"How thin you are getting, child!" she exclaimed, smoothing back the red curls. "I don't believe you get out enough. By the way," she said to Aunt Phoebe, "may I borrow this girl for to-day? I have considerable driving about to do and it is rather tiresome going alone. Gladys has gone on an all-day boat ride."
Aunt Phoebe could not very well refuse, for driving about in a machine with an older woman was a very proper form of recreation indeed, in her estimation.
Hinpoha flew upstairs and deposited her bottle of bees on the table in her room for future observation and started off with Mrs. Evans. "We will not be back for lunch, and possibly not for supper," said Gladys's mother as she bade Aunt Phoebe a gracious good-bye, "but it will not be long after that."
"And now for a grand spin," she said, as she started the car and sent it crackling through the dry leaves on the pavement.
"Now I see why the Indians named this river 'Cuyahoga,' or 'Crooked,'" said Migwan, as they rounded bend after bend in the stream. "It coils back on itself like a snake, and I have already counted seven coils within the city limits. I didn't believe it when the captain of a freighter told me that there was a place in the river which his boat couldn't pass because two sharp turns came so near together, but now I see how that could easily be possible."
As the launch putt-putt-putt-ed steadily up the river the water gradually became less black, and the factories along the shore gave way to open stretches of country. By noon they reached the dam and went ashore to look for a place to build a fire. They were in a deep gorge, its steep sides thickly covered with flaming maples and oaks, and brilliant sumachs, stretching on either side as far as they could reach. "It's too gorgeous to seem real," said Nyoda, shading her eyes and looking down the valley; "where does Mother Nature keep her pot of 'Diamond Dyes' in the summer time?"
High up along the top of one of the cliffs a narrow road wound along, and as Nyoda stood looking into the distance she saw an automobile coming along this road. When it was directly above her it stopped and two people got out, a woman and a girl. The sunlight fell on a mass of red curls on the girl's head. "Hinpoha!" exclaimed Nyoda in amazement. From above came floating down a far-echoing yodel—the familiar Winnebago call. The girls all looked up in surprise to see Hinpoha scrambling down the face of the cliff, and aiding Mrs. Evans to descend.
"Why, mother!" called Gladys, running up to meet her.
The surprise at the meeting was mutual. Mrs. Evans, spinning along the country roads, had no idea she was hard on the trail of her daughter and the other Winnebagos until she came suddenly upon them after they had gotten out of the launch. "Can't you stay and spend the day with us, now that you're here?" they pleaded.
Hinpoha's longing soul looked out of her eyes, but she answered, "I'm afraid not. Aunt Phoebe wouldn't approve."