The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery; Or, The Christmas Adventure at Carver House
her misery was far deeper than that. "I didn't mean to tell her that day,
Nyoda, I knew you'd asked us to keep it a secret, but it just slipped out
before I thought."
"Hinpoha, dear," said Nyoda, sitting down on the bed beside her and
speaking seriously, "will it always be like this with you? Will
everything slip out 'before you thought'? Will you never learn to think
before you speak? Will you be forever like a sieve? Must we always
hesitate to speak a private matter out in front of you, because we know
it will be all over the town an hour later? Are you going to be the only
one of the Winnebagos who can't keep a secret?"
Hinpoha's heart came near to breaking. Those were the severest words
Nyoda had ever spoken to her. Yet Nyoda did not say them severely. Her
tone was gentle, and her hand stroked the dishevelled red curls as she
spoke; but what she said pierced Hinpoha's heart like a knife. A vision
of herself came up as she must seem to others--a rattle brained creature
who couldn't keep anything to herself if her life depended upon it. How
the others must despise her! Now she despised herself! Above all, how
Nyoda must despise her--Nyoda, who always said the right thing at the
right time, and whose tongue never got her into trouble! Nyoda might have
nothing more to do with such a tattle tale! In her anguish she groaned
aloud.
"Don't you see," went on Nyoda earnestly, "what suffering you bring upon
yourself as well as upon other people by just not thinking? You could
escape all that if you acquired a little discretion."
"Oh, I'll never tell anything again!" Hinpoha cried vehemently. "I'll
keep my lips tight shut, I'll sew them shut. I won't be like a sieve. You
can tell all the secrets in front of me you like, they'll be safe. Oh,
don't say you'll never tell me any more secrets!" she said pleadingly.
"Just try me and see!"
"Certainly I'll keep on telling you secrets," said Nyoda, "because I
believe they really will be safe after this." She saw the depth of woe
into which Hinpoha had been plunged and knew that the bitter experience
had taught her a lesson in discretion she would not soon forget. Poor
impulsive, short-sighted Hinpoha! How her tongue was forever tripping her
up, and what agonies of remorse she suffered afterward!
Hinpoha uncovered one eye and saw Nyoda looking at her with the same
loving, friendly glance as always, and cast herself impulsively upon her
shoulder. "You'll see how discreet I can be!" she murmured humbly.
Nyoda smiled down at her and held her close for a minute.
"Listen!" she said. From the room where Sylvia lay there came the sound
of a song. It began falteringly at first and choked off several times,
but went bravely on, gaining in power, until the merry notes filled the
house. The indomitable little spirit had fought its battle with gloom and
come out victorious.
"The spirit of a princess!" Nyoda exclaimed admiringly. "Sylvia is of the
true blood royal; she knows that the thoroughbred never whimpers; it is
only the low born who cry out when hurt."
"Gee, listen to that!" exclaimed Slim, sitting in the library with Sherry
and the other two boys, when Sylvia's song rang through the house, brave
and clear. The four looked at each other, and the eyes of each held a
tribute for the brave little singer. Sherry stood up and saluted, as
though in the presence of a superior officer.
"She ought to have a Distinguished Valor Cross," he said, "for
conspicuous bravery under fire."
"Pluckiest little kid I ever saw!" declared Slim feelingly, and then blew
a violent blast on his nose.
"Sing a cheer!" called Sahwah, and the Winnebagos lined up in the hall
outside Sylvia's door and sang to her with a vigor that made the windows
rattle:
"Oh, Sylvia, here's to you,
Our hearts will e'er be true,
We will never find your equal
Though we search the whole world through!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE MASQUERADE
"I don't suppose we'll have the party now," observed Gladys, after Sylvia
had fallen asleep. "It's a shame. We were going to have such a big time
to-night."
"Indeed, we _will_ have the party anyhow!" said Nyoda emphatically.
"We'll outdo ourselves to make Sylvia have a hilarious time to-night. The
time to laugh the loudest is when you feel the saddest. Gladys, will you
engineer the candy making? You have your masquerade costume ready,
haven't you? The rest of you will have to hurry to get yours fixed, it's
three o'clock already. There are numerous chests of old clothes up in the
attic; you may take anything you like from them. And that reminds me, I
must go and bring out my old Navajo blanket for--" "Goodness!" she said,
stopping herself just in time, "I almost told who is going to wear it.
Now everybody be good and don't ask me any questions. I have to bring it
down and air it before it can be worn because it's packed away in
mothballs."
She ran lightly up the stairs, chanting:
"There was an old chief of the Navajo,
Fell over the wigwam and broke his toe,
And now he is gone where the good Injuns go,
And his blanket is done up in cam-pho-o-or!"
She trailed out the last word into such a mournful wail that the
Winnebagos shrieked with laughter.
A few minutes later she came down the stairs with a mystified face. "The
blanket's gone!" she announced. "Stolen. I had it in the lower drawer of
the linen closet off the hall upstairs, all wrapped up in tar paper. The
tar paper's there in the drawer, folded up, with the mothballs lying on
top of it, and the blanket is gone. Did any of you take it out to wear
to-night?" she asked, looking relieved at the thought.
No one had taken it, however. Slim was the only one who wanted to be an
Indian, and he was waiting for Nyoda to fetch the blanket for him.
