There were bathing and boating and tree-climbing in the days that
followed and there were hikes and folk-dances and various
entertainments, by themselves, and occasionally with the Scouts for
audience. The girls canoed all up and down the river, and borrowed the
Scout swimming-pool with rapture, and learned all sorts of swimming and
diving stunts. And everybody got brown and husky and cheerful. But in
between the good times the girls worked on steadily, each at her
appointed task, and in about ten days there was a promising collection
of material to be sold, for the virtuous purpose of giving Camp Karonya
some more weeks of life in the Wampoag woods.
Helen gave up modelling her beloved statuettes, and went soberly to work
at bowls and vases, and other such things that people would be likely to
find useful. She decorated them with motives she drew herself, and took
them up to Wampoag, the summer-resort, where there was a kiln, and had
them fired. Louise made burnt-leather pillows, which filled her hair
with such a fearful smell that for awhile she washed it every day, till
it occurred to her to wear a bathing-cap to work in. She also burned
mats and table-covers and napkin-rings to the limit of her purchasing
power; and when that failed she took to carving things out of wood she
picked up. The Blue Birds wove raffia baskets and table-mats, and Marie
and Edith crocheted bags and collars. Adelaide devoted herself to
canning. The rest helped her sometimes, but more of the time she took
pride in putting up the fruit all by herself.
There were embroidered tea-cloths and runners, and there was hammered
brass-work. The honor-counts rolled up like snowballs, for the girls
made nearly everything a girl is capable of making or decorating. There
was almost enough made to stop.
But still Camp Karonya held nightly discussions, having made these
various things, as to how to sell them. The plan most of them wanted to
adopt was that of going from house to house with them. Having a fair
meant hiring a room or store, or running the risk of having nobody come
to buy--for the camp was two miles from the nearest point of
civilization. The only alternative seemed putting them into some of the
resort shops to be sold on commission, and there was a large risk there
that the shops might not do properly by them. There was another
alternative, sending them home to be sold, but that seemed inglorious,
somehow.
One night, after everything had been argued over until everybody had
finished from sheer inability to think of anything more to say, and
begun to discuss constellations instead, Winona, lying on her back, felt
a pull at her sleeve. She rolled over, to see Louise stealthily working
herself down the hill, out of the moonlight. Winona rolled as stealthily
after her.
"What is it?" she asked, when they were at the bottom of the hill, where
they couldn't be seen.
"Come hither, Little One, and I will tell you!" responded Louise, like
Kipling's Crocodile. She led the way to the dock, where they sat down in
the moored rowboat, and Louise began to hold forth.
"We've got more than enough things to sell, and none of those plans are
a bit of good. What we want to do is to take all that stuff up to
Wampoag, in this old boat of yours, and peddle them at the big hotels."
"I think so, too," agreed Winona, "but the girls haven't gotten
unanimous yet. You know Nataly Lee's going to fight to the last ditch
against selling things that way. I don't know whether she thinks it's
too hard work or too undignified, but you can see she isn't going to
stand for it one little bit."
"Oh, that girl makes me tired!" said Louise. "I'm not going to wait for
their old unanimity. I tell you, Win, I have a plan!"
"Well, go ahead!" Winona encouraged.
"To-morrow morning," said Louise. "You and I will slide off early, like
the Third Little Pig, and pack the boat with all the junk we have ready.
It's all in the boxes in the store-place. Then we'll row to Wampoag, and
just sell things all day!"
"How'll we get them away without anybody seeing us?" objected Winona,
who liked the plan very much. "It would be gorgeous if we could manage
it."
"We'll have to go now and sneak the stuff into the boat before bedtime,"
said Louise. "We can pile them on that amateur stretcher we used to
carry Florence. I think nobody ever took it apart."
"Hurrah! Come on, then!" said Winona, and the two girls slid off into
the shadows.
It was not such very hard work. They filled their two suitcases, and put
what wouldn't go in the suitcases on the stretcher; and had everything
in the boat and covered up with a waterproof blanket before their
absence had been noticed. Then they stole back into the circle as
innocently as kittens, in time to sing "Mammy Moon" at the tops of their
voices with the rest.
They were both on the policing shift that week, so it was easy for them
to arrange to get their share of camp-work over early. By half-past
eight in the morning they were rowing gayly down the river in the
direction of Wampoag. Florence wanted to come, but they had to repress
her. She might have been in their way.
When they were around the bend, safely out of sight of the camp, Winnie
stopped rowing.
"I had an idea, too!" she said. "Reach under the seat, Louise."
Louise pulled out, first, the luncheon she herself had poked under a
little while before; next, a good-sized bundle that appeared to be
clothes.
"What's this for?" she asked.
"For us," said Winona.
Louise opened it, and eyed its contents puzzledly. There were a
dressing-sack made of bandanna handkerchiefs, partly ripped up, two old
skirts, an old shawl and a checked gingham apron.
"They're to dress up in," explained Winona. "We'll be poor little
emigrant girls that want to sella da nice-a goods, lady! The women who
go around selling things out of suitcases always have a foreign look. So
I fished these out of the box of stuff we had for theatricals. I knew
just where it was, because we got some things out of it for 'Everygirl'
last week."
