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قراءة كتاب The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road; Or, Glorify Work
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The Camp Fire Girls on the Open Road; Or, Glorify Work
week you would have had the whole house in an uproar and something wonderful would have been happening every minute. But for the life of us we couldn’t think of a single thing to do for ourselves.
We were still sitting there steeped in gloom when Migwan came in to see how we were getting on. She had some delicious milk chocolate with her and that cheered Hinpoha up quite a bit. It’s going to be a heavenly comfort to have Migwan just ahead of us in college. She knows all the ropes and the teachers and the gossip about the upper classmen and tells us things that keep us from making the ridiculous mistakes so many of the freshmen make all the time.
“But just think how I felt here, all alone, last year,” said Migwan. “Perhaps I didn’t miss you girls, though! You were still altogether and had Nyoda, but here there wasn’t a soul who had ever heard of the Winnebagos. Now it seems like old times again. Think of it, three whole Winnebagos living together almost under the same roof! Didn’t we say that night when we had our last Council Fire with Nyoda that although we couldn’t be together any more, we were still Winnebagos and were loyal friends and true, and that wherever two Winnebagos should meet, whether it was in the street, or on mid-ocean, or in a far country, right then and there would take place a Winnebago meeting? Why, we’re having a Winnebago meeting this very minute!”
“Let’s keep on having meetings, as often as we can, just us three,” said Hinpoha, “and talk over old times and have ‘Counts.’ We can call ourselves The Last of the Winnebagos, like the Last of the Mohicans, and our password will be ‘Remember!’ That means, ‘Remember the old days!’”
Migwan smiled a little mysteriously, but she agreed that it was a fine idea.
We three sat down on the floor in a Wohelo triangle and repeated our Desire and promised to seek beauty in everything that came along, and to give service to all the other girls in college whenever we had the chance, and to pursue knowledge for all we were worth now that there was so much of it on every side of us, and to be trustworthy and obey all the rules to the smallest detail and never cheat at exams, and to glorify work until everybody noticed how well we did everything, and hold on to health by not sitting up late studying and eating horrible messes, and to be happy all the time and try to like every girl in college.
“Let’s clasp hands on it,” said Hinpoha, and we did, and then stood up and sang “Wohelo for Aye” until the window rattled. (It’s awfully loose and rattles at the slightest pretext.)
We had just gotten to the last “Wohelo for Love” when all of a sudden a face appeared at the window. We were all so surprised we stopped short and the last syllable of “Wohelo” was chopped off as if somebody had taken a knife. Our room is on the third floor, and for anyone to look in at the window they would have to be suspended in the air. So when that head appeared without any warning we all stood petrified and stared open-mouthed. It was a girl’s head with very black hair and very red lips. At first the face just looked at us; then when it saw our amazement it grinned from ear to ear in the widest grin I ever saw.
“Did I scare you?” said the face in a voice so rich and deep that we jumped again. “No, I’m not Hamlet, thy father’s ghost, I’m Agony, thy next door neighbor. I heard you singing ‘Wohelo for Aye’ and I just looked in to see if I could believe my ears.”
We all ran to the window and then we saw how easily the thing had been done. Our window is right up against the corner of our room and the window in the other room is right next to it, so that all the apparition had to do was lean out of her window and look into ours, which was open from the bottom.
“Come on over!” we urged hospitably.
The apparition withdrew from the window and appeared a moment later in the doorway, leading a second apparition.
“I brought my better half along,” said the deep, rich voice again, as the two girls came into the room.
They looked so much alike that we knew at a glance they were sisters. The one who had looked in at the window did the introducing.
“We’re the Wing twins,” she said, as if she took it for granted that we had heard about them already. “She’s Oh-Pshaw and I’m Agony.”
“Oh-Pshaw and Agony?” we repeated wonderingly, whereupon the twins burst out laughing.
“Oh, those are not our real names,” said Agony, “but we’ve been called that so long that it seems as if they were. Her name’s Alta and mine’s Agnes. I’ve been nicknamed Agony ever since I can remember, and Alta got the habit of saying ‘Oh-Pshaw!’ at everything until the girls at the boarding school where we went always called her that and the name stuck. You pronounce it this way, ‘Oh-Pshaw,’ with the accent on the ‘Oh.’”
We were friends all in a minute. How in the world could you be stiff and formal with two girls whose names were Agony and Oh-Pshaw?
“We heard you singing ‘Wohelo for Aye,’” Agony explained, “and it made us so homesick we almost went up in smoke. We belonged to the corkingest group back home. It nearly killed us off to go away and leave them.”
Here Oh-Pshaw broke in and took up the tale. “When we heard that song coming from next door Agony squealed, ‘Camp Fire Girls!’ and began to dance a jig. She wouldn’t wait until I got my hair done so we could come over and call; she just stretched her neck until it reached into your window. Oh, I’m so glad you’re next door to us I could just pass away!” And Oh-Pshaw caught Agony around the neck and they both lost their balance on the foot of the bed and rolled over on the pillows.
“I’m sorry you have such dandy nicknames,” said Migwan. “If you didn’t have them we could call you First Apparition and Second Apparition, like Macbeth, you know. But the ones you have are far superior to anything we could think up now.”
Then we told them about the Winnebagos and about you and Sahwah and the rest of them, and how we had formed THE LAST OF THE WINNEBAGOS and meant to have meetings right along. Of course, we asked them to come and “Remember” their lost group with us, and they were perfectly wild about it.
“Let’s have our first meeting right now,” proposed Agony, “and go on a long hike. It’s a scrumptious day.”
We flew to get our hats and Hinpoha was in such a hurry that she knocked over the Japanese screen that stands gracefully across one corner of our room and that brought to light the pile of things that we just naturally couldn’t fit into the room anywhere and had chucked behind the screen until we decided how to get rid of them. There was Hinpoha’s desk lamp, the one with the light green shade with bunches of purple grapes on it—a perfect beauty, only there was no room for it after we’d decided to use mine with the two lamps in it; and an extra rug and a book rack and a Rookwood bowl and quantities of pictures. You see, we’d both brought along enough stuff to furnish a room twice the size of ours.
“Whatever will we do with those things?” sighed Hinpoha in despair.
“Can’t you give them to somebody?” suggested Migwan. “That lamp and that vase are perfect beauties. I’d covet them myself if I didn’t have more now than I know what to do with.”
“The very thing!” said Hinpoha. “Here we promised not a half hour ago to ‘Give Service’ all the time, and yet we didn’t think of

