And in the midst of this tumult the tiny launch, filled with laughing girls, threaded its way up the black river, flying the Winnebago banner, while behind it trailed a birchbark canoe, with Sahwah squatting calmly in the stern, leaning her back against her paddle.  Many times they had to bury their noses in their handkerchiefs to shut out the smells that assailed them on every side.  On they chugged, past the lumber yards with their acres of stacked boards, some of which had come from the very neighborhood of Camp Winnebago; past the chemical works, pouring out its darkly polluted streams into the river.  “Ugh,” said Gladys with a shiver, “to think that that stuff flows on into the lake and we drink lake water!”

“It seems like a different world altogether,” said Migwan, looking out across the miles of factory-covered “flats.”  She was perfectly fascinated by the rolling mills, with their rows of black stacks standing out against the sky like organ pipes, and by the long trains of oil-tank cars curving through the valley like huge worms, the divisions giving the effect of body sections.

While the Winnebagos were gliding along among scenes strange and new, Hinpoha was vainly trying to comfort herself for having to stay at home by catching in a bottle the bees which were crawling in and out of the cosmos blossoms in the garden.  Interesting as the bees were, however, they could not keep her thoughts from turning to the Winnebagos afloat on the river, and it was a very doleful face that bent over the flowers.  Her dismal reflections were interrupted by the sharp voice of Aunt Phoebe calling her to come in.  “What is it?” she asked listlessly, as she came up on the porch.

“Mrs. Evans is here,” said her aunt in the doorway, “and she has asked to see you.”  Hinpoha was very glad to see Mrs. Evans, who rose smilingly and took her hands in hers.

“How thin you are getting, child!” she exclaimed, smoothing back the red curls.  “I don’t believe you get out enough.  By the way,” she said to Aunt Phoebe, “may I borrow this girl for to-day?  I have considerable driving about to do and it is rather tiresome going alone.  Gladys has gone on an all-day boat ride.”

Aunt Phoebe could not very well refuse, for driving about in a machine with an older woman was a very proper form of recreation indeed, in her estimation.

Hinpoha flew upstairs and deposited her bottle of bees on the table in her room for future observation and started off with Mrs. Evans.  “We will not be back for lunch, and possibly not for supper,” said Gladys’s mother as she bade Aunt Phoebe a gracious good-bye, “but it will not be long after that.”

“And now for a grand spin,” she said, as she started the car and sent it crackling through the dry leaves on the pavement.

“Now I see why the Indians named this river ‘Cuyahoga,’ or ‘Crooked,’” said Migwan, as they rounded bend after bend in the stream.  “It coils back on itself like a snake, and I have already counted seven coils within the city limits.  I didn’t believe it when the captain of a freighter told me that there was a place in the river which his boat couldn’t pass because two sharp turns came so near together, but now I see how that could easily be possible.”