"Oh, gorgeous!" cried Louise, finishing the ripping-up of the
dressing-sack into its original red handkerchiefs. She dug through the
pile again and picked out the shortest skirt, for she hadn't her full
growth yet. "Who gets the little checked shawl?" she asked.
"You do, if you want it," answered Winona. "I'll take the apron."
They both turned in the collars of their middy blouses, and rolled the
cuffs under. Skirts over them, a bandanna apiece round their necks, and
the checked shawl over Louise's head and a handkerchief on Winona's--and
they were very convincing emigrants.
"Our shoes are rather too good," said Winona discontentedly, "but you
mustn't ask too much in this world. Pin your hair up, Louise. It's too
red for an Italian, or even a Syrian."
She managed to secure her own on top under her 'kerchief as she spoke.
They were both so brown that they looked like natives of somewhere else,
and the dresses were very natural. The long skirts and fastened-up hair
made them both look eighteen or twenty--for Winona was as tall as she
would ever be, five feet six, and Louise, though shorter, was plump.
"We can buy long earrings at the ten-cent store on our way up," said
Louise. "I always did want to."
"All right," said Winona.
"And, for goodness sake, Win, see if you can't get up some sort of an
accent. Italian would be the easiest, I guess."
"Yes, kinda lady! Sella da fina things--real handa-made!" responded
Winona, her white teeth flashing.
Then they came to the Boy Scouts' camp, and they had to row very softly,
and keep as far away from the bank as they could. But luck was still
with them, and none of the Scouts happened to be fishing that morning.
"If we'd remembered we might have brought back the mending," said
Louise, with a half-concealed desire to go tell the Scouts about her
prospective lark.
"Better not go in there!" said Winona. She had a brother in the camp,
and she didn't care to risk being stopped in mid-career of what promised
to be a very fine time. So they rowed down the river till they reached
Wampoag, and tied their boat to the dock.
They took out the stretcher, put a suitcase on either end of it and
piled the things that were too big for the suitcases in the middle. Then
they each took an end and started bravely forth.
"Where da gooda hotel for sella da goods?" asked Louise, with a broad
and friendly grin, of the interested dock-keeper.
"Any at all," he answered. "Just go straight down this road till you see
a hotel. They're all together."
"Thank you, mister," Louise answered, and they trotted on.
The sight of two young Italian girls carrying a stretcher full of goods
proved to be a little more of a sensation than the girls had bargained
for. They felt as if they had never been so much stared at in their
lives, and they were both grateful when they reached the shelter of the
first hotel porch.
It was a big hotel that they had come upon, and its wide porches were
full of women, young and old, rocking, and talking and embroidering, and
willing enough to look at the things the girls had. The arrangement was
that Winona should take care of the smaller things, the painted and
embroidered linens and so forth in the suitcases, while Louise attended
to the pottery and larger art-craft things, and a row of Adelaide's
jellies. She didn't expect to sell the jelly to people who already had
three meals a day, but she was agreeably surprised. Evidently they liked
to have things to eat in their rooms.
The stretcher and suitcases were set on the porch and Louise, with an
ingratiating grin under her shawl, went from woman to woman, holding up
her wares.
"Look at da fine pot--native wares--very cheapa?" she asked. "You not
have to buy. We lika show. Buy da fine pot cheapa? You nice lady--you
take real Indian pillow--real pine pillow!"
"I believe I will," said an energetic-looking old lady with white hair
and a black silk dress. "How much is that pillow, my dear? And aren't
you pretty young to be out selling things this way? You don't look more
than seventeen."
Louise swelled with pride at being taken for as old as that, but she
managed to answer, "One dollar for pillow--very cheap--real hand work!"
and to the last question, "I lika sella da goods--four little poor ones
younger as me home. I _very_ old!"
At which the elderly lady bought the pillow on the spot. Louise put the
dollar in the pocket of her skirt, and went back to the stretcher after
a big vase of Helen's, which was the pride of her heart, and for which
she meant to ask at least one-fifty.
"Real pottery pot, lady!" she explained to the nearest woman to her.
"Real hand-made--see? Real hand-painted--only two dollar!"
Louise had spent a summer at a hotel herself, the year before, and she
knew all the tricks and manners of the porch-peddlers. She let the woman
who wanted the vase beat her down to one-sixty, and pocketed the extra
dime that she hadn't thought she'd get with a sense of duty well done.
She frisked up and down the porch having a glorious time, while Winona,
with her open suitcase, sat still by the top step. She did not need to
move, for the women were as interested in her wares as they always are
in table-linens. She sold a stencilled crash luncheon set of Marie's,
five pieces, for five dollars, while Louise was haggling over the price
for Helen's vase. Several of the bead bags and necklaces woven on the
little looms went, too. The girls left that porch with nearly twelve
dollars worth of goods sold.
The next hotel did not do so well by them, for the people there only
bought a few handkerchiefs and bead chains. Still it was better than
nothing. They had covered six hotels by one o'clock and made twenty-five
dollars. The needle-work, much to the girls' surprise, went more quickly
than anything else.
