“We are,” replied the Captain.  “Won’t you stay to dinner?  There isn’t anything to eat but a can of tomato soup, but you’re welcome to that.”

“Oh, we hadn’t better,” replied Sahwah, “they will be wondering at home what has become of us, and besides, it would make too much trouble for you.”

“Too much trouble!” snorted the Captain.  “That’s just like a girl.  As if a girl ever cared how much trouble she made for a fellow!  Come on and stay, we want you.  We’re lonesome.”

Thus pressed, the girls accepted the invitation, and pretty soon they were all sitting in a circle under the trees with cups and spoons in their hands, and the Captain was singing at the top of his voice: 

  “Glorious, glorious,
  One can of soup for the four of us,
  Praises be, there are no more of us,
  For the four of us can drink it all alone!”

Lunch over, they exchanged gossip under the trees for a merry half hour, then the girls took their departure and sped homeward to carry the news to Carver House.

CHAPTER X

THE OPENING CAREER OF MANY EYES

  “Good morning, Winnebago friends,
  With your faces as bright as mine,
  Good morning, Winnebago friends,
  You’re surely looking fine,
  Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
  If the pancakes don’t get you the syrup must
  Good morning, Winnebago friends,
  With your faces as bright as,
  Your faces as bright as, Your faces as bright as mine!”

The Winnebagos, happy and hungry, gathered around the breakfast table in answer to the summons which Hinpoha had just sent echoing through the house.  With the advent of the Winnebagos at Carver House, Nyoda’s melodiously chiming Japanese dinner gong had been discarded in favor of a hoarse-throated fish horn, which bore some similarity to the sound of a bugle and was therefore to be preferred because it had more of a military flavor.

“Where’s Sahwah?” asked Nyoda, noticing that her place was vacant

Nobody knew.

Hinpoha blew a second blast of the horn up the stairway, making a noise that would have waked the Seven Sleepers with ease, but there was no answer.

“Sahwah must be out taking a morning walk,” announced Hinpoha, when her horn blast had failed to rout out the absentee, “she’s forever exercising herself in the early morning hours—­as if we didn’t get enough exercise doing military drill!  It’s no wonder she’s like a beanpole.  I would be, too, if I was forever trotting the way she is.  Here she comes now, tearing up the walk like a racehorse!”

“She probably heard your horn on the other side of the woods,” said Nyoda, laughing, “and got here before it stopped blowing.”

Sahwah came in quite out of breath and evidently tremendously enthusiastic about something.

“Nyoda,” she burst out as soon as she was inside the door, “how fast would a Primitive Woman go up and how many pounds would she pull?”