Once more in row, each girl pretended she was holding a card with one hand, while drawing another card softly, but swiftly across the first. This was done with a deft, catchy motion as the girls sing-songed:
“Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy
Two heads on one body.”
“Now we are imitating the motions of carding wool,” Helen whispered softly to Nathalie. “Niddy-noddy means the old-fashioned hand-reel used in the days when there were no machines.”
The Pioneers had finished carding wool and were dancing the Virginia Reel, spinning each other around with the vigor and vim of young hearts as a prelude to the next dance. In this they simulated sewing, taking their stitches with a precision and handiness that rivalled the little maids of Puritan days. With a posture as of holding a wooden frame, while in and out the needle flew, each damsel repeated slowly, with quaint precision:
“Lola Standish is my name.
Lord, guide my heart that I may do thy will,
And fill my Hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to Virtue void of shame,
And I will give the Glory to thy name.”
Only a space of time and the samplers were dropped, and each girl grew strangely still, with bent head and listening ears. With eyes flaming in a fixed stare she poised an imaginary fowling-piece on her shoulder. They stood for a moment in this pose as each one present grasped the idea that they were doing the deed that many a Pioneer woman had bravely done in those early days, in the absence of husband keeping guard over the home from the relentless ravages of the red man!
CHAPTER VIII—THE MOTTO, “I CAN”
A few days after the Pilgrim Rally, as Nathalie lay in the hammock dreaming day dreams as she was wont to do, her mother came and seated herself in a low chair near by.
Nathalie turned, and then with a quick movement sat up as she asked anxiously, “Oh, Mother, has anything happened?”
“I should say ‘anything’ has happened,” ejaculated Dick, who was lounging near, ignoring his mother’s gesture to be silent, “for your mother has been chief cook and bottle-washer all day!”