“Are we?” returned Hinpoha.  “Ask them who roomed next to them this last year at Brownell!  Do we know the Heavenly Twins!  Isn’t it perfectly wonderful that you should turn out to be their father!  We were having a discussion a while ago as to whether you were a lawyer or a professor, and Sahwah—­excuse me, this is Miss Brewster, Mr. Wing, another one of the Winnebagos, that the Twins don’t know—­yet—­Sahwah insisted that you were a lawyer and I insisted you were a professor, and now Sahwah was right after all.  You are a lawyer, aren’t you?  I believe Agony said you were.”

“I am,” replied Mr. Wing with a twinkle in his eye, “and I’m more than delighted to meet you.  Come along, and we’ll see if we can’t get to Oakwood before dark.”

Then the whimsical artist came up and addressed Mr. Wing.  “Did I hear you say you could get to Oakwood on the electric?” he inquired.  “I’m going there too.  My name is Prince, Eugene Prince.”

“Glad to meet you,” replied Mr. Wing heartily.  “Come along.”  He summoned the porter to carry out the various suitcases.

Before long the little party were aboard the electric car, and reached Oakwood almost as soon as they would have if the train had not been held up.  The electric car went by the railway station and the Winnebagos got off, because Nyoda would be waiting for them there.  Mr. Wing and the artist went on to the center of the town.

CHAPTER III

CARVER HOUSE

Nyoda was waiting for them on the platform, looking just as she used to, radiant, girlish, enthusiastic, bubbling over with fun.  Not a shade of sadness or anxiety in her face betrayed the loneliness in her heart and her longing for the presence of the dear man she had sent forth in the cause of liberty.  In respect to sorrows, Nyoda’s attitude toward the world had always been, “Those which are yours are mine, but those which are mine are my own.”

Encircled by four pairs of Winnebago arms and with eager questions being hurled at her from all sides, it seemed as if the old times had come again indeed.

“Sahwah!  Migwan!  Hinpoha!  Gladys!” she exclaimed joyfully, looking at them with beaming eyes.  “My own Winnebagos!  But come, I’m dying to show you my new playhouse,” and she led the way across the station platform to where her automobile stood waiting.

A swift spin along a quiet avenue bordered with immense old oaks that stood like rows of soldiers at attention, and up quite a steep hill, from which they could look back upon the houses and buildings clustering in the valley, which was the heart of the town, and then they drew up before a very old brick house which stood on the summit of the hill.  It had green blinds and a fanlight over the front door, and a brick walk running from the front steps to the street, bordered on each side by a box hedge in a prim, Ladies’ Garden effect like one sees in the illustrations of children’s poems.