"I don't think you should blame yourself, dear," Miss McMurtry interrupted, drawing Betty closer to her and looking almost ready to cry herself as they both turned toward Esther for advice. For somehow Esther might have a shy and awkward personality and not seem of much importance when things were going happily, yet in sorrow or difficulty, insensibly her gravity and unselfishness counted.
"Don't you think we had better send for Nan and let her offer us some explanation," Esther unhesitatingly suggested, "perhaps she will be able to make everything clear?"
Miss McMurtry and, Betty were both silent and Betty moved quietly toward the opening of the tent. "You really will have to let me go away," she pleaded, "for I can't stand up and accuse one of our own Camp Fire girls of having--" Her sentence remained unfinished, but Miss McMurtry was able to catch hold of her skirt. "You can't leave us in the lurch, Betty, child, though I do understand your feelings, you must stand by to help Esther and me out. Certainly we shall not accuse poor Nan of anything, merely ask her a question. Esther, will you find her for us?"
Betty smiled tearfully as Esther went away on the errand, wondering if this time Miss Martha feared to trust her.
Ten minutes passed and then fifteen and yet neither Esther nor Nan appeared. Finally, however, Esther returned looking unusually angry and crestfallen. "Nan says she won't come until Polly has finished the story she is reading, and that probably may take another half hour," she reported. "I told her that you wished her particularly, Miss McMurtry, and waited as long as I could, but she showed no sign of obeying."
"That isn't true, or at least it is only half true, which is as bad," a voice declared at this instant at Esther's elbow, and Nan Graham pushed her way saucily into the tent, rather pleased at making serious Esther flush with displeasure. But at the sight of Betty, whom she always admired, and their guardian, whom she a little feared, her expression became less bold and, indeed, before any one spoke the girl's face had a strange look of guilt. Why else should she toss her head and bridle so unnecessarily, why stare into Miss McMurtry's eyes with her own hard and defiant, even while her lips trembled with nervousness?
"I haven't done anything; what do you want with me?" she asked quickly.
"No, Nan, we only want to ask you a question," Miss McMurtry answered, speaking as gently as she knew how. "Would you mind telling us what you were doing with Betty Ashton's keys the other afternoon and how you happened to get hold of them?"
"I didn't have her keys, that's a lie," Nan returned fiercely, taken off her guard and using a word she had always been accustomed to hear in her home.
To save the situation Betty came quickly forward. "Please don't say that, Nan," she begged, "for Mollie has already told us you merely wanted to look at my blue dress and that was quite all right. But if you deny it, why--"
"Why what?" Nan demanded sullenly, her black eyes on the ground and her face, which had turned a healthier color with her weeks in the woods, now white and drawn.
"Why we might not believe you when asking a more important question," Miss McMurtry said sternly, angered in spite of herself by the girl's disagreeable manner. "How many times have I told you that when people are untruthful about little things one does not believe them in large. The fact is that Betty has lost a large sum of money and--"
"And you believe I stole it!" Nan burst into such a violent storm of weeping at this suggestion that Betty for the first time in their acquaintance actually put her arm about her.
"No, we don't believe you took it just because it has vanished," she whispered comfortingly, casting appealing glances at her guardian and Esther, "only we want to ask you to try to help us find out about it. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it should turn up again!"
Neither Miss McMurtry nor Esther spoke, but Nan was not to be so appeased.
"I am sure you are very kind to give me this opportunity to put your old money back," she answered bitterly, "but as I did not take it I should find that pretty difficult. I didn't even know you had any money, although I confess I did look into your trunk when perhaps I ought to have asked permission and I did take out an old blouse, but I was sorry the next minute and put it back again. But I expect I might as well have kept it and anything else I could lay my hands on. It is the old story, if a girl does a wrong thing once no one ever believes in her when she tries to be straight again. I suppose you will be telling your suspicion to Polly O'Neill and the other girls so they won't let me stay any longer in camp. I don't care, I am innocent!" Nan's voice rose to a shrill cry of protest, but in spite of this there was a note of sincerity in it that almost convinced Betty, although unfortunately the effect was not the same upon Miss McMurtry and Esther.
