“Sh, she’s gone over to get—her,” answered Gladys, smoothing out the folds of her pretty new pleated dress with one hand and tucking in a stray lock with the other.
“What did you say ‘sh’ for?” demanded Sahwah curiously. “There’s no one sleeping, is there?”
“I don’t know why I said it,” answered Gladys, rumpling up the hair she had just tidied, “I’m so excited about meeting Veronica that I don’t know what I’m doing. I just can’t sit still.” And she jumped up from her chair and began to pace nervously up and down the room.
“Doesn’t it remind you of the time we stood on the dock at Loon Lake and waited for Gladys to make her first appearance?” said Hinpoha to Sahwah. “Don’t you remember how we wondered what she would be like and you and Migwah nearly fought over whose affinity she was going to be?”
“Did you really, girls?” said Gladys, pausing in her walk. “And was I as nice as you hoped I’d be?”
Footsteps on the porch saved Hinpoha from having to reply and Gladys hurried to her chair and seated herself properly. A moment later Nyoda entered the room with a young girl beside her whom she led into the center of the group.
“Girls,” she said, with one hand on the stranger’s shoulder, “this is our new member, Veronica Lehar.”
All eyes centered on the newcomer. She was a small, slender girl with short curly black hair, olive complexion, bright red lips and a straight, finely modeled nose. She wore a dark red velvet dress which suited her complexion wonderfully, and fell in soft folds about her lithe form. She was as straight as an arrow and as graceful as a deer. From the crown of her finely poised head to her little fur-topped boots she was an aristocrat. The simple Winnebagos were abashed before her. Never had they met such a high-born little lady. There was an air about her which they could never acquire if they lived a hundred years. They felt like peasants in the presence of a queen. But they forgot her aristocratic air when they looked into her eyes. Large and dark and velvety as a pansy, but so sad it almost broke your heart to look into them. All the sympathy which the girls had worked up for her since hearing her story came back in a rush and they surrounded her with cordial greetings and expressions of welcome. Veronica held her violin, which she had brought over with her, under one arm while she shook hands politely with all the girls. She answered all their pretty speeches in a friendly manner, but she never once smiled, and her eyes had a look as if her thoughts were not there in the room at all, but back in the far country across the ocean. Although she had an accent she spoke a beautiful English, in fact, she used far better language than the majority of American schoolgirls, and more than once the girls felt embarrassed when they had forgotten themselves so far as to utter a slang phrase.
Conversation soon languished, for Veronica did not seem inclined to talk, so Nyoda started the girls singing camp songs to amuse her, and led the talk around to the Winnebagos’ doings which she was now to take part in. Of course the new lodge was the main topic of conversation with the Winnebagos and they waxed so enthusiastic over its splendors that Veronica exclaimed with some show of warmth, “Oh, I must see it soon!” Then she added, “Tell me what I must do to become a Camp Fire Girl like yourselves.”
“You must have a symbolic name,” answered Gladys eagerly, anxious to be the one to explain things to Veronica, “and a Ceremonial dress, and learn the songs, and know the Camp Fire Girls’ Desire, and the Winnebago passwords and oh, lots of delightful things.”