"There is no reason why Betty should be anything but ornamental," Mrs. Ashton argued, although plainly thinking over her son's words.
Dick Ashton shook his head. "No, mother, the modern world has no place in it but for useful people nowadays. And somehow it seems to me that even more is going to be asked of women than has been asked of men. They have got to do their own housekeeping and some of the world's too, pretty soon."
Before the young fellow finished speaking he and his mother were both smiling and waving their hands toward Mollie and Polly O'Neill, who were at this moment crossing the street with several other girl friends. Before they entered the house, however, Betty's automobile, driven by herself, dashed into sight, containing five other passengers: Margaret Everett and her small brother; Miss McMurtry, the science teacher at the high school; a tall girl with a clever face and a far-away expression in her near-sighted blue eyes; and a fifth girl, an entire stranger both to Mrs. Ashton and Dick and until a short while before an equal stranger to Betty.
Almost before the car stopped Betty was out of her seat and ushering her visitors into their big, sweet-smelling drawing-room. There Esther stood close against the wall, trying her best to shrink out of sight even while she reproached herself for her unnecessary awkwardness and fear. Suppose she had had no home and no social training like the greater number of these other girls, yet did she not mean to follow forever the law of the Camp Fire and would it not teach her in time to gain the knowledge necessary to happiness?
"Esther, won't you repeat the Law of the Camp Fire for the girls?" Miss McMurtry asked, fifteen minutes later, when Betty's guests were seated in a close circle about the drawing-room, their faces eager with curiosity.
Esther alone sat at some distance from the others, so that Betty was compelled to draw her forward toward the center of their group. How she longed to refuse to recite, for instead of a dozen pairs of eyes fastened upon her she felt there must be at least a hundred! Yet catching an expression of amused sympathy on Dick Ashton's face somehow she felt encouraged to go on.
"Esther and I have been studying the plan of the Camp Fire organization for the past two months and it is really very simple," Miss McMurtry continued. "One must just follow certain general rules and then add whatever seems appropriate to give one's special camp originality and character. I had been hoping to form a club in the village this summer, but of course if we can carry out Betty's idea and spend our summer together in the woods, why we will learn in a few months what it might have taken us years to find out in weekly meetings in town." The young woman stopped, turning toward Esther, and the girl then felt obliged to speak. Esther's voice was low, but had that rare quality given to but a few voices of being heard at even a great distance without being raised.
"Seek beauty. Give service. Pursue knowledge. Be trustworthy. Hold on to health. Glorify work. Be happy."
With each line, feeling the sympathy of her small audience increase, Esther gained courage until at last she was able to finish her verse with fervor and conviction.
After her conclusion most of the faces near her were unusually thoughtful until Polly O'Neill, seated next Mrs. Ashton, gave a characteristic laugh followed by a sigh.
"My dear children, if we ever learn to live up to that law of the Camp Fire, then shall we be angels and not girls!" she exclaimed.
And she might have added more had not an imploring frown from Betty silenced her. Of course some of the girls would understand that Polly rarely meant what she said, but there we're other members of the little company with whom Betty wished to take no risks. Besides, Polly's laugh could sometimes dampen even her own enthusiasm! And had she not placed her friend next her mother in order that she might interest Mrs. Ashton in their plan, for Polly was a great favorite with the older woman and never afraid of using her pretty blarney stone with her.
However, except for a laugh no one seemed in the least influenced by Polly's skepticism.
"We can at least try to live up to the law," Mollie replied quietly, answering from her chair a few feet away.
In a few moments, however, Betty no longer feared the effect of her friend's attitude. Perhaps to some of the girls the idea of a summer camp seemed too beautiful to be possible, yet plainly the ideals of the Camp Fire organization, as Miss McMurtry explained them more fully, had fired their imaginations, filling them with new hopes and enthusiasm.
Meg had been listening to what had been said with glowing cheeks, meaning to become a Camp Fire girl even though it was entirely impossible for her to join the summer camp. She was holding her small brother tight in her arms, trying to distract his attention with objects to be seen out the front window, and so entirely oblivious of the fact that the hastily adjusted hairpins had been slipping out of her hair, until one yellow braid now dangled over her pink ear.
Mollie O'Neill's cheeks were also flushed, but she sat perfectly still, keeping her hands clasped tight together in a fashion she had when desiring a thing greatly and not feeling sure she would receive it.
Eleanor Meade had even forgiven Betty for dragging her away from her unfinished painting of the May, sky (a painting which Meg and Betty had assured her resembled soap suds), so enthralled had she become with the summer plan. If her parents could be persuaded to allow her to stay in camp with the girls during the summer, why then surely she need not be bothered with having to take exercise and help with the housework, as her mother insisted, she could simply give up all her time to her drawing and painting. You see Eleanor, like a good many other girls, did not at once grasp the meaning of the Camp Fire idea.
Apparently only one person in Mrs. Ashton's drawing-room up to this time seemed to have gotten nothing at all out of Miss McMurtry's explanations and the girls' discussion of a Camp Fire club. But then how could she, for Sylvia Wharton apparently had not listened and certainly had never taken her eyes from Polly's face? She appeared a stupid child, short and stout and, although fourteen, hardly seemed more than twelve. Her clothes were expensive but always inappropriate, indeed they were far too handsome for such a plain little girl. However, they were in accord with her father's taste, and although Mr. Wharton was now a wealthy man, he had begun life as a stone-cutter and could hardly be expected to know much about the proper way to dress a small, motherless daughter.
Several times in the past half hour Polly had almost yielded to the inclination to implore Sylvia to take her eyes off her, for the little girl did not look sensitive and her eyes were so large and expressionless they made one uncomfortable, but then Polly forbore, until, as her own interest in their meeting proceeded, she forgot all about her inquisitor.
It must have been about five o'clock when Betty at last arose and holding a curiously wrought silver ring, a bracelet and a pin in her hand, started to walk slowly about among the circle of her guests.
"If you wish to join our Camp Fire club this afternoon," she invited coaxingly, "you are simply to repeat the lines Esther has just recited for us. Then Miss McMurtry says you may each receive a woodgatherers' ring. Afterwards, when we have acquired sufficient honors in the seven crafts, 'Health Craft, Home Craft, Nature Lore, Camp Craft, Business and Patriotism'," (Betty repeated the list slowly as though not quite certain of herself), "why then we may attain next to the rank of Fire-Makers and wear their bracelets. The highest honor of all, which I for one shall probably never attain, is to become a Torch Bearer and receive the Torch Bearer's pin. It is all right for me to give the girls the rings, isn't it, Miss McMurtry, after they have repeated the law to you?" Betty asked, "since you have been appointed official guardian by the headquarters in New York? Later on I suppose the girls will tell us when they will wish to come into camp."
Miss McMurtry laughed. Never until this afternoon had she had any liking for Betty Ashton. They were such utterly different types of woman and girl! Yet, now Betty's habit of expecting to have her own way, which her teacher so disliked, was assuredly making their Camp Fire plans go ahead with a rush.