"No one shall say anything against you, Nan, nor spread this story in any possible way until more is found out," Miss McMurtry now remarked, briefly dismissing them.
Nevertheless within a few days the story had been circulated about the camp. Not a word, however, had been spoken concerning it by Betty, Esther or Miss McMurtry, but poor Nan Graham had betrayed herself. For in her effort to gain sympathizers, unfortunately a wider suspicion was aroused.
Sore and unhappy over what she insisted was a totally unjust supposition, it was but natural that she should turn to another girl for consolation. Not to Polly, however; Nan said not a word to her, for Polly had given no evidence of having heard of her ill-timed visit to Betty's trunk, having been on her way to the village at the time the offence was committed, and above everything Nan desired to remain fixed in Polly's good graces. No, she confided the account of her interview first to Beatrice Field, making so tragic a tale of it that Bee, who was quite young and only a mischievous tomboy in her disposition and never having heard anything of Nan's past mistakes, was deeply indignant.
"A Camp Fire girl accused of stealing, well not exactly accused but suspected!" Honestly Bee had never conceived of anything so dreadful, and so straightway put the whole case before her sister, Juliet. Then to her surprise Juliet, who was a far more worldly wise person, did not accept the story from the same point of view, indeed Juliet became immediately indignant for Betty's sake, declaring that she was being a martyr in not spreading the news of her loss abroad and at least endeavoring to recover her lost property.
Something of Juliet's impression must have crept into Bee, for in her next conversation with Nan there was a certain cooling off in sympathy that made Nan feel the need of another partisan. This time she was more unwise in selecting Edith Norton, for Edith had always particularly disliked Nan's presence in the Sunrise Camp and, even while hearing her side of the story, had unhesitatingly revealed not only a want of pity for her but a plain lack of faith.
Nan had forgotten to require at the beginning of their conversation that Edith keep her confidence a secret and so the older girl made no pretence of doing so. In her bitterness Nan had not hesitated to say hard things of Betty, Esther and even of their guardian in speaking of the injustice of their attitude toward her, and these remarks Edith felt free to add to her own account. Not that she really meant to be cruel or unfair, but honestly feeling it best that Nan stay no longer in their camp she started a campaign toward that end. Perhaps because Edith was poor and self-supporting herself, unconsciously she resented the presence of another girl whose poverty was of so much less honorable a kind, for it is more difficult to be fair to persons almost in our own state of life than to those in far different ones.
Not long did Edith remain alone in her conviction, for the layer of real faith and affection for poor little Nan in camp was so thin that the first effort broke through it. In point of fact no one had actually wanted her at Sunrise Camp and had only been persuaded into it by Polly and Betty and by Miss McMurtry's approval, and really these three persons were still the only three who continued her champions.
Betty would not hear for an instant of Nan's being sent away, threatened to leave herself rather than be responsible for such an act of injustice. Miss McMurtry was equally firm, although she added that Nan was not to be condemned until further proof was secured against her. Meanwhile Polly O'Neill was really unaware for some time of the actual circumstances of the case. In the first place Betty had begged that the story be kept from Polly as Nan was her especial protegee, and seeing what a storm had been aroused in camp she herself felt more than sorry ever to have mentioned her loss. Of course Polly heard vaguely that Betty had lost something or other about camp, but she did not know exactly what, but then Betty had so many possessions that she was always losing something. Also she began to suspect, dimly at first, that the girls were in some kind of quandary, but as no one mentioned the cause to her, she felt rather too proud to inquire, besides having a problem of her own on her mind which taxed most of her waking hours, although she too kept her own counsel.
But now a sufficient time had gone by, until the date of the meeting of the August Council Fire had arrived when the original number of Camp Fire members were to be promoted to the rank of Fire-Makers and Esther was to be first of the Sunrise Hill girls to be given the highest Camp Fire title--Torch Bearer.
One of Miss McMurtry's plans for her camp was to leave to three girls each month the arrangements for the original features of their Council Fire and in August, the month of the Red or Green Corn Moon, it so happened that Mollie, Eleanor and Edith Norton formed the special committee. Just what their plans were no one knew until the morning before their meeting, not even the camp guardian, or Miss McMurtry might possibly have interfered, although I hardly believe it.
