Hinpoha uncovered one eye and saw Nyoda looking at her with the same loving, friendly glance as always, and cast herself impulsively upon her shoulder. "You"ll see how discreet I can be!" she murmured humbly.
Nyoda smiled down at her and held her close for a minute.
"Listen!" she said. From the room where Sylvia lay there came the sound of a song. It began falteringly at first and choked off several times, but went bravely on, gaining in power, until the merry notes filled the house. The indomitable little spirit had fought its battle with gloom and come out victorious.
"The spirit of a princess!" Nyoda exclaimed admiringly. "Sylvia is of the true blood royal; she knows that the thoroughbred never whimpers; it is only the low born who cry out when hurt."
"Gee, listen to that!" exclaimed Slim, sitting in the library with Sherry and the other two boys, when Sylvia"s song rang through the house, brave and clear. The four looked at each other, and the eyes of each held a tribute for the brave little singer. Sherry stood up and saluted, as though in the presence of a superior officer.
"She ought to have a Distinguished Valor Cross," he said, "for conspicuous bravery under fire."
"Pluckiest little kid I ever saw!" declared Slim feelingly, and then blew a violent blast on his nose.
"Sing a cheer!" called Sahwah, and the Winnebagos lined up in the hall outside Sylvia"s door and sang to her with a vigor that made the windows rattle:
"Oh, Sylvia, here"s to you, Our hearts will e"er be true, We will never find your equal Though we search the whole world through!"
CHAPTER XIII THE MASQUERADE
"I don"t suppose we"ll have the party now," observed Gladys, after Sylvia had fallen asleep. "It"s a shame. We were going to have such a big time to-night."
"Indeed, we _will_ have the party anyhow!" said Nyoda emphatically.
"We"ll outdo ourselves to make Sylvia have a hilarious time to-night. The time to laugh the loudest is when you feel the saddest. Gladys, will you engineer the candy making? You have your masquerade costume ready, haven"t you? The rest of you will have to hurry to get yours fixed, it"s three o"clock already. There are numerous chests of old clothes up in the attic; you may take anything you like from them. And that reminds me, I must go and bring out my old Navajo blanket for-" "Goodness!" she said, stopping herself just in time, "I almost told who is going to wear it.
Now everybody be good and don"t ask me any questions. I have to bring it down and air it before it can be worn because it"s packed away in mothb.a.l.l.s."
She ran lightly up the stairs, chanting:
"There was an old chief of the Navajo, Fell over the wigwam and broke his toe, And now he is gone where the good Injuns go, And his blanket is done up in cam-pho-o-or!"
She trailed out the last word into such a mournful wail that the Winnebagos shrieked with laughter.
A few minutes later she came down the stairs with a mystified face. "The blanket"s gone!" she announced. "Stolen. I had it in the lower drawer of the linen closet off the hall upstairs, all wrapped up in tar paper. The tar paper"s there in the drawer, folded up, with the mothb.a.l.l.s lying on top of it, and the blanket is gone. Did any of you take it out to wear to-night?" she asked, looking relieved at the thought.
No one had taken it, however. Slim was the only one who wanted to be an Indian, and he was waiting for Nyoda to fetch the blanket for him.
Without a doubt it had been stolen. So the midnight visitor had been a thief after all! But why did he take a blanket and nothing else? It was a valuable blanket, but the silverware and jewelry in the house were worth a great deal more. The mystery reared its head again. What manner of man was this strange visitor?
"My mother always used to keep her silver wrapped in the blankets in a clothes closet," said Gladys, "and burglars broke into our house and found it all. The policeman that papa reported it to said that was a common place for people to hide valuables and burglars usually searched through blankets. This burglar must have been looking for valuables in the blanket, and got scared away before he looked anywhere else, but took the blanket because it was such a good one."
"That must have been it," said Nyoda. "I"ve heard of cases before where valuables were stolen from their hiding places in blankets and bedding.
Well, we were lucky to get away as we did.
"Slim, you"ll have to be something beside an Indian chief, for I haven"t another Navajo blanket. It"s too bad, too, because you had the real bow and arrows, but cheer up, we"ll find something else. The trouble is, though," she mourned, "we haven"t much of anything that will fit you. The blanket would have solved the problem so nicely."
"Let him wear the mothb.a.l.l.s," suggested Justice. "He can be an African chief instead of an Indian. A nice string of mothb.a.l.l.s would be all--"
Slim threw a sofa cushion at him and Justice subsided.
