"Never mind, 'Poha," they comforted, "we love you anyhow. We couldn't live without you."
"Did anybody catch up with anybody else today?" asked Sahwah. Nyoda and Medmangi sprang to their feet, and pointing scornfully at Chapa and Gladys, sang to the tune of "Forsaken:
"O'ertaken, o'ertaken, o'ertaken were they,
On a stone by the roadside they sat plain as day;
We sat down beside them and sang them this song,
Which caused them to rise up and travel along."
"We made a song, too," cried Migwan and Hinpoha, springing to their feet. "It's to the tune of 'Jingle Bells.'" And keeping time with their feet, they sang:
"Marching through the woods,
Onward day by day,
Round the lake we go,
Singing all the way.
Packs strapped to our backs,
There our eats we stow,
Oh, what fun it is to hike
With the girls of Wohelo!
Wohelo, Wohelo,
Singing all the day,
O what fun it is to hike
Around the world away!"
The girls joined in the chorus, and then went back to the beginning, and in a few minutes the song had been "adopted for use." By this time the fire was burning low and Nyoda reminded the girls that they had walked twelve miles that day and had a still longer tramp ahead on the morrow. "It doesn't seem possible that I've walked so far today," said Migwan, sitting up and stretching. "I'm not nearly as tired as I have been some days last winter after school."
The girls had all picked out their sleeping places before dark and made up their beds on the ground. Before retiring they all took a dip in the lake, splashing around in the darkness and barking their shins on the rocks. Gladys and Chapa sought their beds first. It was the first time that Gladys had ever slept on the ground. "There's a rock in my back and my feet are higher than my head," she wailed.
"Then let's move," said Chapa, and suiting the action to the word, she picked up the bed and deposited it in another place. This was fairly comfortable and they subsided.
Next an uproar arose from a bed near the beach. "There's a million ants in my bed!" shrieked Migwan, jumping up and shaking her blankets. She had spread her bed on a colony of ant hills, and the ants had improved the shining hours until bedtime by crawling between the blankets.