“They’re strong on names, those Camp Fire Girls,” remarked the florid seaman, encouragingly making conversation, as the small footsteps beside him flagged. “I’m blessed if they didn’t go to work an’ hunt up one—an Indian name with a meaning—for me. It had only twenty-two letters to it.”
“What did it mean?” questioned Kitty, shyly, as her granduncle paused to watch the frolicking figure amid the foam-hills with the flaming symbol of crossed logs upon her breast—signifying that among the Camp Fire Girls she held the rank of Wood Gatherer—and other girlish figures bathing, diving or swimming near her.
“Mean! It was taken from the Ojibway language and it meant something like ‘Wind-in-the-trees-Man!’ They said my voice, or my roar, was like that. But I up an’ said that the name was too long—a comber—knocked me over like a big wave—d’ye understand? And that I objected to being called a ‘Big Wind,’ anyhow! Then they handed me out another just for fun, to keep up the atmosphere of the camp, as they said.”
“And what’s that one?” asked Kitty Sill, her brown eyes feasting themselves upon the water-pommeled figures of girls about her own age.
“Let’s see now! Can I remember it? Something like Men-o-ki-gá-bo; yes, I guess that’s it!”
“An’ what on earth does that mean?”
“‘Standing Tall!’ Ain’t that a bully name?” The mariner reared his massive bulk with a highly amused twinkle in his eye which surveyed the bathers, too. “Fancy me play-acting with Indian names at my age, when I’m cruising toward seventy! But it pleases them an’ don’t hurt me. The Morning-Glory chose the latter name, the girl I was speaking to you about yesterday. There she goes, diving nigh on fifteen feet off that high rock; she dives as well as dances like a foam-chicken! You stick to her like a limpet, little Kitty, if you’re shy-like among the strange girls, and I’ll warrant you’ll soon feel at home! But I guess you will with any of them; they’re a kind-hearted tribe.”
“Tell me some more of their dressing-up names!” Kitty shook her laundered ribbons. The little brown troutlet leaped in the sunlight in her blinking eyes, but it was an eager, not a perverse, minnow now; greedy for the bait of a new interest.
“Oh, tooraloo! Ask me an easy one. Well, I guess I can make a hit at the name of that tall girl that’s toeing the water there on the edge of the beach, making up her mind to go in; I wrote her Camp Fire name down because I considered it the best of the bunch.” Captain Andy took a penciled slip from his vest pocket. “U-l-i-d-a-h-á-s-u!” he spelled out slowly. “That’s a Penobscot Indian word cut down from one of fifteen letters and it means ‘Peace’; she wants to be a peacemaker, that girl, to do her bit now an’ when she grows up toward bringing peace everywhere. She has a dove in her head-band.”
“Who’s the girl with the red cheeks—an’——?”