Gladys got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head. It was the first time she had ever slept out of doors. She felt very small and lonesome and neglected. She had not wanted to come to this camp the least bit. Other summers she had always gone to Atlantic City or some other crowded, lively summer resort with her parents, where she had received considerable attention from young men, just like the older girls with whom she associated. Here, banished to the silent woods, she saw the summer stretch out endlessly before her, intolerably dull and uninteresting. She loved fluffy clothes and despised the bloomers and middies which the girls wore. She loved dainty table service and hated to cook. Up here she would be expected to help with the meals, and all there was to cook on was an open fire and a gasoline stove! What could her father have been thinking of to want her to join such a club! These girls were not in her own class; they went to public school, they were rough and horrid and threw each other into the water!
Gladys could not go to sleep. She tossed restlessly, thinking rebellious thoughts, and shuddering at the night noises in the woods. The lapping of the water on the rocks below had a lonesome sound. She had not yet learned to hear its soft crooning lullaby. The wind rustled in the pine trees with a ghostly, mysterious sound. From somewhere in the woods came a mournful cry that sent the chills up and down her spine. It was only a whippoorwill, but Gladys did not know a whippoorwill from a bluebird. Then the frogs in a distant pool began their concert. "Blub!" "Blub!" "Knee-deep!" "Better go round!" "Knee-deep!" "Better go round!" "Skeel!" "Skeek!" "Skeel!" "Skeek!" "Blub!" "Glub!" "Chralk!" Gladys's eyes started out of her head at the unearthly noises. Her nerves were just about on edge from their incessant piping when suddenly a long, eerie laugh rang out over the water.
"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
She screamed aloud and sat up in bed. "What's the matter?" said
Migwan, waking up.
"What was it? Oh, what was it?" asked Gladys in a voice cold with terror.
"What was what?" said Migwan.
Just then the sound rang out again. "That!" said Gladys.
"Why, that's nothing but a loon," answered Migwan. "Isn't it lovely!" And she fell asleep again.
But slumber would not come to Gladys. The bed sagged in the middle and she could not get herself adjusted to it. She was finally in the act of dozing off when the bed collapsed with a jarring crash. Instantly the whole camp was awake. Migwan jumped up and lit the lantern, and Nyoda came running over from Alpha to see what was the matter. There was much laughter over the mishap, but unfortunately Gladys got the idea that Sahwah, who had giggled uncontrollably from the start, was responsible for the bed going down. "You made it fall down," she said to her, and burst into tears. Sahwah stared at her open mouthed.
"I never touched it," she declared.