“Some friend of the patient,” explained the head nurse.  “Hoffman let her in himself.”  The young girl in question was Medmangi.  Dr. Hoffman knew all about her ambition to become a doctor and allowed her to come into the operating room.  So she began her career by witnessing one of the most inspired operations of a widely famed surgeon.

When Sahwah came out of the ether she felt as if she were held in a vise.  “What’s the matter?” she asked dreamily.  “I feel so stiff and queer.”

“It’s the cast they put you in,” answered her mother.

Sahwah moved her arms carefully to see if they were in working order yet.  Lightly she touched the hard substance that surrounded her hip bone.  “They didn’t cut it off, did they?” she asked in sudden terror.  She could not tell by the feeling whether she had two legs or one.

Dr. Hoffman, coming in in time to hear the question, snorted violently.  “Don’t talk such nonsense, Missis Sahvah,” he said, waving his hands emphatically.  “Dot limb is still vere it belongs, and vill be as good as ever ven de cast comes off.”

The watchers around the bed that day wore very different expressions from what they had worn all week.  Just since yesterday despair had given way to hope and hope to assurance.  Her mother and father and Nyoda hovered over the bed with radiant faces, and the Winnebagos, after seeing Sahwah’s favorable condition with their own eyes, retired to Gladys’s barn to celebrate.  The rules of the hospital forbade the amount of noise they felt they must make.  Dick Albright smiled his first smile that day since the night of the accident.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HONOR OF THE WINNEBAGOS.

  “For High Style use the Preterite,
  For Common use the Past,
  In compound verbal tenses
  Put the Participle last. 
  The Perfect Tense with ‘Avoir’
  With the Subject must agree
  (Or does this rule apply to the
  Auxiliary ’to be’?).”

Migwan, in high spirits, resolved the rules in her French grammar into poetry as she learned them.  Regular lessons were gotten out of the way as quickly as possible these days to give more time to the study of history.  And to Migwan studying history meant not merely the memorizing of a number of facts attached to dates which might or might not stay in her mind at the crucial time; it was the bringing to life of bygone races and people, and putting herself in their places, and living along with them the events described on the pages.  Taking it in this way, Migwan had a very clear and vivid picture of the things she was learning, and her answers to questions showed such a thorough knowledge of her subject that she was regarded as a “grind” at history, while the truth was that she did less “grinding” than the rest of the class, who merely memorized figures and facts without calling in the aid of the imagination.  So Migwan learned her new history and reviewed her old, and was as happy as the day was long.