“Pretty well, but nothing like the way Florence’s and Frances’s little sweet-grass baskets went.”
“If we sell enough to run the camp another two weeks, I don’t see why the girls shouldn’t keep any money over that they earn,” said Winona thoughtfully. “The proprietor of that little boarding-house we went to last but one says she wants more jelly. That’s all gone, thank goodness—oo, but it was heavy!”
“The little baskets at a quarter apiece are going off fast, too,” said Louise. “Hotel Abercrombie-by-the-Water. Don’t forget your dialect, angel-child.”
“E pluribus unum! Panama mañana! Nux vomica!” answered Winona enthusiastically as they ascended the steps. “Buya da beada necklace, lady?”
“Good!” said Louise under her breath, and herself tackled dialect again. “Buya da pot for poor woman, lady? Got thirteen children to keep—no money!”
“Thirteen children—really?” asked the woman in horror.
“Thirteen—all girls!” answered Louise mournfully, while Winona bent very low over her suitcase, and tried not to laugh. “Unlucky number, huh?”
“Very, for her!” said the woman. “Well, I really must buy something to help her.”
Winona was going to stop her, for she thought it wasn’t fair; although Louise evidently took it as a lovely joke. But as the woman did not feel that her duty to the thirteen went beyond buying one fifteen-cent sweet-grass napkin-ring—and she only wanted to give ten cents for it—Winona did not intervene. She only whispered, “Don’t, Louise!” next time she passed her. And Louise, though she laughed, said no more about the thirteen poor little Camp Fire Girls starving at home. Then towards evening it was Winona who got into trouble.
They had sold about forty-five dollars’ worth of stuff in the course of the day, and were back at the first hotel, the one they had started from, to deliver the stencilled set Winona had promised to Louise’s white-haired lady. Winona, who felt very tired after her long day of tramping and selling, was sitting on the top of the hotel porch in the shade of a pillar, her hands crossed on her lap. Her pretty face was pale with the long, tiring day, and her eyelids drooped. She was figuring out that, what with the Scouts’ mending and this day’s work, and the orders they had taken, the camp could go on three weeks more. And she felt a touch on her shoulder.