"Yes, I am a properly appointed guardian," Miss McMurtry answered slowly, "and Esther and I have been studying the Camp Fire program until she is almost ready to become a Fire-Maker, but I wonder if, you girls wish me to be your guardian in camp this summer? Perhaps I am not suited to it!" She turned to look at Betty, but failing to catch her eye, looked toward Polly. For the same reason both girls kept their heads bowed, until Betty was finally able to reply with as much enthusiasm as she could muster:
"Oh, of course we wish you, and we shall try to give as little trouble as possible." Really in her present enthusiasm Betty believed that she and her science teacher would be able to put away all past differences and live in perfect accord under the influence of their new ideals.
Miss McMurtry now turned again to Esther; there were special reasons for her unusual interest in this girl, although even Esther herself was unaware of them.
"You are wearing your bead chains, aren't you?" the new guardian asked, slipping two narrow strips of leather, one strung with orange and the other with bright red beads, from about Esther's throat. "You see each one of these beads represents some honor a girl has attained in the Camp Fire," she explained, "so the girl who finally arrives at the rank of Torch Bearer, really an assistant to the guardian, may own seven different chains of bead, one color for each of the seven crafts."
"My honors so far have been won in health and home craft because of what I was taught at the orphan asylum," Esther added frankly and then blushed uncomfortably, for several of Betty's friends were staring at her curiously. What had inspired Mrs. Ashton and Betty, supposed to be the most exclusive persons in Woodford, to introduce this unknown girl into their home as though she were a member of their family?
Moreover, Betty must have suffered another change of heart for she was now engaged in almost forcing a Wood-Gatherer's ring upon the stranger whom she had lately brought home in the automobile with her.
Mrs. Ashton lifted her lorgnettes to gaze at the visitor. "Tell me, Polly dear," she whispered, "who is that girl with whom Betty is now talking? She is not one of her school friends and yet I feel I have seen her somewhere before, though I am not able to place her."
Polly smiled, shaking her head. "You have seen her, I know I have many times, although she is not a friend or even an acquaintance of mine. But I don't know what has happened to 'The Princess', so I would rather you would put your question to her after we go away."
Mrs. Ashton kept hold of Polly's hand. Two maids had just come into the drawing-room at this moment and were passing plates of cake and cups of hot chocolate about among the guests. The greater number of the girls were crowding around Miss McMurtry and Betty, so only Dick Ashton happened to notice that no one, not even a maid, had come near Esther. Securing chocolate and cake for her himself, he sat down next her, talking but asking no questions, since he feared to embarrass her as he had earlier in the afternoon.
"Do you think, Polly, that this is really a good plan of Betty's?" Mrs. Ashton inquired thoughtfully. "She has seemed so restless and dissatisfied lately. Of course I don't understand all this Camp Fire idea seems to mean to her, I suppose I would have to be a girl again to understand thoroughly, but there may be possibilities in it. Even a conventional society woman longs sometimes to get away from her monotonous life, and surely you will find romance and adventure awaiting you in the woods. I have decided I shall not stand in Betty's way, I shall go away this summer and leave you girls to work things out together, then when I return I may be able to discover what miracles have been wrought in you."
"Oh, you will find us entirely reformed," Polly answered carelessly, not realizing that she of all the girls in the room would be the one to bear the ordeal of fire, the symbol that cleanses and purifies.
But both the girl and woman suddenly became silent, for Dick Ashton had persuaded Esther Clark to the piano and now the entire group of guests closed in about her.
Once again she was singing the morning and evening hymn of the Camp Fire Girls' "My Soul's Desire."
Mrs. Ashton sat listening intently with an odd expression of something almost like relief crossing her face. "Polly dear," she whispered unexpectedly at the close of Esther's song, "perhaps life does even things up more justly than we know, for this strange girl, Esther Clark, has a truly remarkable voice."
"White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, Light mists, whose soft embraces keep The sunshine on the bills asleep."
The sun was just rising above the crests of a group of the White Mountains called long ago by the indians "Waumbek" because of their snowy foreheads. But this morning, instead of shining like crystal, the snow at their summits was opal tinted rose, yellow and violet from the early rays of the June sun.
Sunrise Hill, standing in the foreground, seemed to catch an even stronger reflection from the sky, for the colors drained down its sides until they emptied into a small, wooded lake at its base.
On either side this hill the sloping lands were a soft green and the meadows beyond golden with the new summer grain, but only fifty yards away a grove of pine trees made a deep mass of shade, and with the birds in their branches singing their daily matins, suggested an old cathedral choir.
The singers were evidently indifferent to intruders, for, close by, four white tents were pitched in a square as though a caravan had halted on its travels. But the caravaneers must have been in the place for some days and showed no intention of moving on, for their arrangements had been made with the idea of permanent comfort.
Around each tent a narrow trench several inches deep had been dug to prevent flooding in case of rain, farther off two large bins held all rubbish until such time as it could be conveniently burned. The camp ground was also beautifully clean, not a scrap of paper nor a tin can could be seen anywhere, and even the grass itself had been swept with a novel, but at the same time, a very old-fashioned broom, for a stake tightly bound with a few sprigs of birch rested against one of the tents, plainly--from the evidences about it--the kitchen tent. At a safe distance a camp fire was smoldering, a fire built according to the best scout methods. Two stout stakes driven slantwise in the ground with three logs cut the same length, one on top the other, resting against these stakes. On either side this elevation two logs lay on the ground like fire logs, with a third crossing them in front, and inside this enclosure a bed of ashes still glowed, carefully covered over for the night. On the lake two birch bark canoes were moored to willow stakes, and hanging on a line stretching from a tree to a pole a number of girls' bathing suits flapped and danced in the air, but no human being was yet in sight.
Suddenly there came a ripple of music from one of the pine trees, "Whee-you, whee-you," a small bird with a spotted breast and a cream-buff coat sang to itself and then began a whistling, ringing monotone that for a moment silenced the other bird chorus.
A girl in a dark red dressing gown quietly opened a tent flap.
"There, the morning has come at last, for that is the voice of 'Oopehanka', the thrush. So after a week in the woods I really am beginning to recognize some of the birds and the Indian names for them." She clapped her hands softly together.
"Oh, Princess, do wake up and let us have a swim before any one else wakens," she whispered imploringly.
Then disappearing inside her tent, she knelt by a bed of hemlock branches covered with soft blue blankets. "Princess," she whispered again.
A sleepy voice answered. "Polly child, please go back to bed, it must be the middle of the night and I ache all over from carrying water and digging trenches. Who could have supposed camping would be such a lot of work!"
"Or such a lot of joy!" Polly laughed. "Ah, Betty, I thought you were yearning to be useful; think of the honor beads you mean to earn! But come now and be useful to me; do let us have a swim together."
Betty was never proof against her friend's pleading. "All right," she agreed, searching about near her bed for her sandals while Polly wrapped a light woolen gown about her, "I don't know whether Miss McMurtry will like our going off by ourselves, but I don't remember her having said we should not, though Camp Fire life does mean doing things together."
