"Another Summer, perhaps," she said to comfort them, and her own eyes grew wet, for the children had been a great joy to her in her loneliness.
She gave them each a sweet-grass basket with a cover as a parting present, and they put them inside the rougher ones they had made themselves. That charming perfume would always make them think of the bright plumage, the shining braids and the flashing eyes of their new friend.
"Please be thinking up stories all Winter, will you, Wenonah?" asked Hal.
She promised; and at Christmas-time the children sent her a book of interesting tales to entertain her through the long, cold Winter evenings as she had entertained them through many a sunny afternoon.
They wrote her, also, of a wonderful Christmas gift they had received, themselves. A baby sister had come to their house and they were trying to decide on a name for her. They wanted to call her Wenonah, they wrote, but their mother said her nose wasn't straight enough!
"But we will tell her all about you," wrote Lois, "and we'll bring her with us next Summer. She's such a little, tiny thing! Hal and I told her about Lily-bud and Rose-Petal and she smiled. We think perhaps she knows them. We can hardly wait until she grows big enough to tell us. Good-bye, Wenonah, Good-bye."