When Virginia returned to Vine Haven, she found the girls in the library for the mid-morning free half hour. As soon as Mrs. Martin had closed the door of her study, they flocked about their favorite begging her to tell them just what happened. Betsy taking their president by the arm led her into the long attractive room where the walls were lined with books, pictures and small statues.

“We were sure you’d be coming back about now,” Sally said as she skipped along by the side of her beloved one, “and so we have been poking the fire to keep it bright.”

Betsy teased. “Sally hasn’t much faith in those furs that she loaned you. She has been so afraid that you would come home frozen, it being so cold today.”

“I wasn’t cold,” Virg turned a grateful glance at the doll-like girl who was always hovering near her, “but I know someone who was.”

“My goodness me, it couldn’t have been Mrs. Martin,” Betsy declared. “She was almost hidden in that adorable long fur coat of hers. It must have cost a million dollars, unless her grandfather was a seal diver.”

“They don’t dive to catch seals,” Megsy said, correctingly. “You’re thinking of pearls.”

Sally giggled. “I’d hate to wear a string of pearls instead of a fur boa on a day like this.”

“But enlighten us; who was cold in your party?” Barbara brought the subject back to its point of digression.

“Micky was, and that set me to thinking of our plan. You know we said, since we are so grateful to him for having come out in that bitterly cold storm the other night to rescue us, that we would chip together and buy him something. Well, I believe the thing he needs most is a warm winter overcoat.”

“Hurray for you, Virg! That’s a spiffy idea! I’m for it! Lessee! I have at least fifty cents left after buying chocolate-chews and sweet pickles.” This, of course, from twinkling-eyed Betsy.

“I’m the moneyed person in this party,” Babs said with pretended pride, “for dad sent me ten dollars extra on my month’s allowance, and it just came today. That shall go toward the new coat.”

“We’ll all chip in, but do let’s talk fast, for, in three minutes and two seconds our free period will be over.” Margaret indeed was talking so rapidly that her words sounded jumbled. “We’re wild to know what happened over at the old Burgess place.”

“But I couldn’t possibly tell it all to you in three minutes, for the two seconds are already gone, but this much I can say. Eleanor Burgess is coming, not as a guest but as a teaching pupil, so there will not be anything to keep secret after all.”

“Hurray! That’s jolly fine! I hope there’s a mystery about her that I can solve.” These comments were laughingly called back over the shoulders of the three departing girls for right on time the gong had pealed in the main corridor bidding them to return to their classes.

Virginia walked slowly upstairs to the room which she shared with Winona. She was thinking of the Manuscript Magazine. Eleanor had told her that she would rather write than eat Charlotte Russe and that that was saying a good deal as she adored that particular kind of dessert, but had always been too poor to have it except on very rare occasions such as birthdays or Christmas. “I’m just sure we’ll all love her, and how I do hope one of her stories will do for this month’s magazine.” Virginia opened the door to the corner room and then stopped and stared within.

What she saw aroused her curiosity.

“Winona, where are you going? Why are you packing? You haven’t had bad news from home, have you?” This last because of an open letter on the table which lay as though it had been hastily dropped as soon as it had been read.

The tall, graceful Indian girl stood up and turned to smile with her usual calm expression undisturbed.

“It’s strange, isn’t it,” she said, “how very much can happen in a very little time? Just after you left this morning a telegram came from my brother, Strong Heart, which had been sent from Red Riverton. In it he told me that there was an epidemic in our village and that he was in town trying to find a physician who would be willing to go so far out on the desert and remain until all danger was over. ‘Do not come yet. Night letter will follow,’ that telegram stated. Of course I began at once to pack, believing that I might want to start West at any moment, but when the night letter came, my sister, Glad Song wrote that help had been obtained and that I need not come. I will read what she has written: ‘Winona, several of our little ones passed from our village before we could obtain help. We no longer believe in our old medicine man and there is no one in our midst who knows about first aid measures. I have been wishing that you might learn something of these things before you return to us.’”

The Indian girl looked up, her dark eyes glowing with a new resolve. “You remember White Lily, that day just after the Christmas holidays when I told you that I felt that there must be some real mission in life for each of us?”

Virginia nodded: “Yes, I remember.”

“And you agreed. I recall that you said if we each held the finding of that mission as a definite goal, we would be led to it, and now,” the dark face was radiant, “this is what I may do for my father’s people. I shall go away to another school, White Lily, where I can learn the ways of preventing epidemics.”

How tall and straight, like an arrow, the Indian girl stood, and, in her eyes there was that far-away expression as though she were seeing a vision. Virginia thought of Joan d’Arc. That same expression was often pictured in the eyes of young women who were inspired with a high purpose and in whose hearts there was a noble resolve.

“Where shall you go, Winona?” This was no time for sentimental regrets that the friends were to be parted, their plans changed.

“I do not know. I shall speak with Mrs. Martin. She will know best how to advise me. I will go to her now.”

When Winona was gone, Virginia removed her wraps and sat before the fireplace, thinking. It was but a half hour before lunch and there was not time to attend any of the morning classes.

“Dear, wonderful Winona,” the girl from the West was thinking, “she has found her life work and she will accomplish it, whatever the obstacles may be that will arise in her path.” Then with a little sigh, Virginia thought of her own future. What did it hold for her? What worthwhile thing was she to do? Of course she would return to her beloved desert, but who was there that she could really benefit with what she had learned, as Winona would benefit her father’s remnant of a tribe? In a flash there came to the girl a picture in the fire. For three long years the little school house near the sand hills, which she and Winona had attended when they were younger, had been deserted. The storms had blown the sand high over the door-sill and the drifts, on the side toward which the wind most frequently blew were even up to the windows. Such a sad, forlorn little place it was!

And it could not be reopened. A teacher could not be hired by the State because there were only six pupils to attend it. The three little Mahoys and another three little scraggly unkempt children belonging to a dry rancher over in Wild Hog Canon. Six children who were to grow up without the rudiments of knowledge because the Board of Education would not hire a teacher for that little desert school unless there were eight pupils.

Though she did not know it, the same light was burning deep in the eyes of Virginia that she had noted a few moments before in the dark orbs of her friend. “I, even I, am responsible for those six forlorn little babies,” she was thinking. “They are my mission. Surely the State will permit a self-appointed teacher, whom they will not have to pay, to at least use the little schoolhouse that is nearly hidden in sand drifts.

“Brother Peyton, Uncle Tex, Rusty Pete and the rest will gladly have a shoveling roundup and clear away the sand from the windows and doors. It will be a cheerful little room, flooded with sunlight and filled with color and hope and happiness.”

Virginia’s thoughts were interrupted by the return of Winona. “Strange things are happening,” was her immediate remark. “Mrs. Martin had a folder this morning from a hospital training school, and in it Mrs. Martin is asked to send the name of any girl who might wish to take the three months practical nursing course.

“I said that I would gladly take it, and, that there might be no delay, Mrs. Martin called up the hospital on long distance and she was asked to send me at once as one applicant for the term just beginning had been unable to take the work at present.”

Virginia gladly assisted her friend to pack and that very afternoon the Indian girl left the school before the other pupils even knew what was happening.