Shortly after breakfast, even before the other girls had a chance to disperse for their morning's work, Eleanor, Mollie and Edith Norton disappeared inside their tents.
Edith had been chosen to help at this meeting rather than any other because she was now having her two weeks' August vacation. Ten minutes later the girls came out again into the open air, arrayed in their ceremonial costumes and carrying three Indian baskets which were solemnly passed about from one girl to the other. And these baskets contained invitations to the evening Council Fire painted on bits of birch bark in crimson lettering by Eleanor Meade.
At the top of the scroll were the three words "The Maidens' Feast." Then below, the invitation read: "Sinopa the Little Sister, Apoi-a-kimi, the Light Hair, and Eleanor, the Painter of Sunrises, invite all the maidens of all the tribes to come and partake of their feast this evening at the close of the regular Council Fire ceremonies. It will be in the Sunrise Camp before the moon reaches the middle sky. All pure maidens are invited."
The August moon had never been more radiant, indeed it flooded the Sunrise Camp grounds with a brightness that made it appear almost like day. And now the regular Council Fire proceedings were over and the Indian custom of "The Maidens' Feast" about to begin.
In a circle about a cone-shaped rock, which had been brought with infinite difficulty to its position in the camp grounds, Miss McMurtry and the maidens were seated, each person bearing in her lap a round wooden bowl, while from the smoldering ashes of the Council Fire arose a delicious odor of roasting ears of corn.
But before the feast could be eaten a ceremony of as grave importance to the Camp Fire girls as to the Indian maidens of long ago must take place. Each girl was to take the oath of purity and honor, and then the maidens' song would be sung and four times they would dance around the altar.
No one of the group of Camp Fire members and no more their guardian really knew at first whether in this plan of Eleanor's, Mollie's and Edith's there was any deeper motive than the entertainment of their friends and the revival of an old Indian custom seemingly appropriate and beautiful. But as the details unfolded themselves the suspicion in the minds of most of them grew almost into certainty. Once or twice Miss McMurtry had thought of stopping the proceedings altogether, but then she did not feel satisfied that this method of the three girls for testing the innocence or guilt of their companions was not an admirable one. More than she would have acknowledged, since worry is not permitted in Camp Fire rules, had Miss McMurtry puzzled over what should be done in their present dilemma. Betty's money had certainly disappeared and some one must have stolen it; if not Nan, then who else? For they had had no guests since Esther and Betty returned with the money from the village post-office.
So by the time Edith Norton, with her light hair hanging loose about her shoulders and a circle of red about her head, stepped forth into the center of the circle, looking unusually white and nervous, there was not but one member of her audience who did not at least partially guess at what was about to take place. And this was of course Polly O'Neill! For not only did she fail to understand Betty's actual money loss and the suspicion against Nan, but so deeply had she been involved in her own perplexity that she had hardly been aware of anything that had taken place that evening. Now, however, having at last made up her mind to take Miss McMurtry into her confidence when the girls had gone to bed, she did look up with interest at the picturesque figure of Edith.
Near the cone-shaped rock two arrows had been lightly stuck into the ground, this forming a sort of altar to which each maiden must come, touching first the stone and then the arrows as she declares her purity.
As she stood by the side of this altar Edith's voice trembled so that it was with difficulty her first words could be understood. The girls who knew pretty well what to expect understood her immediately, however, but not Polly!
"Sorrow and much uneasiness have lately crept into our midst, my maidens," she announced, trying to preserve a certain likeness to the Indian speech in the form of her words, "and many of us there are who go about heavy of heart because the sin of one of us must be the burden of us all, until guilt is established and the innocent cleared. Some days ago there vanished from the possession of one of us fifty dollars in bank notes enclosed in an envelope containing no address. This money has not been found, but the envelope has been recognized as crumpled up and thrown away a few feet from the tent of its rightful owner. Now no member of the Sunrise Camp can feel it possible that any one of its members has been guilty of this sin and yet no visitor has stepped foot within our camp limits within the time when the deed must have occurred. Therefore have we three maidens, after deep thought, appointed this evening wherein the innocent may declare her innocence and the wrong-doer confess her sin. For only in confession and by the return of the money can she ever hope to be at peace with herself. Moreover, we believe that no Camp Fire girl will take this oath of purity without telling the entire truth. Betty Ashton will you come forward first."
Betty jumped up quickly. During Edith's long harangue her group of listeners had been supremely uncomfortable, so that no one of them dared do more than barely glance at Nan, who sat with her knees up to her chin, her eyes cast upon the ground and her black hair covering her face like a veil. If she felt, and of course she did, that Edith's speech was directed toward her rather than toward any other girl, neither by a sound nor a movement did she betray it. Not even when Betty, having finished with her part in the ceremony, deliberately forsaking her former place in the circle came back and sitting down next her deliberately laid her arm across Nan's bowed shoulders. There was nothing to do or say, she would only make things worse by any protest now, and yet Betty was bitterly grieved and offended. If Nan had done wrong this public method of making her either confess or perjure herself she felt to be wholly unkind.
So as Nan was in everybody's thoughts during this time no one happened to glance toward Polly O'Neill or, seeing her, to observe anything unusual in her manner or appearance, for Polly also neither moved nor spoke during Edith's recital, although her face turned suddenly white.
Fifty dollars in an envelope, the money in bank notes and the envelope crumpled up and thrown away near their tent! Her discovery in the woods that day had been just this and she herself had thrown away that same envelope. Betty of course had lost the enclosure out of her letter in bringing it home from the post office and, hiding the letter away afterwards, believed the money still there.
Why did not Polly get up and make this announcement at once? It would have been very simple except for one thing, she had spent the money, and in the first moment of surprised horror had no idea how she would ever be able to return it.
Like a good many impetuous people Polly O'Neill sometimes had the misfortune to do her thinking when it was too late. Finding the money in the woods, when she felt she needed it so much, had seemed to her like a miracle, so that it never occurred to her, either that afternoon or evening, that she should have tried to find out to whom the money rightfully belonged before using it, although she had been thinking of little else since then. That this money should have been Betty's of all people, and that it was now her duty to stand up and confess her mistake before her friends.
Polly set her teeth, the circle of girls revolved before her eyes, she had been worrying too much to be either reasonable or well. And at any moment Edith Norton might demand that she step forward and take the oath which was meant to proclaim that she had had nothing to do with the loss of Betty's money. Truly she did not understand that the charge had been directed against poor Nan, so watching her opportunity Polly slipped away without being noticed.
When Nan Graham's name was called from the center of the circle the silence was oppressive. But the girl rose up quietly, pushing her coarse black hair from her face, and as quietly walked forward to the cone-shaped rock where the two arrows were still standing fixed in the ground. Before laying her hand on these objects, however, she stood perfectly still for a moment, letting her accusing eyes sweep from the face of one of her girl judges to the other and then, touching the stone and the arrows, came back quickly to her old place. Not till then did she betray how deeply the atmosphere of distrust and unfaith had hurt her, but when Betty's arm came round her for the second time, she burst into weeping, hiding her face on Betty's shoulder, and hearing her whisper comfortingly: "I believe with all my heart that you know nothing of my wretched money, Nan, and I beg your pardon if I even made you think I suspected you."
Just before the time for Polly to take the oath her absence was discovered, but not until the feast of the corn had actually begun did Mollie and Betty go back to their tent to look for her and they did not return for so long a time that Miss McMurtry, fearing Polly might be ill, rose up to follow them. However, she had only gone a few steps before the two girls joined her.
"We can't find Polly anywhere, Donna," Mollie said in an extremely annoyed tone. "We have looked in all the tents and called and even gone down to the pine grove. What silly mood do you suppose has overtaken her? For the one thing mother most objects to is for Polly to wander off alone at night. She did it once when she was a very little girl."
"Don't worry, Mollie, she is sure to be back in half a minute when she remembers," the older woman replied.
