Veronica, it must be confessed, was a great puzzle to the Winnebagos. Try as they might, they could never get her to enter into their work and fun with any degree of vim. She always sat aloof, her brooding eyes staring off into space. Not that they loved her any the less—they were too genuinely sorry for her—but they never seemed to be able to break down the barrier between them and her. They constantly stood abashed before her aristocratic airs. When the friends went together to get ice cream Veronica had a way of flinging a dollar bill down on the table and bidding the waitress keep the change that made the others feel cheap somehow, although they knew it was useless extravagance. When a poor woman came to the door one day, just as she was going out, and asked if she had any old clothes to give away she promptly took off her expensive furs and gave them to her.
The girls were mightily impressed by this act until Nyoda talked it over with them and made them see that the gift was entirely inappropriate. So while they admired her to distraction and each one secretly hoped that Veronica would single her out as a special friend, they had to admit that as yet they had not made much headway.
“If Sahwah doesn’t come in five minutes, we’ll have to start without her,” said Hinpoha, walking impatiently to the window. “Carol practice begins at two and it’s half-past one now.”
Just then the telephone rang. “It’s Sahwah,” reported Hinpoha, upon answering, “and she says she’s got a real charity case for us to look into—some old woman—and she’s down at Sahwah’s house now and we should all come down. She says it’s the saddest thing she ever heard. What shall we do, girls, shall we go?”
“What about carol practice?” asked Gladys. “Won’t it make us dreadfully late?”
“We’ll just have to be late, then,” said Katherine, jabbing her hatpins in swiftly. “Come on.”
Sahwah met them at the door with an unusually solemn countenance. “You’re a load of bricks to come, girls,” she said, “but I knew you would. Come right upstairs. In here,” she said, pausing before the door of her room. “Maybe you’d better go in one at a time. You go first, Hinpoha.”
Hinpoha, feeling queer, passed in. The next minute those outside heard a great shout. “Migwan! My Migwan! When did you come? We thought you weren’t coming for two whole days yet. Sahwah, you wretch, how could you get us so worked up?”