Sahwah ran from the room in a fearful passion. Nyoda tried to comfort Migwan. “It’s a lucky thing we found it before the stuff was sold,” she said, “or your trade would have been ruined.” She and the other girls threw the ketchup out and washed the bottles.
“Whatever could have happened to it?” said Gladys, wonderingly.
Migwan lifted her face. “I want to tell you something, Nyoda,” she said. “I suppose you wonder why I asked Sahwah if she had put anything in. Well, when I went back into the kitchen after my hat when we were going out on the river, Sahwah was there, and she was dropping something into the kettle.”
“You don’t mean it?” said Nyoda, incredulously. Nyoda understood Sahwah’s blind impulses of passion, and she could not help noticing for the last few days that Sahwah was still nursing her wrath at Migwan for laughing at her, and she wondered if she could have lost control of herself for an instant and spoiled the ketchup.
Meanwhile Sahwah, up-stairs, had cooled down almost as rapidly as she had flared up, and began to think that she had been a little hasty in her outburst. She, therefore, descended the back stairs with the idea of making peace with the family and helping to wash the bottles. But halfway down the stairs she happened to hear Migwan’s remark and Nyoda’s answer, and the long silence which followed it. Immediately her fury mounted again to think that they suspected her of doing such an underhand trick. “They don’t trust me!” she cried, over and over again to herself. “They don’t believe what I said; they think I did it and told a lie about it.” All night she tossed and nursed her sense of injury and by morning her mind was made up. She would leave this place where everyone was against her, and where even Nyoda mistrusted her. That was the most unkind cut of all.
When she did not appear at the breakfast table the rest began to wonder. Betty reported that Sahwah had not been in bed when she woke up, which was late, and she thought she had risen and dressed and gone down-stairs without disturbing her. There was no sign of her in the garden or on the river. Both the rowboat and the raft were at the landing-place. There was an uncomfortable restraint at the breakfast table. Each one was thinking of something and did not want the others to see it. That thing was that Sahwah had a guilty conscience and was afraid to face the girls. Migwan’s eyes filled with tears when she thought how her dear friend had injured her. A blow delivered by the hand of a friend is so much worse than one from an enemy. The table was always set the night before and the plates turned down.
“What’s this sticking out under Sahwah’s plate?” asked Gladys. It was a note which she opened and read and then sat down heavily in her chair. The rest crowded around to see. This was what they read: “As long as you don’t trust me and think I do underhand things you will probably be glad to get rid of me altogether. Don’t look for me, for I will never come back. You may give my place in the Winnebagos to someone else.” It was signed “Sarah Ann Brewster,” and not the familiar “Sahwah.”
“Sahwah’s run away!” gasped Migwan in distress, and the girls all ran up to her room. Her clothes were gone from their hooks and her suit-case was gone from under the bed. The girls faced each other in consternation.
“Do you think she had anything to do with the ketchup, after all?” asked Gladys, thoughtfully. “It was so unlike her to do anything of that kind.”
“Then why did she run away?” asked Migwan, perplexed.