But Polly did not come back within the hour or indeed all night. Naturally there was little sleep among the Camp Fire girls or their guardian who imagined all possible tragedies. Miss McMurtry wondered if Polly could have gone down to the lake and in the darkness fallen into the water, but then the moon was shining brilliantly and she could swim with perfect ease. This idea was only brought on by fear. What had probably happened was that she had wandered off for a walk, lost her way and decided that it was far wiser to spend the night quietly in the woods rather than wear herself out with tramping. When the sunrise came she would return.
With this idea Miss McMurtry comforted and encouraged the girls, for it was impossible that they should do more than search for their companion in the near-by woods and fields. It is true that Betty wanted to attempt to climb Sunrise Hill, taking lanterns with her, fearing that Polly had attempted a short walk and managed to sprain her ankle, and that Esther and Sylvia Wharton were more than anxious to go with her, but Miss McMurtry would not hear of it, having a vision of four lost girls instead of one. There was nothing to do but wait the few hours now until daybreak and then if Polly did not return, properly organize searching parties to seek for her. If the Camp Fire girls had learned anything of scouting methods, this would be their opportunity.
Mollie O'Neill was of course the person who required the tenderest care during the night. She and Polly were closer than other sisters, so unlike in temperament and yet one another's shadows. If only she could have imagined some explanation for her sister's disappearance, for of course everybody knew of Polly's sudden vagaries and yet it was unlike her to be so inconsiderate without cause.
Although Betty Ashton probably understood her friend even better than her sister did, as she sat quietly by Mollie's side for several hours insisting that there was really nothing alarming in Polly's flight and that she would doubtless be both vexed and ashamed of herself in the morning, she too was equally puzzled. For naturally she was not so confident as she pretended, although not until her hour came for rest and after she had actually tumbled into bed did she break down. Then Esther and Sylvia Wharton, who in some strange, quiet fashion seemed a comfort to everyone to-night, had insisted that they relieve Betty's watch with Mollie.
Dropping on her couch, not to sleep but to gain strength for the next day's quest, quite by accident Betty's hand slipped under her pillow. With a low exclamation, overheard by the other three girls in the tent, she drew out folded square of paper. Her name was on the outside, apparently hurriedly addressed in Polly's handwriting. It read:
DEAR BETTY:
Your money was stolen, at least not in the way you think it was, but perhaps in another almost as bad. For I found it in the woods on the day when I went into the village alone and I made no effort to find out to whom it belonged. You must have dropped it out of your letter on your way back to camp, for there was no mark on the envelope in which I found it. But I do not mean this as an excuse, I do not think it one. If I had not felt like a thief perhaps I would not have been ashamed to confess my fault before the other girls as I should have done before our altar fire to-night. I tried but I did not have the courage, so I am going away from camp. Please tell Miss McMurtry, Mollie and the other girls and do not ask me to come back, for it is impossible. If I could return your money, Betty, I should not feel so bitterly humiliated, but as I cannot at present I would rather not see you until I can. Of course we are no longer friends, for you cannot wish it, and always it has seemed to me that your wealth and my poverty makes the gulf between us. I can only say that I am truly sorry.
Yours sincerely,POLLY
Having finished this ungracious note of apology Betty handed it without comment to Esther and then buried her own head in the pillow. If Polly could feel toward her in this manner because of a mistake which they had both made, then nothing she could do or say would make any difference. For to insist to Polly that she had a perfect right to use the money found by accident would not be altogether true and would not change her point of view, while to declare that the return of the money to its rightful owner was a matter of indifference would only deepen the misunderstanding.
Less accustomed to Polly's writing Esther read the note aloud slowly and then it was that Mollie's and Betty's positions were changed, and Mollie became instead of the comforted--the comforter.
"That is exactly like Polly O'Neill," she announced indignantly, "here she has done something she ought not to do without thinking, like spending that money without trying to find its owner, and now because she is so sorry she goes ahead and makes things worse for everybody instead of better." Mollie slid off her own hemlock bed and crossing the tent sat down by Betty. "Don't you worry, dear, or feel in the least responsible," she whispered, "you know Polly is hateful sometimes just because she is so ashamed and miserable she does not know how to be anything else. She does care for you more than anyone and you know that she will do almost anything to make peace with you as soon as she comes to her senses. Of course, Betty, I understand you don't care for the money part, why you would give either of us ten times that amount if you could and we would accept it, but you won't mind my writing mother to make things all right."