The two girls had been talking in the lowest possible tones and were now tiptoeing softly out of their tent, when another voice from another bed interrupted them.
"Betty and Polly, you are sneaks!" Mollie O'Neill exclaimed indignantly. "Just because I can't swim as well as you do and Esther can't swim at all, you are going off without us. You are fine Camp Fire girls; please bring our bathing suits here, too."
Both girls nodded and laughed in rather an abashed fashion. But at a safe distance away Betty turned to Polly. "Won't you confess, please, that it is rather a nuisance having Esther Clark in the tent with us? I don't see why Martha McMurtry insisted upon it when we might have had Meg or most anybody else."
Polly looked unusually grave. "You don't care for Esther, do you?" she questioned. "It is curious, because though you haven't been particularly nice to her, she is devoted to you and I believe would do anything in the world for you."
Ten minutes later the four girls in their Camp Fire bathing suits were in the waters of the lake near their camp, Polly and Betty swimming with long even strokes toward its center, Mollie hovering near the shore, while Esther stood shivering in a foot of water trying vainly to warm herself by splashing and throwing handfuls of water on her chest and face.
Half a mile out Betty turned over on her side. "Say the Law of the Camp Fire to yourself, Polly. I have just said it and I am going back toward shore. I suppose if one makes a vow to 'give service' it is little enough to show another girl how to swim. If Esther didn't look so big and wasn't so horribly shy, I am sure I should like her better, but here goes!"
It wasn't easy work teaching Esther to swim, for she was so much larger than Betty and had such an absurd fashion of keeping both feet down and splashing the water into her own and her teacher's face. Polly laughed softly to herself as she swam slowly forward to offer her assistance. She was wondering if a single week in camp had really begun to reform her spoiled Betty and if it had, had any change also been wrought in her? She was to find out in a very few minutes.
One Camp Fire law, that there was no escaping, was that the girls were not to spend but fifteen minutes in bathing. Really it hardly seemed like half that time before the four girls were once again on land getting into their bathing gowns which had been left hanging on a willow tree nearby. They were to dress later on in their tent, so they were hardly on shore more than a few moments, but even in that short space of time a noise a few yards away startled them. The four girls turned indignantly. In the entire week of their stay in camp they had not been disturbed by a single intruder. Sunrise Hill, with its tall pines--the emblem of the Camp Fire--its wooded lake for fishing, bathing and canoeing, and its utter seclusion, had seemed, after several weeks of careful search in the neighborhood about Woodford, the ideal place for the girls' summer camp. So far not even a friend, man or woman, had been allowed to visit them, because the camp was to be in running order before they received any outside criticism.
Now a young fellow of perhaps sixteen stood only a short distance off from the lake with an expression of superior amusement on his face. He was a country boy, for he wore no hat and his hair was burnt to a light straw color at the ends, his skin was almost bronze.
"Please go away," Polly demanded haughtily. She had gathered her bathing gown about her as though it were a Roman matron's robe and was feeling that her presence must be impressive although her hair was extremely wet and drops of water were trickling down her face.
However, the intruder paid not the least attention to her request, except to laugh as though her indignation gave him special pleasure. He was carrying a large tin pail on one arm and a basket on the other and of course his behavior was hardly that of a gentleman.
Anger for the moment kept Polly speechless, but a chorus of protests arose from Betty, Mollie and Esther. "We are camping here and we would rather not have visitors, so would you mind going back the way you have come?" Betty requested in her most Princess-like fashion.
"Not until I have seen the sights," the newcomer answered. He did not really look impertinent, only mischievous, and his eyes were as blue as Polly's.
"You don't suppose that I have walked a mile before breakfast and carried these heavy things except to find out what on the face of the earth you crazy girls are doing here, trying to pretend you are scouts or Indian squaws. Of all the foolishness!"
Perhaps even this short acquaintance with Polly O'Neill has suggested that she had, what is for some reason or other called an Irish temper, though temper does not belong wholly to Irish people. Polly herself did not know when this temper would take possession of her nor where it would lead her. At present the young man continued to walk slowly on toward the white tents, whistling to show his complete indifference, while the four girls could see that their friends were now stirring about in camp evidently getting ready to start breakfast.
Without reflecting Polly stooped. There on the ground before her lay a sharp rock, ground and polished by the waters of the lake, and like a shot from a bow she flung this stone whistling through the air at the intruder.
Whether she thought her stone would strike the young man or what particular effect her childish bad manners would have if it should, Polly herself did not know. However, she was startled and flushed hotly when, with an exclamation of pain, the boy put down his pail, placing one hand quickly to his head.
The four girls had started for their camp, but now Mollie, first flashing a look of surprise and scorn at her usually beloved sister, ran on ahead of the others. "I am so sorry," she said in a gentle, reserved manner peculiar to her, "you were rude not to go away when we asked you, but it is far worse for one of us to have been so childish as to strike you. I am dreadfully ashamed."
The young man smiled, not very cheerfully it must be admitted, but at least not looking so angry as he had the right to. "Did you throw the stone?" he inquired. "I never would have believed a girl could throw straight if I hadn't felt the blow, so perhaps you are learning one or two things by living like boys. Never mind, I can see you are not the guilty one."
"We are not trying to live in the least like boys, only like sensible girls," Mollie started in to reply quietly, but the last part of her sentence trailed off into a faint whisper, for the young man had just taken his hand down from his head and his fingers were covered with blood, a few drops were even trickling down the back of his neck inside his soft flannel shirt.
The other three girls had now come close enough to see the blood also, and except for Betty, Pony would everlastingly have disgraced herself. There are many persons in the world whom the sight of blood fills with a strange shrinking and terror that is almost like faintness, and Polly was one of them. Now she wanted to run away, she even turned to fly, when her friend caught hold of her. "Don't be utterly stupid, Polly, you have done a foolish trick and you've got to face the music, for if you don't, you know Mollie is apt to take the blame upon herself."
Polly's knees were shaking and her thin expressive face so pale that she looked quite unlike herself. However, she managed to save a part of her dignity by saying with an attempt at a smile, as she stopped alongside Mollie and the young fellow, "I am sorry, I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet, so please feel all the anger against me. I do hope I haven't hurt you very much."
The young man now stared at Polly and then at Mollie and afterwards back again from one to the other. He started to whistle but stopped himself in time. "Gee, but you are alike--with a difference," he returned, neither accepting nor refusing to accept Polly's half-hearted apology.
Hardly knowing why, except that the back of his neck was apparently covered with perspiration when there was no heat to explain it, the boy again put up his hand to his head. This time it was impossible to ignore the amount of blood that covered his hand nor the horrified faces of his small audience.
"I expect I can't go up to your camp, after all, when I am in such a fix, so you've come kind of close to getting your own way. I guess you, usually do!" he said, frowning up at Polly. "I wonder if it is too much to ask you girls to carry these things up to your tents; the pail has your morning's milk and is pretty heavy; the basket is only filled with strawberries. My father is the farmer who owns the land about here and I thought it would be a lark to find out what you campers were trying to do. Didn't mean anything serious but I guess you'll have to come for your own supplies after this as there ain't no one but me to bring 'em." He spoke rather churlishly, but then he did have cause.
"Hadn't you better wash your cut at the lake or come on up to the tent and let us do something there for you," Betty proposed, not knowing exactly what they should do in the present situation and yet feeling that something ought to be done. "I am afraid walking home in the sun with your head in that condition may make you ill."
The young man shook his head and then winced. "It ain't anything," he replied, beginning to back away, but at the same moment Mollie O'Neill took firm hold on his sleeve. "Come down to the water," she demanded quietly, "you are cut pretty badly, but I think I can stop the bleeding. I suppose the other girls will laugh at me, but ever since I have been in camp I have been carrying some gauze bandage about in my pocket and finding out what to do in case of accidents. I won't hurt you."
The young fellow had intended utterly to decline Mollie's kindly offer, but now her suggestion of not hurting amused him, besides he was sensible enough to know she was right. It was embarrassing, however, to have three other girls looking on during the operation, so whatever anguish Mollie caused him he felt prepared to endure in silence.
In a very business-like fashion the young girl drew her roll of surgeon's lint from an inside pocket of her bathing gown and a small pair of scissors. Then she made her patient sit down on the ground by the water's edge while she carefully examined his cut.
"I ought to help, Mollie," her sister suggested faintly, but Mollie shook her head and the young man appeared grateful. "I don't mind blood and you do, Polly," she returned, "besides if anybody is to help I would rather have Esther. I am afraid, if you don't mind, I have got to cut your hair away, it is already so matted with blood."
To almost any suggestion the patient would have agreed, since he had but one desire now, and that to get away from the strange girls about whom he had been so curious an hour before.
Mollie cheerfully snipped away several locks of his hair covering a space about as large as a dollar. The cut she discovered was deeper than she had expected and, as it was still bleeding profusely, she next called Esther for advice. Very carefully then the two girls washed out the cut with clean water and then Mollie, finding a flat stone, made a pad by wrapping it a number of times with gauze. This she placed over the wound, binding the young man's head, Esther assisting in making the bandage as tight as he could endure.
All this time Polly, with Betty's hand firmly clutching hers, had stood quietly looking on at the scene. She was feeling penitent and ashamed, and yet her Irish sense of humor made her a little bit amused as well. Mollie was so entirely unconscious, but she did seem to be intensely enjoying her first opportunity to prove herself a worthy Camp Fire Girl.
Perhaps the young man vaguely felt Polly's amusement, although he did not look at her and certainly did not give her the satisfaction of knowing whether or not she had been forgiven. But he managed to thank Mollie and Esther more politely for what they had done for him, than his boorish manners earlier in the morning suggested, and even insisted on going on up to the camp with them in order to carry the heavy pail.
Several others of the Camp Fire girls, were by this time engaged in getting break fast and although they could hardly help showing surprise at the unexpected appearance of a wounded hero no questions were then asked.
Miss McMurtry did not seem annoyed at seeing the young man, indeed it turned out that she and several of the girls had walked over to Mr. Webster's farm the day before to ask as a special favor that milk be sent their camp each day. If she felt any displeasure, Betty and Polly were sure it was directed toward them, for the first week of Camp Fire life had not been altogether smooth and there were still adjustments to be made between some of the girls and their guardian.
Besides the four girls who have just returned from the lake there were six others in the camp at Sunrise Hill, their guardian, Miss McMurtry and one small imp or angel, according to one's way of looking at things. For Margaret Everett had joined the summer campers and, in order to accomplish it, had brought her small brother, Horace Virgil Everett, along with her. You see, the girls felt they simply must have Meg, so after a great deal of discussion it was decided that Horace Virgil would be an excellent person to practice mother craft upon and would certainly bring into service whatever first aid information might be required.
Meg was so gay, so sweet tempered and so utterly inconsequential. If things were going well in camp, if the sun was shining and everybody was feeling amiable then she was entirely happy, but if things were going wrong, then it was that Meg counted, for she kept her temper through almost any kind of stress. She did not have so many moods as Polly, she was not so quiet and reserved as Mollie, nor did she expect the world to move according to her desires, as Betty Ashton did. Meg's faults were that she was not a good manager and did try to do too many things at once and so did none of them well, but she had not had an easy time since her mother died two years ago. Although her father and older brother adored her, they were selfish in unconscious masculine ways, President Everett in devoting too much time to his school and John to his studies and amusements. Unfortunately neither of them realized that Meg might now and then grow weary of having a small brother, capable of originating new kind of mischief at least once an hour, everlastingly tagging after her. But Meg's cares (if she ever called them by that name) had for the present been entirely lifted from her, for she had ten other people now to help, her take care of "Bumps," whom the girls had rechristened "Hai-yi" or "Little Brother," and if Meg had been asked to vote upon the happiest week of her life since her mother's death she would instantly have voted her first week in camp with her own club of Camp Fire Girls.
Then there was Sylvia Wharton! Did Sylvia really enjoy the change in her life from staying cooped up in a great house, looked after by servants and alone a great part of the time when her father was away? Her brother Frank, who was several years older, seldom paid the least attention to her. If the little girl did enjoy the woods and the companionship of the other girls and all the opportunities that the camp fire life offered her, so far she showed not the slightest sign. Her one pleasure must have been her chance to haunt Polly O'Neill, for although she did not seem particularly happy when she was with Polly, certainly she never left her side unless she were compelled to do her share of the camp work and only then when Polly insisted upon it. Already Miss McMurtry felt that Sylvia might become difficult, but then the child had had no training, and besides Miss McMurtry shared the belief of almost all other persons that Sylvia was simply stupid. Curiously enough Eleanor Meade now appeared to have been invited into the first Woodford Camp Fire circle under a false impression. You see, the girls at the high school where Eleanor was also a student considered her a genius, and it is agreeable for a community to have one genius in its midst. Eleanor did have talent for drawing, and besides she had a number of characteristics which many persons associate with genius. She was entirely careless of her other responsibilities, and, if she happened to wish to paint, considered it entirely unreasonable that anything or anybody should interfere with her desire. She was often in the habit of forgetting engagements and at times there was a faraway expression in her eyes, which may have come from having neglected to wear her glasses, but which her friends believed due to the thrall of some wonderful creative idea which might be presented to the world some day in the form of a great picture. And Eleanor, being but human and seventeen, had done her best to foster this belief. She would not dress in modern fashions like the other girls; her parents had little money, but Eleanor's mother was a clever needlewoman and her eldest daughter always appeared in gowns made after exactly the same pattern and of some soft clinging material, whether cashmere or cheesecloth, they were always short waisted with a folded girdle and deep hem and cut low in the neck. Then Eleanor's hair, which was heavy and straight and a kind of ashen brown, was always worn parted in the middle and fixed in a great loose knot at the back of her neck. Eleanor was not pretty like Betty and Meg and Mollie and, at times, Polly O'Neill, but she would have scorned to have been thought pretty--interesting was the adjective she preferred.