"It must be the wistful sweetness of your expression, or else they think
I look too well-fed to be sorry for, Win," said Louise as they munched
their sandwiches on the dock. The dock-keeper had given them permission.
"You just sit still and look pleasant, and the sales get made. I have to
chase all over creation, and tease and joke and cheapen, to get them to
buy mine."
"I'm afraid to talk much, for fear my accent will break through,"
explained Winona. "It's the goods, I think. They all seem crazy over
those stencilled things. I could sell a lot more if I had them."
"Haven't you any more?" asked Louise between bites.
"Only one, and I promised that to your kinda lady that you sold the pine
pillow to, and told you were the oldest of five. But I'm taking orders,"
finished Winona with a grin.
"Do you suppose Marie will stand for going on with it?"
"For what--this bandanna party? She needn't--I'll deliver them myself,"
stated Winona calmly.
"What about the carved frames Elizabeth made?" asked Louise, as they
rose and took up the burden of life in the shape of their much lightened
stretcher.
"Pretty well, but nothing like the way Florence's and Frances's little
sweet-grass baskets went."
"If we sell enough to run the camp another two weeks, I don't see why
the girls shouldn't keep any money over that they earn," said Winona
thoughtfully. "The proprietor of that little boarding-house we went to
last but one says she wants more jelly. _That's_ all gone, thank
goodness--oo, but it was heavy!"
"The little baskets at a quarter apiece are going off fast, too," said
Louise. "Hotel Abercrombie-by-the-Water. Don't forget your dialect,
angel-child."
"E pluribus unum! Panama manyana! Nux vomica!" answered Winona
enthusiastically as they ascended the steps. "Buya da beada necklace,
lady?"
"Good!" said Louise under her breath, and herself tackled dialect again.
"Buya da pot for poor woman, lady? Got thirteen children to keep--no
money!"
"Thirteen children--really?" asked the woman in horror.
"Thirteen--all girls!" answered Louise mournfully, while Winona bent
very low over her suitcase, and tried not to laugh. "Unlucky number,
huh?"
"Very, for her!" said the woman. "Well, I really must buy something to
help her."
Winona was going to stop her, for she thought it wasn't fair; although
Louise evidently took it as a lovely joke. But as the woman did not feel
that her duty to the thirteen went beyond buying one fifteen-cent
sweet-grass napkin-ring--and she only wanted to give ten cents for
it--Winona did not intervene. She only whispered, "Don't, Louise!" next
time she passed her. And Louise, though she laughed, said no more about
the thirteen poor little Camp Fire Girls starving at home. Then towards
evening it was Winona who got into trouble.
They had sold about forty-five dollars' worth of stuff in the course of
the day, and were back at the first hotel, the one they had started
from, to deliver the stencilled set Winona had promised to Louise's
white-haired lady. Winona, who felt very tired after her long day of
tramping and selling, was sitting on the top of the hotel porch in the
shade of a pillar, her hands crossed on her lap. Her pretty face was
pale with the long, tiring day, and her eyelids drooped. She was
figuring out that, what with the Scouts' mending and this day's work,
and the orders they had taken, the camp could go on three weeks more.
And she felt a touch on her shoulder.
"My dear," said the brisk voice of the lady who had bought the
stencilled set, "you seem tired."
"Why, not so very," said Winona, coming out of her thinking-fit hastily,
and forgetting her accent on the way.
"And don't you find this a hard life for so young a girl?" went on the
lady. "Wouldn't you rather do something else?"
Winona smiled and shook her head. "I like it," she said.
The old lady sat down by her and took her hand. Louise, meanwhile, out
of hearing, was trying to sell a very lopsided basket to an elderly
gentleman.
"My child," she said, "I can't help feeling that you're too intelligent
and too refined-looking for a life like this. I am sure you are not an
Italian. Is there nothing I could do to help you?"
Winona felt very uncomfortable. She hadn't bargained for having people
take a personal interest in her.
"Really there isn't anything," she answered truthfully. "I have a very
good time. I can't tell you all about it, but indeed, I have a very
pleasant life."
But the old lady was not to be daunted.
"My dear child, there is something very attractive about you," she said.
"I believe with the proper education you would become an unusually
charming young girl. You are young enough still to be trained. Is that
girl with you your sister?"
"Oh, no," said Winona, wondering what next.
"I thought as much," said the old lady. "You don't look like sisters.
You're naturally of a better class than she is. Now, supposing that
someone who could do a good deal for you took you and had you educated,
do you think you would be a good girl and do them credit?"
Winona did not know in the least what to say. It looked as if the old
lady intended to adopt her before she could escape.
"It would be awfully nice," she said, uncomfortably, "and very kind.
But--indeed, I couldn't!"
The old lady had begun to speak again, when a clatter of hasty feet on
the steps behind them made her and Winona both turn around and look.
[Illustration: "WILLIAM!" SAID HIS AUNT, "DO YOU KNOW THIS--THIS YOUNG
PERSON?"]