"When may I go out in a canoe?" asked Gladys.
"Right this very minute," said Nyoda, and took her out for a ride in the sailing canoe.
The morning song hour had now become a time of keenest pleasure, for Gladys threw herself into the work with heart and voice. Her strong, sure soprano led the girls through many a difficult passage which they could not have attempted without her help, and she taught them much about expression. She took great pleasure in singing solo parts and having the girls hum the accompaniment. This last arrangement was particularly effective on the water, and the hills echoed nightly with "Don' You Cry, Ma Honey," "Mammy Lou," "Rockin' in the Wind" and other negro melodies, besides boating songs galore. Migwan won a local song honor by writing a lullaby, beginning:
"Over the water Night steers her canoe,
She's coming, she's coming, for me and for you."
But the favorite canoe song was, and always would be, "Across the Silver'd Lake," and the girls sang it first and last every night. The moon was in full glory at that time of the month, and the glittering lake closed in by high dark pines made a scene of indescribable beauty. It was harder each night to break away and go to bed.
"O dear," sighed Migwan one night, "why do we have to go to bed at all? I'd like to stay up and serenade the moon all night!"
"I don't know as I care about wasting songs on that old dead moon," said practical Sahwah, "but there is one thing I'd like to do, and that is serenade the doctor."
"That's a good idea," said. Nyoda, "and one which we must carry out."
So the next morning they gathered around the piano to practise a song to sing under Dr. Hoffman's window. "We ought to sing a German one," said Sahwah, "that would please him more than anything." They picked out the "Lorelei" and began learning the German words.
The night was one of magic splendor and the lake was without a ripple as the two long, dark canoes glided silently over the water toward the opposite shore. The doctor's house, which was a summer cottage, stood close to the beach, and a light on the side where his office was assured them that he was at home. Gladys started them off, and the beautiful strains rose on the still air: