“Let him wear the mothballs,” suggested Justice. “He can be an African chief instead of an Indian. A nice string of mothballs would be all——”
Slim threw a sofa cushion at him and Justice subsided.
The stolen blanket remained the chief topic of conversation until late in the afternoon, when Katherine made a discovery which furnished a new theme. She was up in the attic, hunting something from which to concoct a masquerade suit, and while rummaging through a trunk came upon a photograph underneath a pile of clothes. It was the picture of a young girl dressed in the fashion of a bygone day, with a tremendously long, full skirt bunched up into an elaborate “polonaise.” Above a pair of softly curved shoulders smiled a face of such witching beauty that Katherine forgot all about the trunk and its contents and gazed spellbound at the photograph. In the lower right hand corner was written in a beautiful, even hand, “To Jasper, from Sylvia.”
Katherine flew downstairs to show her find to the others.
“O how beautiful!” they cried, one after another, as they gazed at the picture of the girl Uncle Jasper could not forget. The small, piquant face, in its frame of dark hair, looked up at them from the picture with a winning, friendly smile, and looking at it the Winnebagos began to feel the charm of the living Sylvia Warrington, and to fall in love with her even as Uncle Jasper had done.
“Take it up to Sylvia,” said Migwan. “She’ll be delighted to see a picture of her Beloved.”
Sylvia gazed with rapt fondness at the beautiful young face. “Isn’t—she—lovely?” she said in a hushed voice. “She looks as though she would be sorry about my being lame, if she knew. May I keep her with me all the time, Nyoda? She’s such a comfort!”
“Certainly, you may keep the picture with you,” said Nyoda, rejoicing that a new interest had come up just at this time, and left her hugging the photograph to her bosom.
Right after supper Nyoda shooed all the rest upstairs to their rooms while she arrayed Sylvia for the party. In her endeavor to cheer and divert her she gathered materials with a lavish hand and dressed her like a real fairy tale princess, in a beautiful white satin dress, and a gold chain with a diamond locket, and bracelets, and a coronet on her fine-spun golden hair. The armchair she made into a throne, covered with a purple velvet portiére; and she spread a square of gilt tapestry over the footstool.
The effect, when Sylvia was seated upon the throne, was so gorgeously royal that Nyoda felt a sudden awe stealing over her, and she could hardly believe it was the work of her own hands. Sylvia seemed indeed a real princess.