Veronica opened her eyes and smiled when she saw Sahwah.  Sahwah, unable to think of a thing to say, held out the berries silently, and Veronica exclaimed in delight: 

“You dear thing,” she said, taking the dainty basket in one hand and catching hold of Sahwah’s hand with the other.  “You’re so good to me,” she whispered, squeezing the hand she held and looking up at Sahwah with wide-open, candid eyes.  “Come, sit on my bed, and make my headache go away, like you did once before.”

Sahwah sat down beside her and smoothed her throbbing forehead with light, soothing fingers that had a magic power to charm away aches and pains.  As she worked over Veronica and caught the sweet, straightforward glances from her eyes all her doubts concerning her vanished, and in their place there came uncertainty as to whether she herself had not been suffering under a delusion that afternoon.  Had she really heard the telephone ring and Veronica answer it?  Had hearing played some bizarre trick on her?  She seemed to be perfectly awake and in her right mind in other respects.  The girls had evidently not noticed anything peculiar about her actions when she came out of the house, not even Nyoda, the sharp sighted.  Clearly she had not been walking in her sleep.  She had certainly heard the telephone ring; she had certainly heard Veronica answer it.  She had understood every word she had said perfectly; the hall had been absolutely still.  And yet—­she had not heard Veronica go out of either door!  She remembered that distinctly, but her first impulse had been to wait until Veronica had gone out of the front door and then look after her.  It was impossible not to have heard the front door open; one hinge was rusty and it emitted a dismal squeak every time the door opened.  But if she had gone out of the back door the others would have seen her and would not have said that she was upstairs in her room.  That was the point which made Sahwah doubt her own memory.  Veronica had not left the house; she must have gone right upstairs.  And she must have said something else through the telephone and Sahwah’s ears had played her a trick.  It was easy to have missed her in her search through the big house; Sahwah had merely run into one room after another, given a hasty glance around and then run on to the next.

Sahwah smoothed the brown satiny forehead lovingly, and laughed at herself for a suspicious idiot.  And yet, the occurrence would not go from her mind, and she wakened in the night to think about it hour after hour and when she did sleep she was oppressed with a constant feeling of uneasiness, and woke again and again with that sense of groping after something that had just occurred, but which had escaped her utterly.

Then the next morning her doubts all vanished once more when the Winnebagos assembled on the front lawn for flag raising, and Veronica, whose turn it was to hoist the Stars and Stripes, stepped out with shining eyes, and with loving hands fastened the flag of her adopted country to the waiting halyard, carefully keeping it from touching the ground, and with an attitude both proud and humble sent it fluttering to the top of the pole.  Then she joined in the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner” with all her soul in her voice.