"The only thing we can do," said Nyoda, "inasmuch as we haven't time to make them over, is for all of us to wear our white linen skirts with our middies outside, so it won't show how much they gap. And let this be a solemn warning to every girl to look over her clothes before it is time to go home!"
Promptly at sundown four canoes appeared around the cliff, each manned by two paddlers, and drew up alongside the Winnebago dock, where the girls stood to welcome them. The Counsellor who had shown Sahwah and Gladys around the boys' camp was there, and the Roberts brothers and five more of the senior campers. Ed Roberts looked around for Gladys the first thing, and his brother for Sahwah, while the rest paired off with the other girls as they went up the hill to the shack. Nyoda was not very fond of having her company sitting around in pairs and immediately started them to playing games which took them all in, and followed the games up with a Virginia Reel. Ed Roberts was filled with impatience at this method of entertainment, for it gave him no chance to monopolize Gladys as he would have liked to. He saw that she was a good dancer and was eager to try a new Hesitation step with her.
By and by Gladys slipped from the room and returned dressed in a fancy dancing costume. Poising on her toes as lightly as a butterfly, she did some of her choicest dances—"The Dance of the Snowflake," "The Daffodil," "The Fairy in the Fountain." The admiration of the boys knew no bounds, and she received a perfect ovation.
"Now, Sahwah, do your dance," commanded Nyoda. Sahwah shrank back and did not want to, saying that after Gladys's performance anything she could do would seem pitifully flat. But the boys all urged her to try it, and at last she allowed herself to be led out on the floor by Gladys. She was still in an agony of embarrassment and wished the floor would open and swallow her, but it was a rule of the Winnebagos that if they were called on to perform for the entertainment of visitors they must do the thing called for to the best of their ability, and Sahwah knew that if she refused to dance the reckoning with Nyoda would be worse than the embarrassment of dancing, so she swallowed hard and went to work. She got through it very creditably indeed and was rewarded with hearty applause, which made her more fussed than ever.
Then boys and girls alike clamored to be allowed to "just dance" and Ed Roberts had plenty of opportunity to try his new Hesitation with Gladys. But after she had danced three or four times with him in succession she left him for another partner. This made him cross and he would not ask any one else to dance until a quiet word from his Counsellor sent him rather unwillingly on to the floor again. "Mayn't I have this one?" he pleaded every time after that, but Gladys smilingly declined, saying she had promised every one of the boys a dance and would not get around if she gave him any more, to which he assented politely, fuming inwardly, and wanted Gladys to himself more than ever. "Bet I don't get another dance with her to-night," he thought crossly, and this was exactly the case, for Nyoda presently suggested lemonade and the dancing stopped.
It was nearly nine o'clock by this time, but the boys pleaded so hard for a ride on the lake in the canoes that Nyoda yielded and granted fifteen minutes extra. Ed Roberts took immediate possession of Gladys and led her into his canoe before she had time to say a word. He pushed off before there was time to put any one else in with them, for some of the canoes had to carry four. As they paddled through the moonlit water the girls sang "Across the Silver'd Lake" and by and by the boys added a few bass and tenor notes to it. Fairly in tune now they sang song after song in time to the dipping of their paddles.
"How much better any song sounds with a bass to it!" said Nyoda to the Counsellor in the canoe with her, which remark, though merely an effort to start a conversation on Nyoda's part, caused the Counsellor to flush to the roots of his hair and get completely out of stroke.
Sahwah, up at the head of the procession with Ned Roberts, was in her element. He was a fine paddler and his stroke matched hers exactly. They were in her own little canoe, the Keewaydin, and as it was so much lighter than the others they were continually getting ahead. She taught him the "silent" paddle of the Indians, which they used to hide their approach, twisting the paddle around under the surface to avoid the sound of dipping. She told him about the rifle which Gladys's father had sent her, and he promised to teach her to shoot it when the boys made the all-day visit which Nyoda had suggested.
Ed Roberts managed to keep himself and Gladys at the tail of the procession. He was continually stopping to let the canoe drift and gradually widening the distance between them and the others. When they rounded one of the little islands he stopped so long that the first canoes got out of sight around the bend, leaving them hidden behind the island. Gladys would have paddled on, but he begged her to stop and talk awhile. "Let's land on the island and sit on the rocks in the moonlight," he proposed. Gladys refused.
"Nyoda wouldn't like it," she said, "and it's past our bed time already. The other canoes have started for home."