Then they dragged Migwan out to the House of the Open Door and introduced her to the Sandwiches, who were playing basket ball in their half of the barn. The Sandwiches began to plan a Christmas barn dance in her honor on the spot, and nobody thought of carol practice again until it was too late to go. Migwan had to explain how she got through with her work at college two days earlier than she had expected and came home to surprise them. She went to see Sahwah first and Sahwah worked the little stratagem which brought them all down to her house in such a hurry. Each one insisted upon Migwan’s going home with her to spend the night, but she could not be enticed away from her own home. “I guess you’d want to stay at home, too, if you hadn’t seen your mother for three months.” But she promised to attend a select sleeping party some night up in the House of the Open Door, which Sahwah had just “germed.”
“There’s a loose shingle on the roof and the snow comes in a little,” said Hinpoha regretfully. “It really ought to be fixed.”
“Never mind the shingle,” cried the others. “When did the Winnebagos ever balk at a snowflake or two on their beds?”
The barn dance was a grand success in spite of the fact that Slim fell down the ladder in his excitement and sprained all the portions of his anatomy that he needed most for dancing, besides demolishing a frosted cake in the tumble.
“Too bad you can’t dance,” said the Captain sympathetically, when Slim’s ankles had been strapped with plaster and he had been comfortably settled on a pile of bearskins brought down from the bed upstairs. “But you don’t need to waste your time. You can be musician and play the banjo while the rest of us dance.”
“But I can’t play the banjo,” objected Slim.
“Play anyway,” commanded the Captain. “Here, I’ll teach you a couple of tunes that you can play with one finger that we can do most of the dances to.” So Slim learned to play the banjo under pressure and picked banefully away while the rest whirled about on the floor. Sometimes he got his tunes or his time so badly mixed that it was impossible to dance and then the Captain would make him sing and beat time with a hatchet on the floor. Finally Nyoda took pity on him and took over the banjo, producing such lively strains and keeping the dancers going at such a mad pace that they sank down breathless one by one, and a series of loud thumps from Sandhelo’s stall told them that he was also capering to the music and nearly battering his stall down in the process.
The boys went home reluctantly at eleven o’clock and the girls climbed the ladder to the joys of the “select sleeping party.” This was the first time any of them had stayed all night in the House of the Open Door. “Covers were laid for nine,” as Katherine wrote in the Count Book. Nyoda had her camp bed, Sahwah had her pile of bearskins, Gladys her Indian Bed and Nakwisi her willow bed. Migwan was invited to share them all and chose the bearskins. Katherine had brought a couch hammock, which she declared surpassed them all in comfort. The rest of the girls played John Kempo for the privilege of sleeping with Nyoda, and Veronica got it, and the other two spread their blankets on mattresses on the floor. The fireplace was filled with glowing hard coals, which would keep all night, and the Lodge was as warm as toast, so the snowflakes which drifted in through the hole in the roof were never noticed. Of course they talked half the night, for there was so much to tell Migwan and so much she had to tell them it seemed they never would get it all told. But finally the conversation was punctuated by steadily lengthening yawns, and then trailed off into silence.
Nyoda was awakened by the touch of a cold hand on her face. “What is it?” she asked, sitting up.
“It’s I—Migwan,” said the figure standing beside her. “Do you know where Sahwah is?”