“Now everybody come to breakfast, and forget all about this miserable business.”
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIALS OF AN EXPLORER
“Oh, tell me again about the time you went camping, and the people thought you were drowning,” begged Sylvia.
Hinpoha drew up a footstool under her feet, and sank back into a cushioned chair with a long sigh of contentment. All day long she had been helping the others search for the secret passage, upstairs and downstairs, and back upstairs again, until she dropped, panting and exhausted, into a chair beside Sylvia in the library and declared she couldn’t stand up another minute. The others never thought of stopping.
“But you aren’t fat,” she retorted when Sahwah protested against her dropping out. “You can run up and downstairs like a spider; no wonder you aren’t tired. I’m completely inside.”
“You’re what?”
“Completely inside. Classical English for ‘all in.’ ‘All in’ is slang, and we can’t use slang in Nyoda’s house, you know.”
Sahwah snorted and returned to the search, which was now centered in Uncle Jasper’s study.
“Now tell me about your getting rescued,” said Sylvia.
“We were spending the week-end at Sylvan Lake,” recounted Hinpoha, “and there were campers all around. Sahwah and I wanted to get an honor for upsetting a canoe and righting it again, so we put on our skirts and middies over our bathing suits and paddled out into deep water. Nyoda was watching us from the shore. We were going to take the complete test—upset the canoe, undress in deep water, right the canoe and paddle back to shore. We got out where the water was over our heads and upset the canoe with a fine splash. We were just coming up and beginning to pull off our middies, when we heard a yell from the shore. Two young men from one of the cottages were tearing down to the beach like mad, throwing their coats into space as they ran.