“The river!” cried Sahwah, immediately, “we must go out on the river once more. Oh, how can I say good-bye to the Tortoise-Crab?” And she shed imaginary tears into her handkerchief.
“Let’s go for one more float,” cried all the girls.
The grown-ups strolled down to the river bank and sat on the grassy slope, watching with indulgent interest what the girls were going to do next. They saw them coming far up the river and heard their song as it was wafted down on the scented breeze. Slowly and majestically the raft approached, with Sahwah standing up and guiding it with the pole. When it had come nearer the onlookers saw a romantic spectacle indeed. Gladys reposed on a bed of flowers and leaves, under a canopy of branches and vines, a ravishingly lovely Cleopatra. Beside her knelt Antony, otherwise Migwan, holding out to her a big white water lily. The other Winnebagos, as slave maidens, sat on the raft and wove flower wreaths or fanned their lovely mistress with leaf fans. It was the slaves who were doing the singing and their clear voices rang out with wonderful harmony on the enchanted air. On they came, past the spot where Sahwah had been hidden on the afternoon of the moving pictures; past the Lorelei Rock, where they had held that other pageant which had frightened Calvin so; past the spot where they lay concealed and watched the strange manœuvers of the supposed Venoti gang. Each rock and tree along the stream was pregnant with memories of that eventful summer, and they could hardly believe that they were saying good-bye to it all.
Now they were opposite the watchers on the bank and the murmurs of admiration reached their ears as they floated past. “What lovely voices——”
“What wonderful imaginations those girls have——”
“How beautifully they work together——”
Calvin looked on in speechless admiration, his eyes for the most part on Migwan. Never in his life had he regretted anything so much as he did the fact that these jolly friends of his were going away. He was to stay on his farm after all and now the prospect suddenly seemed empty.
The voices of the onlookers blended in the ears of the boaters with the murmur of the river as it flowed over the stones, and with the sighing of the wind in the willows as the raft passed on.
And here let us leave the Winnebagos for a time as we love best to see them, all together on the water, their voices raised in the wonder song of youth as they float down the river under the spell of the magic moonlight.
THE END.