“Oh, that’s all right!” said Vicky as the two went back to camp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was quite true that the Camp was not to break up for some time, owing to the Wampoag people’s appetite for Camp jellies and linens; but so far as Winona was concerned, life under the greenwood tree received a sudden check.
It was a harmless-looking letter enough that the detachment of Blue Birds brought up from the post-office. Winona pounced on it with a cry of joy. “Oh, a letter from mother!” she said. “And we only had one yesterday, Florence!” So she tore it open.
“Dear Little Daughter,” it said, in a rather shakier handwriting than was usual with Mrs. Merriam. “I am sorry to have to tell you, as you are having such a splendid time, that we need you here at home. Yesterday, just after I had mailed my last letter to you, I slipped on the wet cellar stairs, and went down from top to bottom, and the result is a badly wrenched ankle. The doctor says that it is a severe sprain. Clay is a good little soul, but he can’t do very much more than the helping out, and your father has to have his meals and everything. So I shall have to ask my little girl to come home and keep house for me. I will expect you the day after you get this. Your loving mother.”
“Oh!” cried Winona. “Oh, poor mother!”
“What’s the matter!” asked Florence.
“Mother’s sprained her ankle on the cellar stairs,” said Winona, “and I have to go home. You needn’t, Floss.”
“I shall, though,” said Florence—and the younger Miss Merriam was a very determined little person. Her eyes filled with tears. “Frances and Lucy and I had a secret hike all planned,” she said. “Oh, dear, it is so nice in camp! But I won’t let you go home and nurse mother all alone, and you needn’t think it!”
Winona didn’t argue. She gave the letter to her little sister to read, and went off in the woods to be by herself. She climbed up to the platform that two of the girls had built, and sat there. There was no use denying it, she did not want to go home. She was going, of course, and going to nurse her mother just as well as she possibly could, and look after her father with all the powers she had learned in the Camp Fire activities. And she was sorry her mother’s ankle hurt her—very, very sorry. But—oh, dear! There was a beautiful new dance that Edith, who went into Wampoag and got lessons, which she passed promptly on, had been going to teach her. There was a new kind of cooking she had been going to teach a group of Blue Birds. There was a new dive—well, there were any amount of things, that if anyone had asked her about, she would have said she simply couldn’t break off. But she had to. And cooking at home in August was very different from doing it in the woods with a lot of other girls—and everyone she knew well was going to stay here—