“We are, next Saturday,” answered Sahwah. “We were just practicing rolling the ponchos today. Saturday we’re going to take the steamer across the lake to Rock Island. Some friends of Nyoda’s have a cottage there, but they haven’t gone up yet and they said we might stay in it all night if we wanted to. We’re coming home on the boat Sunday night.”
“Are you going by yourselves?” asked Slim, leaning across the table and listening to the conversation. He was fishing for an invitation for the Sandwiches.
“We certainly are going by ourselves,” said Sahwah, to his disappointment. “We haven’t been off by ourselves for a long time. We’re going in a lonely place and have a Ceremonial Meeting on the shore of the lake and tell secrets and do stunts and have a beautiful time. It’s strictly a Winnebago affair—a hen party, you’d call it.”
Slim sighed and consoled himself with five pieces of fudge and an apple. He was one of those boys who like to be around girls all the time. Too fat to enjoy the more strenuous society of the boys, he preferred to sit with his gentler friends and dip his hand into the dishes of candy that they usually had standing around. The fact that they made no end of fun of him and never took him seriously only increased his desire for them. And, like the Captain, he delighted to look upon the hair when it was red. He admired Hinpoha with all his corpulent soul.
The winter and spring months had flown by with swifter wings than the white-tailed swallow, and the clock of the year was once more striking June. Saturday found the Winnebagos skimming over the blue waters of the lake in the big daily excursion boat bound for Rock Island. Nakwisi, of course, had her spy glass and was carefully scrutinizing the empty horizon. “Has Katherine come into your range of vision yet?” asked Nyoda, a trifle anxiously. Katherine had boarded the boat with them safely enough, for she had been personally conducted from home by the whole six, but had disappeared within ten minutes after the boat started.
Nakwisi lowered her glass and laughed. “No, I don’t see her in the sky,” she said, “though I shouldn’t be very greatly surprised if I did.”
And they began a thorough search of the boat from top to bottom and finally found her hanging over the rail of a gangway, trying to touch the snowy foam flying in the swirling wake of the paddle wheel. It was the first time she had ever been on a lake, and she took a perfectly childish delight in the racing water. Pulled back to safety by Nyoda, she gave an animated account of her adventures since seeing them last, in the course of which she had nearsightedly walked into the pilot house and caught hold of the wheel to steady herself when the boat gave a lurch, and had been summarily put out by an angry first mate. “I’ve been everywhere on the boat except down the smokestack,” she concluded triumphantly.