Lovingly your
Katherine.
GLADYS TO KATHERINE
Brownell College, Oct. 18, 19—.
Darling Katherine:
Well, we’re settled at last, though it did seem at first as though we were going to spend all our college life wandering around with our belongings in our arms. We came a day late and found the room we had arranged for occupied by someone else. Through a mistake it had been assigned to us after it had been once assigned to these other two, so we had to relinquish our claim. The freshman dormitory was full to the eaves and we realized that there wasn’t going to be any place for us. We made our roomless plight known and to make up for it we were told there was a vacant double in the sophomore dormitory that we might take provided no sophomores wanted it. We hadn’t expected such an honor and sped like the wind after our belongings. The sophomore dormitory is right across from the freshman one; they are called Paradise and Purgatory, respectively. It sounded awfully funny to us at first to hear the girls asking each other where they were and to hear them answer, “I’m in Paradise,” or, “I’m in Purgatory.” We were overcome with joy when we discovered that Migwan roomed in Paradise. Our room was way up on the third floor and hers was down on second, but to be under the same roof with her was such a comfort that all our troubles seemed over for good. We just had our things pretty well straightened out and Hinpoha was nailing her shoebag to the closet door when the sky fell and we were informed that a couple of sophomores wanted our room, and, as there was now a vacancy in the freshman dormitory, would we kindly move? So we were thrown out of Paradise and landed in Purgatory after all, and, for the second time that day, we trailed across the campus with our arms full of personal property, strewing table covers and laundry bags in our wake. We didn’t have time to straighten out before exams began and for two days we lived like shipwrecked sailors with the goods that had been saved from the wreck piled on the floor and when we wanted anything we had to rummage for half an hour before we found it. Even after we had survived exams we were half afraid to begin settling for fear we would be ordered to move once more. We couldn’t quite believe that we were anchored at last.
The first week went around very fast; we were so busy getting our classes straightened out and learning our way through the different buildings that we didn’t have time to feel homesick. But by Saturday the first strangeness had worn off; we had stopped wandering into senior class rooms and professors’ committee meetings, but still we hadn’t had time to get very well acquainted. Saturday afternoon was perfect weather and most everybody in the house had gone off for a walk, but we had stayed at home to finish putting our room to rights. When everything was finally in place we sat down on the bed and looked at each other. Hinpoha’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“I want the other Winnebagos!” she declared. “I can’t live without them. I want Sahwah and Nakwisi and Medmangi, and I want Katherine! Oh-h-h-h, I want Katherine! How will we ever get along without her here?”
And we both sat there and wanted you so hard that it seemed as if the heavens must open up and drop you down on the bed beside us. Katherine, do you know that you have ruined our whole lives? Why, O why did you come to us only to go away again? You got us so in the habit of looking to you to tell us what to do next that now we aren’t able to start a thing for ourselves. We knew that if you had been there with us that first week you would have had the whole house in an uproar and something wonderful would have been happening every minute. But for the life of us we couldn’t think of a single thing to do for ourselves.
We were still sitting there steeped in gloom when Migwan came in to see how we were getting on. She had some delicious milk chocolate with her and that cheered Hinpoha up quite a bit. It’s going to be a heavenly comfort to have Migwan just ahead of us in college. She knows all the ropes and the teachers and the gossip about the upper classmen and tells us things that keep us from making the ridiculous mistakes so many of the freshmen make all the time.
“But just think how I felt here, all alone, last year,” said Migwan. “Perhaps I didn’t miss you girls, though! You were still altogether and had Nyoda, but here there wasn’t a soul who had ever heard of the Winnebagos. Now it seems like old times again. Think of it, three whole Winnebagos living together almost under the same roof! Didn’t we say that night when we had our last Council Fire with Nyoda that although we couldn’t be together any more, we were still Winnebagos and were loyal friends and true, and that wherever two Winnebagos should meet, whether it was in the street, or on mid-ocean, or in a far country, right then and there would take place a Winnebago meeting? Why, we’re having a Winnebago meeting this very minute!”
“Let’s keep on having meetings, as often as we can, just us three,” said Hinpoha, “and talk over old times and have ‘Counts.’ We can call ourselves The Last of the Winnebagos, like the Last of the Mohicans, and our password will be ‘Remember!’ That means, ‘Remember the old days!’”