“223? Just love to,” Mimi fibbed. They couldn’t see her flushed face. They mustn’t know she was teased. There were ruts and bumps on the trail now but Mimi would forge ahead. Once she determined to do something she kept at it doggedly. At camp she had resolved to find the beautiful in life, and where it was not, to create beauty. She had chosen as her watchword, “Hojoni,” a Navajo word meaning “trail of beauty.” In darkest moments she uttered it prayerfully. As she turned in 223 she whispered to herself, “Hojoni.” Gingerly she picked up the soiled clothes tied up in a big bath towel and holding them at arm’s length away from her averted nose, fled down the back stairs and left them.
She reached the post office just in time to have the windows closed in her face—and there was a letter in her box! It could be for Chloe but again it could be from Mother Dear! All period she tried to concentrate on the fact that “a straight line is the shortest distance between two points,” but who could focus her attention on geometry when she had been humiliated? When she might have her first news from home? The post office wouldn’t be open again until three-thirty. How could she wait?
Going to her first gym class helped, or she thought it would.
Getting out of her uniform and putting on black shorts and a clean white shirt perked her up. Mimi loved the freedom of gym clothes. She liked to fling her arms, stretch her legs, to run and dance and play. The greatest disappointment she had had so far at Sheridan was the fact that there was no swimming pool. Plans for the completion of a modern swimming pool with lights beneath the water were under way but that didn’t help Mimi this year. To make up for not having a pool, there were macadam tennis courts and an excellent hardwood basket ball floor. Today she would find out about them and from Miss Bassett! Dit might be there, too.
Again Mimi was disappointed. Something besides play was happening in the gymnasium. Girls were huddled in the anteroom. Two doctors, two nurses and half a dozen college seniors—yes, Dit was one of them—majoring in Physical Education were busy. Miss Bassett was here and there.
“In line alphabetically,” she said as Mimi straggled in. “New girls in anteroom to the left, alphabetically, please.”
When Miss Bassett spoke, people acted.
“What is it all about?” Chloe asked Mimi. There was something so appealing about her wide-eyed question, Mimi put her arm around her. Chloe looked so small and helpless in her gym clothes. Her legs and arms were paper-white in contrast to Mimi’s ruddiness.
“Physical examination,” Mimi guessed, and she was right. “I took one to get my medical card for camp and it isn’t bad,” Mimi reassured Chloe.
She was not half so composed as she sounded. Daddy had examined her for camp. Hastily he had run down the card, checking the contagious diseases she had had—measles, mumps, whooping cough—writing yes or no after questions about vaccination and serums. He had thumped her chest a time or two, pressed his ear above her heart. Laughing heartily he had said: