“Suppose what?” asked Hinpoha.
“Do you suppose,” continued Migwan, “that Sahwah was up here and broke it accidentally and is afraid to show herself on account of it?”
“Maybe,” said Hinpoha, “but Sahwah’s not the one to try to cover up anything like that. She’d offer to pay for the damage and it wouldn’t worry her five minutes.”
“It may have been broken the night of the storm,” said Nyoda, who had arrived on the scene. “If I remember rightly, we opened it when Miss Mortimer was up here, and as it is only held up by a nail and a rope hanging down from the ceiling, it could easily have been torn loose in such a wind as that and slammed down against the casement and broken. We were so excited trying to cover up the plants that we did not hear the crash, if indeed, we could have heard it in that thunder at all.”
This seemed such a plausible explanation that the girls accepted it without question and dismissed the matter from their minds. Descending from the hot attic they went out on the river on the raft. As it drew near supper time they feared that Sahwah would stay away and miss her supper, and they knew that she would have to show herself sometime, so they determined to have it over with so Sahwah could eat her supper in peace. On the path along the river they found her handkerchief and knew that she was somewhere near the water. They called and called, but she did not answer. “I know what will bring her from her hiding-place,” said Nyoda. She unfolded her plan and the girls agreed. They poled the raft back to the landing-place and got on shore. Then they set Ophelia on the raft all alone and sent it down-stream, telling her to scream at the top of her voice as if she were frightened. Ophelia obeyed and set up such a series of ear-splitting shrieks as she floated down the river that it was hard to believe that she was not in mortal terror. The scheme worked admirably. Sahwah heard the screams and peered through the bushes to see what was happening. She saw Ophelia alone on the raft and no one else in sight, and thought, of course, that she was afraid and ran out to reassure her. She took hold of the tow line and pulled the raft back to the landing-place.
“Whatever made you so scared?” she asked, as Ophelia stepped on terra firma.
“Pooh, I wasn’t scared at all,” said Ophelia, grandly. “They told me to scream so you’d come out.” So Sahwah knew the trick that had been practised on her, but instead of being pleased to think that the girls wanted her with them so badly she was more irritated than before. There was no further use of hiding; she had to go into the house now and eat her supper with the rest. The meal was not such a trial for her as she had anticipated, because no one mentioned the subject of moving pictures, or acted as if anything had happened at all. After supper Nyoda brought out a magazine showing pictures of the Rocky Mountains and the girls gave this their strict attention. Nyoda read aloud the descriptions that went with the pictures. In one place she read: “The barren aspect of the hillside is due to a landslide which swept everything before it.”
At this Migwan’s thoughts went back to the scene on the hillside that day, when the human landslide was in progress. Now Migwan, in spite of her serious appearance, had a sense of humor which at times got the upper hand of her altogether. The memory of those figures rolling down the hill was too much for her and she dissolved abruptly into hysterical laughter. She vainly tried to control it and buried her face in her handkerchief, but it was no use. The harder she tried to stop laughing the harder she laughed. “Oh,” she gasped, “I never saw anything so funny as when you rolled against Miss Mortimer and Mr. Chambers and knocked them off their feet.”
After Migwan’s hysterical outburst the rest could not restrain their laughter either, and Sahwah became the butt of all the humorous remarks that had been accumulating in the minds of the rest. If it had been anyone else but Migwan who had started them off, Sahwah would possibly have forgiven that one, but since selling her two plots to Mr. Larue Migwan had been holding her head pretty high. That Migwan had succeeded in her end of the motion picture business when she had failed in hers galled Sahwah to death and she fancied that Migwan was trying to “rub it in.”
“I hope everything I do will cause you as much pleasure,” she said stiffly. “I suppose nothing could make you happier than to see me do something ridiculous every day.” Sahwah had slipped off her balance wheel altogether.