However, since Eleanor's appearance in camp for almost a week she had forgotten to be a genius. For one thing the girls were all wearing the regulation Camp Fire uniform, a loose blouse and dark blue serge skirt, and so she could not dress the part. Then, although the Camp Fire official log book had been given her to illustrate she had not even started to paint the totem of the Sunrise Camp on its brown leather cover, although Sunrise Hill stood, always before her in its changing beauty. The girls had taken its name for their camp with the thought that the hill might symbolize their own efforts to look upward always to the highest and most beautiful things.
But Eleanor should hardly be blamed for not having done much painting so far, there, had been such a lot of other work to do, in helping to put things in order in camp, and besides she had developed the most surprising talent for making an Irish stew, that was the envy and delight of all the other girls. Eleanor said it was because she had a soul above science and used her imagination in her stew, but whatever the reason, since the first day when the cooking of dinner fell to her, this stew had been one of the greatest successes in camp and Eleanor received her first honor bead for her genius in cooking instead of in art.
Besides these seven girls already described, there was an eighth girl in the Sunrise camp, the stranger whom Betty had brought home with her on the day their club had first been discussed--the girl whose face was so familiar to Mrs. Ashton but whose name was unknown. There had been a question as to whether or not this particular girl could come to summer camp, not because the other girls were unwilling to have her, but because she worked in a milliner's shop in Woodford and had to go back and forth to be at work every day. Quite by accident on the eventful afternoon Betty had stooped by this shop in her journey to Meg's to ask about her new spring hat, and being so full of her plan had poured it into Edith Norton's ear, while the little milliner was trying on her hat. Naturally Edith thought it a wonderful plan, so Betty, with one of her sudden impulses, immediately insisted that the young milliner come home with her to become a member of their new Camp Fire club. This seemed at the time a perfectly impossible dream to Edith, who was a poor girl with her own living to make, but then she did not understand Betty's ability to make things happen. Every obstacle had been smoothed away, Edith was now riding Betty's bicycle back and forth from camp to town every day and, already the headaches, which had first wakened Betty's sympathy, because of the pallor of her face and the dark circles under her eyes, had begun to grow better from the daily fresh air and exercise. Of the Camp Fire Girls Edith was the oldest; she was about eighteen and had blonde hair and delicate features, with brown eyes. She might have been pretty, but that she needed to grow stronger in body and character, and already the girls and their guardian had discovered that Edith was too fond of tea and coffee and sweets and modern novels for her own health or happiness. The trouble was that her home was too filled with small brothers and sisters and a father and mother too poor to make them comfortable, so that the eldest daughter had been forced to find her own pleasures.
The last two members of the Sunrise Hill camp were unknown to the other girls until a few days before. They were two sisters, daughters of a favorite doctor, cousin of Miss McMurtry's, who had been pupils in a fashionable boarding school in Philadelphia. They were not alike, either in appearance or character, for the older one of them thought too much about clothes and wealth and position, and so immediately fell to admiring and imitating Betty, while the other was an impossible tomboy, more like a feminine Puck, the very incarnation of mischief, whose one idea of happiness seemed to lie in playing pranks.
Juliet Field, the older girl, had light brown hair and eyes, was rather pretty and had a plump girlish figure, round fat cheeks with a good deal of color and a piquant, turned-up nose, while Beatrice, whom everybody called "Bee," wore her curly dark hair cut short, had a melancholy brown face entirely unlike her character and was as slender and small and quick in her movements as a tiny wren.
The two sisters and Sylvia Wharton slept in the tent with Miss McMurtry, while the third tent sheltered Eleanor, Edith, Meg and, of course, "little brother".
When Miss McMurtry had wakened to discover that four of the Camp Fire girls had gone in swimming without the others, she had not been pleased, more because she felt that Betty and Polly were too much inclined to be leaders among the girls and to disregard her advice. They had not yet openly disobeyed her, so of course she had been unable to say anything to them, but now she made up her mind to hang in each tent the rules for each day's camp routine so that there could be no more uncertainty. Miss McMurtry had merely been waiting to decide what rules were wisest before making her schedule.
As soon as their first masculine visitor departed Eleanor, Meg and Juliet announced breakfast. At a comfortable distance from the kitchen fire a large white cloth had been spread on the grass and in the center stood the great basket of fresh strawberries just brought over by the young man to whom Polly had given such an uncomfortable reception. A big coffee pot and two jugs of milk stood at opposite ends of the cloth besides toast and a dozen boiled eggs in a chafing dish, while from the nearby fire came the most delicious food odor in the world: bacon fried before open coals. Nevertheless the girls did not sit down to breakfast at once although they were dreadfully hungry. Already they had established certain Camp Fire customs, and one was their morning habit of reciting some verse of thanksgiving in unison before beginning the real living of their day. The hymn, which first introduced Betty to Esther was always sung at the close of each day, but this morning verse had always to be original and one girl at a time was allowed to make the selection. To-day it had fallen to Polly's lot and she had taught it to the other girls over their camp fire the night before.
So now the ten girls with their guardian in the center stood in a semicircle facing Sunrise Hill. The sun had fully risen and the earth, as the Indians used to say, had "become white." Led by Polly they slowly recited this ancient chant:
"Shine on our gardens and fields, Shine on our working and weaving; Shine on the whole race of man, Believing and unbelieving; Shine on us now through the night, Shine on us now in Thy might, The flame of our holy love And the song of our worship receiving."
And when they had finished, Polly O'Neill, with a note of reverence in her voice that gave it an unconscious dramatic quality she would have vainly tried to have at any other time, added: "We Camp Fire girls worship not the fire but Him of whom in ages past it was the chosen symbol because it was the purest of all created things."
And then without further ceremony there was a sudden rush for breakfast.
Miss Martha McMurtry was an odd guardian for a Camp Fire club which owed its existence to Betty Ashton's enthusiasm, for two more different persons cannot well be imagined. Of course the girls in the club were of many kinds and characters and it would have been almost impossible for any guardian to have been congenial with all of them, but it was unfortunate that the head of the Sunrise Camp and the two girls who were its leading spirits had at the beginning of the summer so little in common. For there was no question but that Betty and Polly were leaders, one week in camp had been more than sufficient to prove this.
Betty's influence was of course easy to understand, for she was uncommonly pretty and wealthy, and though spoiled and wayward, given to sudden generous impulses and affections which made her friends willing to overlook her faults. With Polly, O'Neill the case was different, she had no money and was not particularly good looking, it was simply that the intensity of her emotions would always, whether as a woman or child, make her a force for good or evil. When Polly was happy persons about her found it almost impossible not to share in her mood, she had such a delicious sense of humor and was so full of clever jokes and delicate, unconscious flatterings. Then when an ugly mood descended upon her, and, as Polly in Irish fashion used to say, "a witch rode on her shoulders," it was almost equally impossible to ignore her foolishly tragic points of view. There is an old name for Ireland, Innis Fodhla, which means the Island of Destiny, and though Polly had been born in a little New England village, nevertheless, in her blood there was a strain of those inheritances which have made the Irish nation so unlike all others.
