“What is the matter? What are they saying?” gasped Hinpoha in terror to Katherine, struggling to pull away from the hand that was clutching her coat lapel.
“I don’t know,” answered Katherine, completely at sea and vainly trying to understand the gibberish that was being uttered by the brown-skinned woman dancing up and down before her.
A startled group of workers ran from the Mission to see what the trouble was, and, forcing themselves through the circle, drew the frightened girls inside the fence of the Mission. Then from the group of women outside there arose a voice in broken English, demanding angrily: “Where is the charm that hung on the neck of my Stefan? The charm to keep away the fever and the sore eyes? I give you my boy to watch, you steal away the charm. Give it back! Give it back!” Here the angry shouting and gesticulating began again and threatening hands were waved over the fence.
“What does she mean?” asked Hinpoha. “What charm?”
“We didn’t steal any charms,” said Katherine indignantly. “We didn’t take a thing off the babies except some dirty old rabbits’ tails that were full of germs. We burned them up, and a good thing it was, too.”
Here the angry shouts of the women gave way to wails of despair. “They burned the rabbits’ tails!” groaned one woman, who could talk English, lifting her hands heavenward, “the rabbits’ tails that the Wonder Woman tied about their necks on Easter Sunday! Now Stefan will get the fever and the sore eyes and the teeth will not come through!” And she beat her breast in despair. Then her anger blazed forth again and she fell to berating the girls in her own language, and the other women fell in with her until there was a perfect hubbub. The workers at the Mission hustled the girls inside the building and the women finally departed, shaking fists at the Mission and raging at all the dwellers.
“It was nothing but a dirty old rabbit’s tail,” declared Hinpoha tearfully, as the shaken Winnebagos hastened homeward. “I hate foreigners! I guess we’ll never try to do anything for them again.”
“Oh, yes, we will,” answered Katherine optimistically; “we’ll learn not to make mistakes in time.”
“Look at that donkey over there,” said Sahwah. “Doesn’t he remind you of Sandhelo?”
“Poor old Sandhelo,” mourned Hinpoha. “I wonder what became of him? We certainly had fun with him, even if he never would go unless he heard music.”