Then after a few words of explanation to their guardian the Camp Fire girls slept quietly until daylight, but even after they had eaten a hurried breakfast together the wanderer had not returned.
So immediately afterwards three parties set out, leaving Edith Norton and Juliet Field behind to protect the camp and to announce by the ringing of a bell if Polly should return or if they were in any need.
Betty, Sylvia and Esther went off in one direction, Miss McMurtry and the two younger girls, Nan and Beatrice, in another, while Mollie, Meg and Eleanor took the interior of the Webster farm. The chief obstacle in their search being that it was apparently impossible to discover the direction of Polly's footprints on first leaving camp, the grass in the neighborhood being so constantly trodden down by the feet of so many girls.
Billy Webster, as he preferred to be called, was in a wheat field with his reaper just about to start to work, when a Camp Fire girl, whether Mollie or Polly he could not tell at first, came running toward him in apparent distress. So as not to make another mistake he let the girl speak first, only smiling at her in a sufficiently friendly fashion to make it very simple.
Mollie's first words were luminous. "Have you seen anything of Polly? She is lost or gone away or at least we can't find her!"
Therefore until lunch time Billy kept up the search over the farm with the three girls. And though they were not successful in making any discovery it was surprising what a comfort the girls found him, particularly Mollie, who seemed to depend on him as though he had been an old friend.
"I am sure there isn't the least reason to be seriously alarmed," he assured her half a dozen times with a curious understanding of Polly's character; "you see your sister has got a funny streak in her that makes her mighty interesting and mighty uncertain." (How angry Polly would have been could she have heard him!) "She has got a lot to learn before she settles down."
By noon, finding his three companions nearly exhausted, the young man persuaded them to go up to the big, comfortable farmhouse, see his mother, have their luncheon and rest. And straightway on meeting her, Mrs. Webster took a liking to Mollie that was to last all the rest of her life.
During this time Betty, Esther and Sylvia were going slowly along the main path that led through the fields and finally on to the high road into the village. Miss McMurtry and her assistants were climbing Sunrise Hill.
But Sylvia Wharton was so tediously slow. About every five minutes she would stop and kneel down in the dirt, attempting to fit an old shoe of Polly's into any fresh track she happened to observe. The other two girls wandered off into bits of woods or meadows near by, calling and hunting, but Sylvia never went with them.
"There is no use," she explained, "Polly has gone straight into Woodford and because it was night had to take the regular path instead of going through the fields as she usually does."
Claiming to have exactly traced her footsteps Esther and Betty were still not convinced. "It is such a stupid idea, Sylvia," Betty argued, "for there isn't anybody in town now to whom Polly would go in the middle of the night, and besides she would be ashamed to let people know she had run away from camp."
Nevertheless Sylvia kept stolidly on and because her companions had nothing better to suggest they followed after her.
On the high road Sylvia, who would still creep like a tortoise, suddenly stooped down. The August dust was very thick along the way and wagons had already been traveling into town, and yet she picked up a string of red, white and blue beads, which surely were Polly's, since patriotism had been one of her chief studies during the summer.
It was also Sylvia's suggestion that led the little party of friends straight to Mrs. O'Neill's closed cottage. The doors and windows in front of the house were sealed, but Betty found the door of the old kitchen halfway open. And there inside on her mother's lounge lay Polly! She seemed to be almost asleep when the girls entered, but awakened immediately and in a wholly different frame of mind.
Realizing in the last few hours, when it was too late, how great an anxiety her disappearance must have caused, she wanted to go back to camp, to confess her fault and at least to persuade Betty to forgive her. Yet she dared not trust herself to go alone, for Polly's head was aching furiously, her face was hot and flushed and any attempt to walk made her sick and dizzy.
While Betty and Esther were discussing what had best be done, Polly having trusted herself wholly to their hands, neither of them noticed Sylvia Wharton's withdrawal.
When they did there was hardly time to comment upon it before she reappeared at the back door with her round face covered with dust and looking more freckled and homelier than ever.