Without a doubt it had been stolen. So the midnight visitor had been a
thief after all! But why did he take a blanket and nothing else? It was a
valuable blanket, but the silverware and jewelry in the house were worth
a great deal more. The mystery reared its head again. What manner of man
was this strange visitor?
"My mother always used to keep her silver wrapped in the blankets in a
clothes closet," said Gladys, "and burglars broke into our house and
found it all. The policeman that papa reported it to said that was a
common place for people to hide valuables and burglars usually searched
through blankets. This burglar must have been looking for valuables in
the blanket, and got scared away before he looked anywhere else, but took
the blanket because it was such a good one."
"That must have been it," said Nyoda. "I've heard of cases before where
valuables were stolen from their hiding places in blankets and bedding.
Well, we were lucky to get away as we did.
"Slim, you'll have to be something beside an Indian chief, for I haven't
another Navajo blanket. It's too bad, too, because you had the real bow
and arrows, but cheer up, we'll find something else. The trouble is,
though," she mourned, "we haven't much of anything that will fit you. The
blanket would have solved the problem so nicely."
"Let him wear the mothballs," suggested Justice. "He can be an African
chief instead of an Indian. A nice string of mothballs would be all----"
Slim threw a sofa cushion at him and Justice subsided.
The stolen blanket remained the chief topic of conversation until late in
the afternoon, when Katherine made a discovery which furnished a new
theme. She was up in the attic, hunting something from which to concoct a
masquerade suit, and while rummaging through a trunk came upon a
photograph underneath a pile of clothes. It was the picture of a young
girl dressed in the fashion of a bygone day, with a tremendously long,
full skirt bunched up into an elaborate "polonaise." Above a pair of
softly curved shoulders smiled a face of such witching beauty that
Katherine forgot all about the trunk and its contents and gazed
spellbound at the photograph. In the lower right hand corner was written
in a beautiful, even hand, "_To Jasper, from Sylvia_."
Katherine flew downstairs to show her find to the others.
"O how beautiful!" they cried, one after another, as they gazed at the
picture of the girl Uncle Jasper could not forget. The small, piquant
face, in its frame of dark hair, looked up at them from the picture with
a winning, friendly smile, and looking at it the Winnebagos began to feel
the charm of the living Sylvia Warrington, and to fall in love with her
even as Uncle Jasper had done.
"Take it up to Sylvia," said Migwan. "She'll be delighted to see a
picture of her Beloved."
Sylvia gazed with rapt fondness at the beautiful young face.
"Isn't--she--lovely?" she said in a hushed voice. "She looks as though
she would be sorry about my being lame, if she knew. May I keep her with
me all the time, Nyoda? She's such a comfort!"
"Certainly, you may keep the picture with you," said Nyoda, rejoicing
that a new interest had come up just at this time, and left her hugging
the photograph to her bosom.
Right after supper Nyoda shooed all the rest upstairs to their rooms
while she arrayed Sylvia for the party. In her endeavor to cheer and
divert her she gathered materials with a lavish hand and dressed her like
a real fairy tale princess, in a beautiful white satin dress, and a gold
chain with a diamond locket, and bracelets, and a coronet on her
fine-spun golden hair. The armchair she made into a throne, covered with
a purple velvet portiére; and she spread a square of gilt tapestry over
the footstool.
The effect, when Sylvia was seated upon the throne, was so gorgeously
royal that Nyoda felt a sudden awe stealing over her, and she could
hardly believe it was the work of her own hands. Sylvia seemed indeed a
real princess.
"We have on the robes of state to-night," said Sylvia, with a half
hearted return to her once loved game, "for our royal father, the king,
is coming to pay us a visit with all his court."
Nyoda made her a sweeping curtsey and hurried upstairs to dress herself.
The costumes of all the rest were kept a secret from one another, and no
one was to unmask until the stroke of eleven. She heard stifled giggles
and exclamations coming through the doors of all the rooms as she
proceeded down the hall.
Crash! went something in one of the rooms and Nyoda paused to
investigate. There stood Slim before a mirror, hopelessly entangled in a
sheet which he was trying to drape around himself. A wild sweep of his
hand had smashed the electric light bulb at the side of the mirror, and
sent the globe flying across the room to shatter itself on the floor.
"Wait a minute, I'll help you," said Nyoda, coming forward laughing.
Slim emerged from the sheet very red in the face, deeply abashed at the
damage he had done.
"I was only trying to grab ahold of the other end," he explained
ruefully, "like this--" He flung out the other hand in a gesture of
illustration, and smash went the globe on the other side of the mirror.
Nyoda laughed at his horror-stricken countenance, and soothed his
embarrassment while she pinned him into the sheet and pulled over his
head the pillow case which was to act as mask.
"Just as if you could disguise Slim by masking him!" she thought
mirthfully as she worked. "The more you try to cover him up the worse you
give him away. It's like trying to disguise an elephant."
She got him finished, and as a precaution against further accidents bade
him sit still in the chair where she placed him until the dinner gong
sounded downstairs; then she hastened on toward her own room.
"Oh, I forgot about Hercules!" she suddenly exclaimed aloud. "I promised
to get something for him."
"Migwan's gone down to fix him up," said a voice from one of the rooms in