The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

A NEW WINNEBAGO.

Sahwah the Sunfish sat on top of the diving tower squinting through Nakwisi's spy-glass at the distant horizon.

"Sister Anne, sister Anne," called Migwan from the rocks below, "do you see any one coming?"

Sahwah lowered her glass and shook her head. "No sign of the Bluebird yet," she answered. "If Gladys doesn't come pretty soon I shall die of impatience. Oh, what do you suppose she'll be like, anyway?"

"Beautiful beyond compare," answered Migwan promptly, "and skilled in every art we ever thought or dreamed of. She is going to be my affinity, I feel it in my bones."

Sahwah looked rather pensive. "Nobody in her right mind would choose me for an affinity," she said with a sigh, squinting sidewise down her nose and mentally counting the freckles thereon, "I'm not interesting enough looking."

"Goosie," said Migwan, laughing, "affinities aren't chosen, they just happen. You see somebody for the first time and you don't know a thing about her, perhaps not even her name, and yet something tells you that you two belong together. That's an affinity."

"But how can you tell in advance that you and Gladys are going to be affinities?" asked Sahwah. "How do you know that when she sees me waving the sheet from the tower she won't say to herself, 'The energetic maiden on yon lofty tower is my one and only love. I can only see one bloomer leg and a hank of hair, but that is enough to recognize my soul mate by. Come to my arms, Finny!'"

Migwan laughed at the picture, and replied mysteriously, "Oh, I have a way of telling things beforehand. I can read them in the stars!"

Sahwah sniffed and resumed her watch, holding the sheet in readiness to wave the instant the little steamer should appear around Blueberry Island. The minutes passed without a sign of the Bluebird, and Sahwah grew tired of looking at nothing. She ceased staring fixedly at the distant gap between Blueberry Island and the mainland, and pointed the glass around at the objects near her; at Migwan washing middies in the lake, her soap tied to the dock to keep it from floating away; at the toothbrushes strewn over the rocks like bones bleaching in the sun; at the smooth strip of shining sand; aiming her glass idly now here, now there, her feet swinging in the air eighteen feet above the water, her long brown hair flying in the wind.

High up on the cliff Hinpoha stood nailing the railing around the Crow's Nest, a tiny tree-house just big enough for two, built in the branches of a tall pine tree. She finished her pounding and stood looking out over the gleaming lake, dotted with rocky, pine-covered islands, shading her eyes with her hand. Her gaze strayed again and again to the narrow gap between Blueberry Island and the mainland, and now and then she heaved an impatient sigh. "Oh, please, dear Bluebird," she said aloud, "please hurry up!" By and by her eyes rested upon Sahwah, silhouetted against the sky on top of the diving tower. Picking up a big dry pine cone from the floor of the Crow's Nest, she took careful aim and sent it sailing downward in a swift, curving flight....