She soon discovered that most provisions could be bought a few cents cheaper in the market than in the stores, so every Saturday afternoon she made a trip downtown with a big market basket and bought the week’s supply of butter, eggs and vegetables.  At first the necessity for spending carfare cut into her profits, but she got around this in an adroit way that promised well for her future ability to handle her affairs to the best advantage.  She tried a little publicity work to swing things around to suit her purpose.  She simply exalted the joys of marketing until the other Winnebagos were crazy to do the family marketing, too.  As soon as Gladys caught the fever her object was accomplished, for Gladys took all the girls to market in her father’s big car and brought all their purchases home.  So Migwan accomplished her own ends and gave the Winnebagos a new opportunity to pursue knowledge at the same time.

At Christmas time she had also fallen back on her ingenuity to produce the gifts she wished to give.  There was no money at all to be spent for this purpose.  Migwan took a careful stock of the resources of the house.  The only promising thing she found was a leather skin which Hinpoha had given her the summer before for helping her write up the weekly Count in Hiawatha meter, which was outside of Hinpoha’s range of talents.  She considered the possibilities of that skin carefully.  It must yield seven articles—­a present for each of the Winnebagos.  She decided on book covers.  She wrote up seven different incidents of the summer camping trip in verse and copied them with the typewriter on rough yellow drawing paper, thinking to decorate each sheet.  But Migwan had little artistic ability and soon saw that her decorations were not beautiful enough to adorn Christmas gifts.  After spoiling several pages she gave up in disgust and threw the spoiled pages into the grate.  The next morning she was cleaning out the grate and found the pieces of paper, only partially burned around the edges.  She suddenly had an idea.  The fire had burned a neat and artistic brown border around the writing.  Why not burn all her sheets around the edges?  Accordingly she set to work with a candle, and in a short time had her pages decorated in an odd and original way which could not fail to appeal to a Camp Fire Girl.  Then she pasted the irregular pieces of yellow paper on straight pages of heavy brown paper, which brought out the burned edges beautifully.  On the cover of each book she painted the symbol of the girl for whom it was intended, and on the inside of the back cover she painted her own.  The Winnebagos were delighted with the books and took greater pride in showing them to their friends than they did their more expensive presents.

That piece of ingenuity was bread cast on the water for Migwan.  Nyoda came to her one day while she was working her head off on the typewriter.  “Could the authoress be persuaded to desist from her labors for a while?” she asked, tiptoeing around the room in a ridiculous effort to be quiet, which convulsed Migwan.