"Aw-lip-ka-shaw, Keela!" she said. "Some day I'm coming back and take you home with me."
The Indian girl drove reluctantly away; presently her canvas wagon was but a dim gray silhouette upon the horizon.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE RIVAL CAMPERS
Northward by lazy canal and shadowy hummock, northward by a river freckled with sand bars, Diane came in time to a quiet lake where purple martins winged ceaselessly over a tangled float of lilies—where now and then an otter swam and dipped with a noiseless ripple of water—where ground doves fluttered fearlessly about the camp as Johnny pitched the tents at noonday.
But for all the whir and flash of brilliant birdlife above the placid water—for all the screams of the fish hawks and the noise of crows and grackle in the cypress—for all the presence of another camper among the trees to the west, the days were quiet and undisturbed. And at night when the birds were winging to the woods now black against the yellow west, and the lonely lake began to purple, the fires of the rival camps were the single spots of color in the heavy darkness along the shore.
Diane wrote of it, with disastrous results, to Aunt Agatha.
At sunset, one day, a carriage produced an aggrieved rustle of silk, a voice and a hand bag. Each fluttered a little as the driver accepted his fare and rolled away. The hand bag, in accordance with a sensational and ill-conditioned habit which had roused more than one unpopular commotion in crowded department stores and thoroughfares, leaped unexpectedly from a gloved and fluttering hand.
Aunt Agatha possessed herself of the bag with a sniff and rustled heedlessly into the nearest camp.