While Betty and Polly were friends there was apt to be peace among all the girls in camp, but if they should disagree? Ah well, they had never really had any serious differences of opinion in their lives which Mollie, after the passing of a day or two, had not been able to smooth over. And they both had every intention of making themselves as agreeable as possible to their guardian.
Of course from the beginning of things it had been perfectly apparent that Betty would never voluntarily have chosen Miss McMurtry for their camp guardian, but finding that her science teacher was the only woman in Woodford who knew about the Camp Fire movement and was able to spend the summer with them, she had accepted the situation with as good a grace as possible.
Miss Martha McMurtry was not an attractive woman when she first came into the Sunrise Camp. Names have an odd fashion of describing the persons who own them and Miss McMurtry's exactly described her. Have you not a mental picture of a tall, learned young woman, with straight black hair, which she wore pulled back very tight, forming an unattractive knot at the back of her head? Of course she also wore glasses, having spent all her life inside of books until her pupils were convinced that she knew everything in the world. She did know a great deal and because of her knowledge was a splendid Camp Fire guardian, but there were a few things about human nature which her girls were to teach her in exchange for her science. Her information covered a number of fields, for while she taught botany and chemistry at the Girls' High School, she had also taken a two years' course in domestic science before beginning her teaching. Miss McMurtry was only twenty-six, had no family and lived all alone in a small house in Woodford. However, she appeared much older, and one of the questions her pupils were never able to answer was whether she had ever had a man call on her in her life. About her early history there was very little known, as she did not care to talk about herself and no one asked about her past.
About five o'clock on the next afternoon Miss McMurtry and Esther Clark were seated not far from a small fire which they had lately built near their pine grove. The day was not cold, but New Hampshire is seldom very warm in June and, besides, no one in camp ever tried to resist the opportunity for having a fire when most of their pleasure in being in camp centered around it.
Back and forth from the pine grove to his friends Hai-ya, Little Brother, traveled. He was cheerfully engaged in bringing pine cones to Miss McMurtry, and piling them into a small mound, later to be thrown on the fire. On the ground between the woman and girl were some odd pieces of khaki galatea, bits of leather fringe, shells and beads, and Esther was busily sewing. Miss McMurtry was writing: several times she had torn up what she had written, throwing the waste paper into the fire, but finally she handed a sheet to Esther in a hesitating way.
"See what you think of this, Esther?" she asked. "You see the Camp Guardians are advised to follow certain rules and regulations in camp life and I have been trying to decide what would best suit us. Please tell me what you think?"
Esther looked the paper over thoughtfully, and then began reading it aloud.
6:30 A.M. Arise, wash, either bathing in lake or tent, then air bedding thoroughly. Hoist American flag, salute it. Three girls prepare breakfast.
7:30 A.M. Recite in unison morning verse, eat breakfast, make up own bed and clean tent, also do whatever share of work is apportioned for the day.
10 to 12 A.M. Devote to practice in one of the seven Camp Fire crafts for obtaining honors.
12 to 1 P.M. Three girls prepare dinner.
1 to 2 P.M. Dinner served.
2 to 3 P.M. Rest.
3 to 5:30 P.M. Recreation.
5:30 to 6:30 P.M. Three girls prepare tea.
6:30 to 7 P.M. Tea served.
7:00 to 8:30 P.M. Camp Fire, stories, songs, confidences, etc.
8:30 P.M. Milk and crackers, bed.
9 P.M. Lights out.
Ester read the schedule over the second time and then nodded her head approvingly. "It's splendid and I am sure the girls will think it can't be improved upon," she answered, adding the latter part of her speech as she handed the paper back, for Miss McMurtry was looking troubled and Ester half guessed the cause.
Miss McMurtry said nothing, however, only picking up a piece of Ester's sewing.
"What is this you're making, Ester?" she inquired. "I thought you had made your ceremonial Camp Fire dress some time ago!"
Ester did not reply at once as she bent more closely over her work, but on being asked the question the second time returned with an attempt at speaking carelessly: "Oh, it's Betty's costume, I hope you won't mind, but she says really she never has had time to do any sewing since our club was formed. So, as we are to have our June Council Fire to-night, I promised to finished it for her. You see this is our most important meeting because that afternoon in town we did not have an opportunity to arrange appropriate ceremonies."
Miss McMurtry nodded, "Yes, but I thought it was part of our plan to have each girl make her own dress. Even Sylvia Wharton has done her best to help."
Miss McMurtry picked up a portion of the neglected dress, however, and began to assist Esther. "I wonder if it is a good thing for you and Betty to be together," she remarked thoughtfully. "Of course I know Mrs. Aston's intentions were for the best in taking you to live with them at this late date and they will probably be very kind to you, but really there isn't any reason, Esther, why you should take all the cares away from Betty. She seems to be one of the persons in the world for whom nothing is ever made difficult, while you--" Breaking off abruptly she turned to see if her small charge was still busy and then shaded her eyes from the sun.
Esther laughed happily. Not so shy and awkward here in the woods with the other girls, she had lately thought little of her own lack of advantages. "You needn't worry about me," she now replied, stopping her work for a moment to look off across the fields for the return of the other Camp Fire Girls. "Already I perfectly adore Betty. Of course she does not care a great deal for me, for there is nothing in me to attract her, but all my life I have wanted some one to love, and sort of take care of and do things for. Of course Betty has so many people she does not need me much now, but some day. Oh well, as she herself says, one never can tell just how things may turn out in this world."
"Wohelo, Wohelo, Wohelo!" A far cry from several voices sounded across the fields and a few moments later Betty Ashton, Meg, Eleanor and Juliet Field came into view. Betty was wearing her every day Camp Fire costume with the official hat of blue cloth embroidered with a silver gray "W" on a dark red background and over her shoulder was strapped a smart knapsack. She seemed to dance away from the other girls, although she was not dancing but running. Yet such was her grace and slenderness that somehow she appeared:
Like to a lady turning in the dance, Foot before foot from earth so slightly moved, That scarce perceptible her advance.
Arriving first she threw herself down on the ground near Esther, tossing off her hat and resting her head on the other girl's lap.
"I am nearly dead!" she exclaimed rather irritably. "Two miles walk into town and two miles back is a good deal when one has been doing a thousand things beforehand. Besides, I didn't find a letter from mother or father, and Mollie and Polly have seven from Mrs. O'Neill, one for each day of her trip from New York to Queenstown. Of course it does take longer for a ship to land in Naples, so I am silly to be disappointed, yet I am just the same! Besides, Polly was dreadfully obstinate and would insist on coming back to camp by another route, said it was shorter and much more adventurous than the open road. So we parted, and Mollie and Sylvia and Bee axe returning with her. She may be having more adventures than we did, but the way is not shorter, for we appear to have arrived first."
Opening her knapsack Betty then handed two letters to Miss McMurtry and gave a little rolled package to Esther. "Here is something for you from Dick; he doesn't seem to have written me either."
