The little girls seemed to very much want to. So Winona took her mending and her rocker, and they sat down in the shelter of a big tree. Winona told them stories till it was time for her to go in and see about supper. By then her mother’s headache was over. But after supper Florence came up to Winona, and said, “The girls want to ask something. They want to know if you won’t tell them stories other times, too!”
“Why, what a lovely idea!” said Winona. “Of course I will!”
So to the Porch Club and the housekeeping Winona added two hours every other day, telling stories to Florence and her small friends. She felt rather shy over it at first, but gradually it began to be more and more easy. When the fairy-tales ran low she went to the library and hunted out the Robin Hood and Arthur legends, and even history stories once in awhile. And one day when she was rummaging the card catalogue for more stories about King Arthur she found out that the Malory book was only a very little of what there was to be told. Everything seemed to lead somewhere else. So the story-hours kept to King Arthur, except for one fairy afternoon a week, for the rest of the month, and Winona learned a good deal about him that she would never have found out by herself.
After one or two meetings, sewing as she talked, she began to show the children a little about darning, too. They brought stockings after that, and kept quieter, she found, when they were working as well as she. The most surprising thing of all to her was that she had time enough for everything. The story-hours took care of all the household mending that her mother did not do; the Porch Club, which met at different houses in rotation, was no trouble at all, merely a good-times affair. The housekeeping was running smoothly, and Winona got time for letter-writing and walks with the boys, and even practice on the piano. There were lots of places where she and Nataly and Tom and Billy could go trolley riding on hot evenings, and there were always boys and girls running in and out, asking her to go places and do things. Winona discovered, as others have before her, that you can have a very good time by staying home in the summer.
One night, toward the last of August, her mother asked her a question.
“How would you like to go back to camp to celebrate your birthday, dear?” she asked.
Now Winona’s birthday, her fifteenth, was on the eleventh of September, just two days before the girls were coming back.
“I would, very much,” she said, “but do you think you will be able to spare me?”
“I am quite sure of it,” said her mother. “Indeed, I might be able to take charge of the house again by next week, if my ankle improves as it is doing now.”
“Oh, no,” said Winona, “I won’t take the risk. Besides, I couldn’t leave the story-hour children, and the Porch Club has to have some things planned for it that I think I’d better help with. But if I can go up there over my birthday it will be lovely.”