The stolen blanket remained the chief topic of conversation until late in the afternoon, when Katherine made a discovery which furnished a new theme. She was up in the attic, hunting something from which to concoct a masquerade suit, and while rummaging through a trunk came upon a photograph underneath a pile of clothes. It was the picture of a young girl dressed in the fashion of a bygone day, with a tremendously long, full skirt bunched up into an elaborate "polonaise." Above a pair of softly curved shoulders smiled a face of such witching beauty that Katherine forgot all about the trunk and its contents and gazed spellbound at the photograph. In the lower right hand corner was written in a beautiful, even hand, "_To Jasper, from Sylvia_."
Katherine flew downstairs to show her find to the others.
"O how beautiful!" they cried, one after another, as they gazed at the picture of the girl Uncle Jasper could not forget. The small, piquant face, in its frame of dark hair, looked up at them from the picture with a winning, friendly smile, and looking at it the Winnebagos began to feel the charm of the living Sylvia Warrington, and to fall in love with her even as Uncle Jasper had done.
"Take it up to Sylvia," said Migwan. "She"ll be delighted to see a picture of her Beloved."
Sylvia gazed with rapt fondness at the beautiful young face.
"Isn"t-she-lovely?" she said in a hushed voice. "She looks as though she would be sorry about my being lame, if she knew. May I keep her with me all the time, Nyoda? She"s such a comfort!"
"Certainly, you may keep the picture with you," said Nyoda, rejoicing that a new interest had come up just at this time, and left her hugging the photograph to her bosom.
Right after supper Nyoda shooed all the rest upstairs to their rooms while she arrayed Sylvia for the party. In her endeavor to cheer and divert her she gathered materials with a lavish hand and dressed her like a real fairy tale princess, in a beautiful white satin dress, and a gold chain with a diamond locket, and bracelets, and a coronet on her fine-spun golden hair. The armchair she made into a throne, covered with a purple velvet portiere; and she spread a square of gilt tapestry over the footstool.
The effect, when Sylvia was seated upon the throne, was so gorgeously royal that Nyoda felt a sudden awe stealing over her, and she could hardly believe it was the work of her own hands. Sylvia seemed indeed a real princess.
"We have on the robes of state to-night," said Sylvia, with a half hearted return to her once loved game, "for our royal father, the king, is coming to pay us a visit with all his court."
Nyoda made her a sweeping curtsey and hurried upstairs to dress herself.
The costumes of all the rest were kept a secret from one another, and no one was to unmask until the stroke of eleven. She heard stifled giggles and exclamations coming through the doors of all the rooms as she proceeded down the hall.
Crash! went something in one of the rooms and Nyoda paused to investigate. There stood Slim before a mirror, hopelessly entangled in a sheet which he was trying to drape around himself. A wild sweep of his hand had smashed the electric light bulb at the side of the mirror, and sent the globe flying across the room to shatter itself on the floor.
"Wait a minute, I"ll help you," said Nyoda, coming forward laughing.
Slim emerged from the sheet very red in the face, deeply abashed at the damage he had done.
"I was only trying to grab ahold of the other end," he explained ruefully, "like this-" He flung out the other hand in a gesture of ill.u.s.tration, and smash went the globe on the other side of the mirror.
Nyoda laughed at his horror-stricken countenance, and soothed his embarra.s.sment while she pinned him into the sheet and pulled over his head the pillow case which was to act as mask.
"Just as if you could disguise Slim by masking him!" she thought mirthfully as she worked. "The more you try to cover him up the worse you give him away. It"s like trying to disguise an elephant."
She got him finished, and as a precaution against further accidents bade him sit still in the chair where she placed him until the dinner gong sounded downstairs; then she hastened on toward her own room.
"Oh, I forgot about Hercules!" she suddenly exclaimed aloud. "I promised to get something for him."
"Migwan"s gone down to fix him up," said a voice from one of the rooms in answer to her exclamation. "She found a costume for him this afternoon, and she"s down in the kitchen now, getting him ready."
Nyoda breathed a sigh of grat.i.tude for Migwan"s habitual thoughtfulness, and went in to don her own costume.
Down in the kitchen Migwan was getting Hercules into the suit she had picked out for him from the trunkfull of masquerade costumes she had found up in the attic. It was a long monkish habit with a cowl, made of coa.r.s.e brown stuff, and it covered him from head to foot. The mask was made of the same material as the suit, and hung down at least a foot below his grizzly beard.
"Sure n.o.body ain"t goin" ter recognize me?" Hercules asked anxiously.
Migwan"s prediction that an invitation to the party would cheer him up had been fulfilled from the first. Hercules was so tickled that he forgot his misery entirely. He was in as much of a flutter as a young girl getting ready for her first ball; he had been in the house half a dozen times that day anxiously inquiring if the party were surely going to be, and if there would be a suit for him.