After the breaking of the vase the game stopped and the girls sat down again in a quiet circle.  “Do you know,” said Nyoda, “that bead band Gladys made has given me an idea?  Why can’t we keep a personal record in bead work?  It would be a great deal more interesting and picturesque than keeping a diary, and there would be no danger of your little sister getting hold of it and reading your secrets out loud to her friends.”

“It’s a great idea,” said Migwan, who had always kept a diary and had suffered much from an inquisitive brother and sister.

“Besides,” said Sahwah, “think how exciting it would be at Ceremonial Meetings, to sit with your life story hanging around your neck, and know that your neighbor was just breaking her neck trying to figure out what the little pictures meant.  Wouldn’t old Fuzzytop love to be able to read mine, though!” And Sahwah giggled extravagantly as she saw in her mind’s eye the bead record of some of her activities in the Junior session room.

“Now, about all our activities,” continued Nyoda, “are covered by the seven points of the Camp Fire Law, so that everything we do either fulfills or breaks the Law.  What do you say if we register our commendable doings in colors, but record the event in black every time we break the Law?”

The girls thought this would be a fascinating game, and Sahwah remarked that she must send to the Outfitting Company for a bunch of black beads directly, as she had only a very few left.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t keep this record last summer,” said Gladys with a thoughtful look in her eyes, “or mine would have been black from one end to the other.”

“It wouldn’t, either,” said Sahwah vehemently.  “You did more for us in the end than we ever did for you.  And my sins were as scarlet as yours, every bit.”

Since that terrible day in camp Gladys seemed to have been made over, and never once reverted to her old selfishness and superciliousness, so that she now had the love and esteem of every one of the Winnebagos.  All mention of her old short-comings was quickly silenced by Sahwah, who now adored her, heart and soul.  Gladys’s entrance into the public school after two years at Miss Russell’s had caused quite a stir among the girls of the neighborhood, who in times past had been wont to consider her proud and haughty, but her simple, unaffected manner quickly won for her a secure place in the affections of all.  Teachers and scholars alike loved her.

Sahwah was still counting up her own misdemeanors at camp when the Evans’s automobile came for Gladys, and reluctantly all the girls prepared to go home.  It always seemed harder to break away from Hinpoha’s house than from any of the others’.  In spite of the rich furnishings it had a cozy, homey atmosphere of being used from one end to the other, and no guest, however humble, ever felt awkward or out of place there.  Thus it usually happens that when people are entirely at ease in their own surroundings, they soon make others feel the same way too.