The Camp Fire Girls at School | Page 5

second voice, "what is it?"
"Why, the Francona has gone down," answered the first voice. "Struck
a mine in the ocean."
At the word "Francona" Nyoda started up. That was the boat Hinpoha's
parents were coming on! She hurried out into the hall after the two
teachers. "What did you say about the Francona?" she asked. They
handed her the "extra" they had been reading and she saw with her own
eyes the account of the disaster. The list of "saved" was pitifully small,
and Hinpoha's parents were not among them. Soon she came to the
notation, "Among the lost are Mr. and Mrs. Adam Bradford, prominent
Cleveland lawyer and his wife. Mr. Bradford was the son of the late
Judge Bradford and a well-known man about town." Of what little avail
is "prominence" when calamity stretches out her cruel hands! "Well
known" and obscure gave up their lives together and found a grave side
by side.
"You look like a ghost, Miss Kent," said one of the teachers. "Any
friends of yours on board?"
"Dorothy Bradford's mother and father," answered Nyoda, "one of the
pupils here at school."
Leaving her work unfinished, she hastened to Hinpoha's house. The
news had just been learned there. Aunt Grace had fainted and was
being revived with salts. Hinpoha flung herself on Nyoda and clung to
her like a drowning person. Between neighbors and friends coming to
sympathize and reporters from the newspapers seeking interviews the
house was a pandemonium. Nyoda saw that Hinpoha would never quiet
down in those surroundings and took her away to her own apartment.
Of all the friends who offered consolation Nyoda was the one to whom
Hinpoha turned for comfort. Here the brilliant young college woman
and the simple girl were on a level, for they shared a common

experience, and each could comprehend the other's sorrow.
Poor Hinpoha! She had need of all the consolation that Nyoda could
give her in the days that followed. Full of bitterness as her cup was,
there was to be added yet one more drop--the drop that caused it to run
over. Aunt Phoebe came to live with her and be the mistress of the
Bradford house. At some time in the past Judge Bradford and his sister
Phoebe had been named joint guardians of Hinpoha, but the Judge was
now dead and Aunt Phoebe was the sole guardian. Aunt Phoebe was a
spinster of the type usually described in books, tall and spare, with
steely blue eyes. She was sixty years old, but she might have been a
hundred and sixty, for all the sympathy she had with youth. She had
been disappointed in love when she was twenty and had never thought
kindly of any man since. From her earliest childhood Hinpoha had
dreaded the very name of Aunt Phoebe. When she came to visit a
restraint fell over the whole house. The usual lively chatter at the dinner
table was hushed, and Aunt Phoebe held forth in solemn tones,
generally berating some unfortunate person who nearly always
happened to be a good friend of Mrs. Bradford's. Hinpoha would be
called up for a minute examination of her clothes and manners and
would invariably do something which was not right in her great aunt's
eyes.
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