“A soap-box on wheels is what I think you’re hinting at,” said Louise, “but I hope not.”
“Are you really in earnest?” asked Nataly, who had taken no share in the talk so far.
“Why not?” asked Winona. “It’s no worse than taking a horse and cart down through the Italian quarter and selling rummage things to the women there; and that’s what the Ladies’ Aid at our church did last winter.”
“It’s different,” insisted Nataly, and nothing could shake her in her ideas. So Louise poked Winona, as a hint not to argue any more. But when Nataly went into the little general store to buy some picture post-cards Louise whispered to the other girls, “I have a glorious improvement on your soap-box plan, Winnie. If you girls will help me put it through I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’d like to hear about it first,” said Helen doubtfully; for Louise’s plans were always original, but not always safe and sane. Before Louise could answer Nataly was back again, and Louise began to tell her the story of the reduced English gentlewoman who had to sell shrimps for a living, by calling them up and down the streets. “And she was such a perfect lady,” finished Louise, “that whenever she called out ‘Shrimps for sale!’ she’d add under her breath, ‘I hope to goodness nobody hears me!’”
“And did they?” Nataly asked innocently, while Winona tried to keep her face straight.
“No, they didn’t,” said Louise sadly, “so she never sold any shrimps at all. And so she died of starvation.”
But Nataly, instead of grasping the moral, said only, “Well, why didn’t she eat the shrimps, then?”
At which Louise grunted disgustedly and went in to buy herself the benzine.
After that day there was always a feeling in the village near Camp Sunrise that every Camp Fire Girl’s first object in life was cat-rescue. And it was Winona who was responsible. To begin with, the day the girls arrived at camp she had been seen by all the interested villagers, walking near the head of the dusty procession, leading a small, sash-bandaged gray kitten by a string. Hike had meowed for air and exercise just as the village had been neared, and Winona had taken that means of giving it to him, without risking his running off. The villagers might have let that, by itself, pass. But when it was coupled with Winona’s performance of this afternoon—well, you can judge for yourself.