“It isn’t because I don’t want to stay,” said Katherine in a choking voice, “it’s because I want to go home. It’s hotter out there than a blast furnace, and our one-story brick shack is like an oven, and we haven’t one-tenth of the comforts that people have here, but it’s–home!”
Migwan rolled Katherine over and took her head into her lap. “I know just how you feel,” she said softly. “After you’ve been away from home a whole year nothing looks good to you any more but that. And when you’ve been crossing off the days on your calendar and been cheered up every night when you realized that you were that much nearer home it must be an awful bump to find out that you’re not to go after all. But cheer up, it won’t be 9 so bad after all, once you get used to the idea. Think what a good time your folks are having, and then start out and hunt up some adventures of your own.”
Thus she comforted the doleful Katherine and the others pressed around to express their sympathy and none of them heard the automobile stop in front of the house. They all started violently when Gladys burst into their midst, and regardless of the prostrating temperature, danced a jig on the porch floor.
“Oh, girls,” she cried, waving a palm-leaf fan over her head like a triumphal banner, “listen! Papa has bought Lake Huron and we’re all going camping!”
And without noticing the tears in Katherine’s eyes, she pulled her out of Migwan’s lap and danced around with her.
“Your papa has done what?” cried Migwan, her voice shrill with amazement. “Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Evans.” For Gladys’s mother, proceeding more leisurely up the walk than her impetuous daughter, was just coming up the steps. “What’s this about Mr. Evans buying Lake Huron?”
“Oh, nothing so startling as that,” said Mrs. Evans, laughing in great amusement. “We haven’t started out to own the world yet. But without any effort on his part, Mr. Evans has become the owner of a small island somewhere in Lake Huron. Some time ago he lent a large amount of money to a company 10 owning the island to establish a bottling works for mineral water, which flowed from a spring on the island. But after the money had been spent to get the business under way the spring was discovered to be much smaller than had at first been supposed; in fact, not large enough to be profitable at all. The company went bankrupt, and the island, which had been put up as security for the loan, became the property of Mr. Evans. Owning an island so far away was so much like having a castle in Spain that none of us thought much about it until just now, when Mr. Evans has suffered a severe nervous breakdown and the doctor has ordered him to get away from his work and from the city altogether and spend the summer living close to nature. This made our trip to the seashore, with its hotels and its throngs of people, out of the question, and then we thought of the desert island up in Lake Huron. But when we talked it over we decided that it would be pretty lonesome up there with just the three of us, and Gladys suggested that we round up all the girls who would otherwise stay in town all summer and take them up with us. Do you suppose any of you could go?” Mrs. Evans looked rather wistfully from one to the other.
“Will we go?” shouted Sahwah, likewise forgetting the heat and capering madly about the porch, “I should say we will! We were just resigning ourselves to the dullest summer that ever happened.”
11“I would love to go,” said Migwan a little less vehemently, but none the less sincerely, “and I don’t think my folks will have the slightest objection. Mother was really worried about my having to stay here during the hot weather. She’s afraid I’ve studied too hard.”
“And I am sure I can go,” said Hinpoha. “The Doctor and Aunt Phoebe are going East to a lot of conventions, and while I could go along, I suppose, rather than stay at home, I’d lots rather go with you.”