The whole crowd of girls rushed out to meet her, and sang a cheer from the time her motor-boat was in sight till she landed. They surrounded her, and carried her into camp, where supper was nearly ready.
It seemed very good to be back. The pine needles smelled as woodsily as ever, and the long wooden table looked very homelike, with its brown, chattering girls surrounding it, all trying to tell her everything at once. As soon as supper was over Helen and Louise swept her off to her old tent.
“Hurry,” said Helen. “Get into your ceremonial costume, honey. Heap big Council Fire to-night.”
“Council Fire?” said Winona in surprise. “Why, is it the night for it?”
“This is an extra-special,” explained Helen hastily. “Here, Win, let me help you.”
She began to unfasten Winona’s travelling suit.
“You have a lot more beads than you had,” Winona observed a little wistfully, as Helen took her own gown down from the wall and began to put it on.
Helen laughed as she slung the long string of colored honor-beads around her neck.
“Maybe you’ll catch up,” she remarked carelessly. “You’ll doubtless get an honor or so to-night.”
“Oh, yes,” said Winona. “I ought to get a bead or two for home-craft, and I did some story-hour work, too.”
“As if that was all you did!” said Helen indignantly; and stopped herself short.
“Hurry up, girls!” said Louise, sticking her bead-banded head into the tent. “Time to begin. Hear the drum!”
“Oh, the nice old drum!” cried Winona happily, as she heard its well-remembered monotonous sound in the distance. The three girls linked arms, and hurried to the council hill.
“Oh, but it’s good to be back!” said Winona for the third or fourth time, as she sank into her place in the circle around the first place. She listened dreamily as the ceremony of fire-lighting and all the rest went forward. Things had been happening, it appeared. The reports were given one by one. Winona listened on, and Hike the Camp Cat trotted noiselessly over the ground and curled himself into Winona’s lap. Even he remembered her. She stroked him and listened.
Helen, they told, had managed to coax an old farmer down the road, the identical one they didn’t buy the music-box of, to stop setting traps that hurt rabbits. Louise had, after many hoppings about in solitude, actually managed to master five folk-dances. Adelaide and little Frances had made an emergency dash down the river to get the doctor, when one of the other little girls had fallen from a tree and broken her wrist. There were other things as thrilling.