Esther unwrapped her parcel. "It is just a piece of music your brother told me about, an Indian love song. He thought perhaps I could learn it and we could sing it together in camp. He is very kind."
Betty shrugged her shoulders. "Oh yes, Dick is kind to nearly everybody, except to me sometimes when he thinks I need discipline. But he and mother both think you have a remarkable voice, Esther, and that it will be a pity if you don't have it cultivated some day."
Esther laughed, touching Betty's auburn hair affectionately. It was loosened from her walk and curling round her face. "That is my soul's desire, Betty," she whispered, surprised at her sudden burst of confidence. But Betty's manner with her was unexpectedly more intimate than it had been since their first meeting. She could hardly have known that it was owing to the fact that she had just quarreled with her adored Polly. Of course Betty did not intend to be deceitful, she was simply in the habit of seeking consolation from some source, whenever things went wrong with her.
Now she put her hand the second time into her knapsack and, drawing forth a square white box, she proceeded to open it in a slightly shamefaced fashion and then handed it to Miss McMurtry. "I am a dreadful backslider from Camp Fire rules, but I just had to have some candy this afternoon. Do eat some with me, so I won't be the only sinner in camp," she begged.
Miss McMurtry shook her head. "Don't tempt Esther or any of the other girls, Betty," she replied in a tone that Betty was familiar with at school. "One of the health craft rules you girls have promised to observe is to give up candy between meals for three months. Of course if you wish to break your word you may, but I had rather you would not try to influence any one else."
Betty banged the lid back on her box.
"Oh," she replied unsteadily. "I am sorry you feel about me in that way. I didn't mean to be a mischief maker, but you need not worry about Esther, for she is not the kind that falls from grace."
She sat a few moments longer leaning her chin on her hand and looking toward the grove of pine trees where the shadows were now growing longer and darker as the afternoon lengthened. Sorry to have fallen from grace herself, Betty at this moment would have perished rather than confess it.
The other three girls had gone straight on up to the tents, Meg taking "Little Brother" with her. But now Eleanor appeared at the opening before their kitchen tent and began vigorously ringing a large dinner bell.
"Betty Ashton," she called, "it is half-past five o'clock and time to begin dinner. You know it is your turn to help with Juliet and me. Meg is putting the baby to bed."
Betty encircled her hand above her lips forming a small trumpet. "I am not going to help with dinner to-night, I am too dead tired," she halloed back. "I will help to-morrow instead."
"To-morrow?" Eleanor cried indignantly. "What has to-morrow, got to do with it? You are no more tired than the rest of us and besides it is your turn to-night and we have promised not to try to get out of things unless we are ill." Eleanor said nothing more, but even at a distance of a good many yards it was plain that she had flounced back inside the tent. When she came out again with some pots and pans her air was one of conscious and offended virtue.
A moment later Betty sighed. "I wonder if you would mind taking my place this afternoon, Esther?" she inquired. "I am very tired and you haven't been doing anything. Would you mind, Miss Martha?"
Betty made her request very prettily and really without the least idea that it could be refused, for she was not in the habit of being made to do what she did not wish. With her own family to have said she was tired would have been regarded as a sufficient excuse for any change of plan.
Perhaps Miss McMurtry would have been wiser had she agreed to Betty's request, and had she been another girl she possibly might have been more lenient. Now she decided that Betty was simply trying to shirk her responsibilities and so slowly shook her head.
"Of course if you are not well, Betty, I will be glad to take your place myself," she answered, trying to speak kindly. "However, if I were you, I would hardly say that Esther has been doing nothing since she has been sewing all afternoon on the ceremonial dress you promised to make your self, so that you may wear it to our Council Fire to-night."
Betty got up quickly. "Please don't do any further work for me while we are in camp together, Esther," she demanded, "for it is evident that Miss McMurtry thinks I spend my time trying to impose upon you. As far as the dress is concerned, I shall not need it to-night, for I shall not come to the Council Fire. I will do my part in helping to get dinner, of course, but I prefer to rest afterwards."
Hardly, knowing what she was doing because of her anger, Betty yet managed to get up quietly from her place and start toward camp without glancing at either Esther or Miss McMurtry, although she heard Esther following close behind her. "Please don't disappoint us, dear," Esther pleaded. "I know Miss Martha will be willing to let me do your work to-night, if we ask her again, and it will quite ruin our Council Fire if you are not with us. What will Polly say when you and she have planned the whole ceremony? And I--I shall be so disappointed, for I am to be made a Fire-Maker to-night. Besides, you know we are to talk over the names we hope to be known by in our club."
But Betty only walked steadily on as though deaf to the other girl's entreaty. Near her own tent she turned at last and Esther could see that her eyes were full of tears. "You are mistaken, Esther, though I am sure you are very kind," she insisted with her offended Princess air, about which Polly used so often to tease her. "I am sure no one will miss me in the least and my absence will give you a chance to bestow on me the title you think really belongs to me, such as: 'Betty who won't bear her own burdens' or anything you prefer. Please leave me alone now."
So there was nothing more for Esther to do but to return to her work, knowing how little influence she had with Betty at any time.
Half an hour later Polly discovered Esther seated alone by her slowly perishing fire taking the last stitches in Betty's rejected ceremonial dress. She had even embroidered on the left sleeve a small crown in gold colored silk, since Betty's old title "The Princess" would scarcely be changed whatever new names might be awarded to the other girls in their Camp Fire.
"Where's Betty?" Polly inquired carelessly. "I hope she wasn't cross; I suppose it was not kind of me to leave her and return another way, and she was right, it did make us late, but we had a delicious adventure!" Polly had dropped down on the ground and put her arms about her, knees, slowly rocking herself back and forth, her face shining with mischief and excitement, so that her color came and went quickly and tiny sparks appeared to dart forth from the blueness of her eyes and the blackness of her hair.
But as Esther neither answered nor asked any questions Polly stared at her in amazement. She had no particular emotion for Esther one way or the other, perhaps because she was not yet a rival in Betty's affections, but she had always tried to make herself agreeable to her and to have her feel like one of them; moreover, she did not enjoy being disregarded.
Halfway up on her feet a glance at Esther's face made her drop back into her old position, except that she put one hand under the girl's chin, turning her face toward her.
"For goodness' sake, Esther, what is the matter?" she demanded. "I suppose it is Betty!"
And Esther nodded, feeling an absurd disposition to shed actual tears of disappointment. So much had been planned for to-night's Council Fire and this was the first disagreement in their camp. Should Betty fail to appear, the other girls, learning the cause, were sure to take sides and no one would be really happy.
Until Esther finished her story Polly listened without comment, although her face flushed and her lips were pressed close together.
"I do think Miss McMurtry was a little hard," she said finally. "It isn't fair to expect us to reform all at once and she might remember that Betty has never had the discipline of having to do things when she didn't wish to before. It is different when one has been poor, isn't it, Esther? Never mind, I will do my best. Betty hasn't any right to make everybody uncomfortable just because she is offended, particularly when she has had so much to do with our plans for to-night."