"A carriage will be here in five minutes to take us to camp; I have ordered it," she announced.
Good-by to summer, good-by, good-by, Good-by to summer
Esther's plaintive song ceased abruptly, for Betty Ashton leaning over suddenly put her hand to her lips. And at the same moment Meg Everett holding fast to Little Brother dropped down on the ground by the girls with one arm full of early goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies.
"No use to make Esther stop singing, it won't help matters, Betty, dear, the summer has gone," she exclaimed. "Little Brother and I have just seen quail whirring about in the underbrush. See I lay our autumn bouquet at your feet," and she tossed her flowers over to Betty. "Where is Miss McMurtry?"
Betty made a wry face. "Gone into town, if you please, to see about some books--school books. Oh, it wasn't because I didn't agree with Esther's song that I made her stop singing, it was because it was so dreadfully true that I felt at the moment I couldn't bear it. You are sorry too, aren't you, Nan?" she queried, turning to the girl on the other side of her who was sewing industriously on a soft blue cashmere frock, almost similar in color and texture to the one Betty had at this moment inside her trunk. The gown represented the complete restoration of peace between Nan and Betty. At first there had been some difficulty in persuading Nan to accept it, but after all Betty had been kinder than most of the other girls! Moreover, there had been many other expressions of apology in words and deeds that Nan had accepted and stored away in her heart.
"I just can't bear to think of it either," she replied slowly, letting her hands rest idly in her lap for a moment. "I guess you other girls can't ever know what these weeks in camp have been to me and what a lot I've learned. I hope I ain't going to forget it ever and Miss Martha says she is going to try to get them to let me come back to the High School. It will be all right if any one will trust me enough to give me work to do afternoons."
Before replying Esther Clark put several pine logs and a great bundle of pine cones on the fire around which she and her friends were seated, and the girls were quiet for a moment watching them sparkle and blaze.
"I expect I know, Nan, at least better than any one else," Esther answered finally, "for you see this is the first summer of my whole life that I haven't spent at the asylum scrubbing and cooking and nobody caring anything about my work except that I got it done. Work this summer has seemed like play, hasn't it? And I wouldn't be here, except for The Princess. I wonder if I shall ever be able to repay her?"
"Oh, wonder something else, Esther," Betty returned ungraciously, for references of this kind always made her uncomfortable. "Here comes Polly and Mollie and, of course Sylvia. Bee, will you go find Eleanor and Juliet and let us have tea here by the camp fire. Donna and Edith will probably be here before we finish. Suppose each one of us places a stick on the fire and while it burns make a good wish for the Sunrise Camp. Hello, Polly, yes Sylvia is perfectly right, you must not sit down on the ground without something under you, yes, and you must let her put that wrap over your shoulders, the sun will be going down pretty soon and then it will be quite cool."
Polly submitted to Sylvia's attentions none too graciously, but a moment later turned toward the younger girl. "You are a trump, Sylvia," she murmured. "I am sure I don't know what I should have done without you these past two weeks while I will have been ill. It is funny how you should happen to know just what to do for people who are sick when you are so young!"
Sylvia sat stolidly down next the speaker. "I am going to be a trained nurse when I am old enough, that's why," she answered calmly, apparently not even observing the surprise of her companions. "You see if I thought I had sense enough I would try to be a doctor, but as I haven't I shall just take care of sick people. I have already learned a good many things this summer."
Polly whistled and several of the girls laughed. "I don't doubt it for a moment, Sylvia Wharton!" Polly exclaimed, "for heaven alone can tell what you do know! But it is absurd to talk about your being a nurse, when you will be the richest one of us, child, perhaps even richer than 'The Princess'."
There was no reply from Sylvia, only her lips shut tight and her chin looked oddly square and determined for a young girl. But then Sylvia looked like her father, who, one must remember, was a self-made man. And sometimes the daughter also inherits the traits of character that have made the father a success.
Eleanor and Juliet at this moment appearing with the tea things, the kettle was hung above the fire on an arrangement of three pronged sticks and not until tea was over did the girls or Betty remember her suggestion. Then she handed Polly a pine knot first. "Thrust this into the fire, Polly, dear, and make a parting wish for Sunrise Camp," Betty explained, "for a few days more you know, and we must fold our tents and say farewell to our summer."
