around her shoulders for a fichu, while Agony was piling her hair high on her head for her and Oh-Pshaw was pinning on a train made of bath towels.
"Have you a blue velvet band?" Hinpoha demanded thickly, as I entered, through the pins she was holding in her mouth.
"No, I haven"t," I replied, retiring to a corner to escape the sweeping strokes of the hair brush in Agony"s hand.
"Why haven"t you?" lamented Hinpoha. "I just _have_ to have one."
"What for?" I asked.
"To put around my neck, of course," explained Hinpoha impatiently. "It"s absolutely necessary to finish off this costume. Go out and sc.r.a.pe one up somewhere, Gladys, there"s a dear."
I obediently made the rounds, but nowhere did I find the desired blue band. Not even a ribbon of the right shade was forthcoming.
"Paint one on," suggested Agony, with an inspiration born of despair.
"Then you"ll surely have it the right shade."
"The paint box is in the bottom dresser drawer," said Hinpoha, warming to the plan at once. "Hurry up, Agony."
"Oh, I"ll not have time to do it," said Agony, moving toward the door.
"I"ve got just fifteen minutes left to sew the ruffle back on the bottom of my white dress to wear in chapel to-morrow when we sing for the bishop, and it"s really more important for the country"s cause that I have a white dress to wear to-morrow than that you have a blue band around your neck to-night. My green and purple plaid silk would look chaste and retiring among the spotless white of the choir, now, wouldn"t it?" And swinging her hairbrush she went out. Oh-Pshaw had already disappeared.
"Here, Gladys," said Hinpoha, holding out the box to me, "mix the turquoise with a little ultramarine."
"I"m awfully sorry, "Poha, but I can"t stop," said I. "I"ve an interview with Miss Allison in five minutes. Get somebody else, dear."
"Everybody"s rushed to death," grumbled Hinpoha.
I went off to keep my appointment and Hinpoha took up her watch for a pa.s.ser-by whom she could bully into painting a blue band on her neck.