Polly disappeared, but when tea was served a short time later a signal to Esther reported that she had met with no success. Betty helped with the evening work, saying nothing but looking pale and tired, so that Miss McMurtry wondered if she had been too severe. Perhaps Betty was used up by her walk! She would have liked to have talked to her but had no opportunity, for as soon as supper was over (and three other girls always did the clearing up) Betty immediately disappeared inside her tent, and when her three friends came in to dress for their meeting they found her in bed covered up with her blue blankets and not in the mood for conversation.
Vainly Mollie and Esther attempted persuasion, reproaches, they received always the same answer--fatigue and not ill temper kept Betty from their entertainment. She was sorry of course but they would probably have a better time without her.
Curious, but in the half hour required by the three girls for their dressing, Polly, in spite of her promise, added not a single word of regret or entreaty in spite of Esther's pleading looks and Mollie's outspoken demands that her sister exert her influence. Appearing utterly absorbed in her own costume and in admiring Esther's and Mollie's, Polly only shook her head.
The June afternoon was a long one, so there still remained sufficient daylight for the girls to see to dress in their tent. Over the crest of Sunrise Hill a pale crescent moon with a single star glowing beneath it had now arisen and the moonlight later on promised to be radiant.
There were bursts of laughter, cries of admiration floating from one open tent to the other, for this was the first time the girls had seen one another dressed in their new costumes.
Polly plaited her long black hair in two braids, twining it in and out with narrow strips of bright orange ribbon, and then around her head she bound a broader band of ribbon the same color with a single black feather just above her forehead on the left side. With her dark hair and high cheek bones, which to-night were crimson with excitement, she made an unusually picturesque Indian girl. Mollie's hair was softer in texture and less heavy, so that she wore it hanging loose over her shoulders.
At first, however, Esther's appearance was not much of a success. Although, apparently lost in languor and uninterested in anything, from her couch Betty observed her, wondering what could be done. For Esther to look so awkward and plain to-night, when as the first of their Camp Fire girls to be raised to the rank of Fire Maker she would be the center of all eyes, did seem hardly fair.
Trying to make the best of herself and without the gift most girls have in this direction, Esther had also arranged her hair in two braids, but while her hair was thick it was too short to be effective in this style, and parted in the middle accentuated the plainness of her long face with its irregular features, light blue eyes and large mouth; moreover, the bright yellow of her khaki costume with its red fringes, gay shell and beads made her complexion appear in contrast paler than ever. In despair she was twisting a band of bright red cotton decorated in brass spangles about her forehead, when a cry from Polly, who happened at this moment to catch sight of her, made her drop her head-dress.
"Stop, and don't you ever so long as you live, Esther Clark, dare to put a touch of red near your face," Polly demanded autocratically, rummaging at the same time in a small box on a table which she knew held a number of trinkets belonging to Betty. The next moment drawing forth a band of dull silver embroidery about an inch and a half wide, she crossed over to the older girl.
"Please let me fix you a little differently," she urged coaxingly, beginning at once to unwind Esther's hair and combing it out over her shoulders; then loosening it in front she put the silver band like a crown about it. Esther's hair wag red, of this there could be no denial, but now unbound it showed bright strands of gold and darker shades of red that could never have been discovered when tightly fastened to her head. Perhaps it was partly due to Polly's little act of friendliness making the other girl happier, but certainly there was a marked change for the better in Esther's appearance, so much so that Betty decided she looked almost pretty when a few moments afterwards her three friends bidding farewell to her went out leaving her alone in her tent, where the darkness was now closing in. In parting, Mollie and Esther had added a final plea to Betty to join them, but still Polly had spoken no word.
Lying alone on her couch Betty wondered why? Of course Polly was always being swept off her feet by new people and new interests and so after ten days in camp would not be so fond of her, but it was odd that she cared nothing for her presence at their Council Fire to-night, since they had planned the whole ceremony together and were to play leading parts.
Partly to close out the moonlight, which was now shining faintly inside her tent, and partly to shut her ears to the voices and laughter of her friends, Betty turned over on her balsam pillow with her face to the tent side, and there covering up her head lay perfectly still, so still that she would not even put her handkerchief to her eyes, although for some reason or other they were uncomfortably moist.
Fifteen minutes passed and there was no noise of a returning footfall, but presently there was a faint, sweet odor in the lodge and Betty heard a low call such as a boy would make on a wild reed whistle.
She did not stir, so the sound was repeated more shrilly, and by and by a pair of hands forcibly pulled the blankets down from her face.
There stood Polly in her Indian costume with her intense love for the dramatic shining in her eager face and holding above Betty's head two perforated sticks, one painted blue to represent the sky, the other green to represent the earth, and both of them decorated in tiny feathers of birds and a pair of wing-like pendants.
"Betty," Polly asked quietly, "do you remember the names of these two Indian treasures and how hard we have worked to make them as like the originals as we could?"
"Of course, they are the calumets you are to use in the Council Fire ceremony to-night. They are pretty!" Betty conceded.
But Polly had dropped down by the side of her bed. "They have another name, Betty, which isn't calumets and you know it, and we were to use them at our Council Fire to-night. They are called 'pipes of peace' and I can't very well lead the party that is to bring them to camp and also the children who are to receive them."
A silence in the tent then followed, lasting several moments.
"Aren't you a little ashamed, Princess, thinking of the character of our ceremony this evening, not to be willing to be present? It is to be war and not peace then, isn't it?"
Betty laughed. "I only said I was tired," she argued faintly. "I am sure no one has the least reason for thinking I am angry if I happen to prefer to rest."
Then Polly began to feel that her case was won. Very quietly she slipped over to a wooden dress-good's box covered with bright cretonne and, opening it, drew forth the ceremonial dress so recently finished by Esther, then she lighted two candles on either side the table underneath their small mirror. Betty's head-dress was there, a band of her favorite blue velvet ribbon with three white feathers crossed in front. Catching it up Polly waved it temptingly.
"Come on, Betty, and let me help you dress, everybody is waiting for us and there never was such a night!" But seeing that her friend still hesitated, added in a tone which was a question, not a reproach: "Don't you think, dear, that so long as you really originated our Camp Fire club and asked Miss McMurtry to be our guardian, it is rather a pity for you to make the first break? Isn't one of the Camp Fire ideas to learn to put the happiness of a good many people before our own personal desires?"
In a half minute Betty was out of bed with her Camp Fire dress nearly on. "If you are going to turn preacher and reform at this time of life, Polly O'Neill, then goodness knows what is to become of me! Once you were my partner in crime, but now--well, it is hard to think of you even yet as 'Saint Polly'!"
"And will be to the end, me darling," Polly agreed, dropping into her Irish brogue from sheer pleasure that her purpose was accomplished.
Five minutes later the two friends were hurrying forth toward a circular piece of ground some yards from their tent, which to-night the girls wished known as their "earth lodge." There the other Camp Fire members had already assembled with a great pile of wood in their midst waiting to be kindled.