Polly quickly thrust her torch into the hottest blaze. "I wish," she said at once, her cheeks hot from the closeness of the flames and from her own thoughts, "that everybody in Sunrise Camp would promise to forgive me for my foolish behavior two weeks ago and all the anxiety and trouble I caused. The camp has given me a new motto this summer that I shall at least try to live up to. It reads: 'Think first!"
"Yes, and if you had only thought second and asked for your mail at the post office that day after finding Betty's money, Polly, you would have had your own fifty dollar prize for the best essay on 'A Summer Camp Fire in the Woods'," Mollie added in her usual practical fashion, and then she gave a little sigh of relief that the money had been paid back to Betty without troubling the mother still so far away.
"I wonder if Polly is going to be our genius as well as Eleanor," Esther next suggested quietly, "every Camp Fire club is sure to turn out at least one extraordinary person and of course ours will have two or three." Then she blushed hotly in her old embarrassed, fashion, clasping her big hands closely together as Betty, half laughing at her own suggestion, whispered something in her ear.
Juliet Field wished the Sunrise Camp long life, and Meg that they might keep up their work together in town during the coming winter, Eleanor that they might spend the next summer together, and then Betty, happening quite by chance to observe a wistful expression on Nan's face, passed the fifth pine stick to her.
"Tell us what you are thinking of, Nan," she said, speaking with special friendliness to the one girl who had not had entirely fair treatment at their hands. "I have an idea you have something special on your mind."
Nan shook her head, although she did what was asked of her. "Oh no," she explained, "or at least I am afraid you will think my wish very silly. I was just wishing that we were not going back to the village but were going to spend our winter together amid the snows."
Nan's suggestion was so surprising that everybody stared at her for one, almost two minutes before Betty spoke.
"Very well, Nan, let's stay," she returned, as though making a perfectly ordinary remark. "I can't bear for Esther and me to have to go back alone to our great, empty house with mother and father away and no knowing when they may come back." (There was a catch in Betty's voice that her friends understood, for Mr. Ashton was again seriously ill and there was no hope of his returning to America at present.) "We can't live in our tents of course, but I don't know why we can't build a log cabin and somehow manage to get back and forth to school. When the snow comes we can use our big sled."
"You are quite mad, Betty Ashton; Esther, please tie a handkerchief around her lips before she makes us all equally so," Polly requested, "for there is no hope of our doing anything so impossible, as she suggests." And then because she caught an expression almost of agreement on her sister Mollie's face, Polly paused, almost overcome with surprise. Mollie, the sensible; Mollie, the practical--it was incredible.
"I don't see that Betty's idea is so foolish, for at least some of us might be able to live in camp this winter," Mollie thinking aloud as she talked. "For you see, the doctor has said that Polly must be out of doors as much as possible for the next year, and mother writes she would rather not come home at present if we can possibly get on without her, for there is something or other going on in Ireland that she has not explained to us, but she says if she can stay a few months longer it may make a difference in all our futures. I believe she would be glad to let us remain in Sunrise Camp for the winter if your mother and father are willing and we can make things comfortable, Betty," she concluded.
The mental conception of a group of girls living together in a winter's camp in the woods was evidently too surprising to be grasped all at once, for no one else at the moment had anything to say, and then Esther, glancing off across the fields where a soft September haze suggested the approach of the twilight, exclaimed. "See, there are Miss McMurtry and Edith returning from town. Let us give them our Camp Fire call to welcome them home."
"Wohelo for work, Wohelo for health, Wohelo for love!"
The ten voices carried the refrain far across the country and somehow the echo returning to them from Sunrise Hill brought with it the suggestion of even happier days to come.
The second volume in the Camp Fire Girls' Series will be called "The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows." In this book the history of the girls will be revealed under very different conditions. More than ever will their life be built around the fire which has always been the center of the home. Various important changes will take place in the circumstances of the leading characters and mysteries merely suggested in the first story will be developed in the second.
The End