She had a vivid recollection of going tobogganing down the long front walk one winter day, her jolly mother on the sled with her, steering it adroitly around the corner and up the sidewalk for a distance after leaving the slope.  Such fun they were having that they did not look to see if the road was clear, and went bumping into a female figure that was coming majestically along the street, knocking her off her feet and into a snowdrift.  It was Aunt Phoebe, coming to make a formal afternoon call.  She sat bolt upright in the snow and adjusted her lorgnette to see if by any chance her grandniece could be one of those rowdy children.  When she discovered that it was not only Hinpoha, but her mother as well, frolicking so indecorously, she was speechless.  Mrs. Bradford started to make an abject apology, but the sight of Aunt Phoebe sitting in the snowdrift with her lorgnette was too much for her and she went off into a peal of laughter, in which Hinpoha joined gleefully.  It was weeks before Aunt Phoebe could be coaxed to make another visit.  And this was the woman who was coming to take the place of Hinpoha’s beloved mother!

Aunt Grace left the day she came.  There was not enough room in one house for her and Aunt Phoebe.  With Aunt Phoebe came “Silky,” a wiggling, snapping Skye terrier.  He gave one glance at genial Mr. Bob, who was rolling on his back before the fireplace, and with a growl fastened his teeth into his neck.  Hinpoha rescued her pet and bore him away to her room, where she shed tears of despair while he licked her hand sympathetically.  Aunt Phoebe’s first act was to put Hinpoha into deep mourning.  Hinpoha objected strenuously, but there was no help, and she went to school swathed from head to foot in black.  Nyoda was wrathful at the sight, for if there was one point she felt strongly about it was putting children into mourning.  Among the gaily dressed girls Hinpoha stood out like some dark spirit from the underworld, casting a gloom wherever she went.

“Where is that beautiful vase I brought your mother from the World’s Fair?” asked Aunt Phoebe one day, suddenly missing it.

“It was accidently broken at our last Camp Fire meeting,” answered Hinpoha, with a tightening around her heart when she thought of that last happy gathering.

“Camp Fire!” said Aunt Phoebe with a snort.  “You don’t mean to tell me that you are mixed up in any such foolishness as that?”

“I certainly am,” said Hinpoha energetically, “and it isn’t foolishness, either.  I’ve learned more since I have been a Camp Fire Girl than I did in all the years before.”

“Well, you may consider yourself graduated, then,” said Aunt Phoebe, drily, “for I’ll have no such nonsense about me.  I can teach you all you need to know outside of what you learn in school.”

“Camp Fire always had mother’s fullest approval,” said Hinpoha darkly.

“I dare say,” returned her aunt.  “But I want you to understand once for all that I won’t have any girls holding ‘meetings’ here, to upset the house and break valuable ornaments.”