Sylvia Wharton wearing a trained nurse's costume tiptoed into a darkened room.
Instantly the figure upon the bed turned and sighed.
"I don't see why she does not come to me, if she is no worse than you say she is," the voice said. "Really, Sylvia, I think it would be better for you or some one to tell me the truth."
Sylvia hesitated. "She isn't so well, Betty dear. Perhaps Dr. Barton may be angry with me, as he distinctly said that you were not to be worried. But as you are worrying anyhow, possibly talking things over with me may make you feel better. It has all been most unfortunate, Polly's being ill here in your house when you were enduring so much yourself. But it all comes of mother's and everybody's yielding to whatever Polly O'Neill wishes."
Sylvia sat down upon the side of the bed, taking one of Betty's hands in hers. Ten days had passed since the accident at the cabin and the burns on Betty's hands had almost entirely healed, but over her eyes and the upper part of her face was a linen covering, so that it was still impossible to guess the extent of her injury. She was apt to be quieter, however, Sylvia had found out, when she could feel some one touching her. And now the news of Polly for the time being kept her interested.
"You see, mother's first mistake was in not bringing Polly straight back home as soon as she found out what she was doing in New York. Polly had a slight cold then and it kept getting worse each night. But of course Polly pretended that it amounted to nothing and that the stars would fall unless she finished her engagement. So finish it she did, and then hearing of your accident toward the last, as mother and Esther had kept the news a secret from her for some time, why come here she would instead of immediately going home. She wanted to help nurse and amuse you and you had said that you wanted her with you. And then of course Polly was embarrassed over meeting father and Frank. And father was angry at her disobedience and her frightening mother and Mollie. However, that cold of hers has kept on getting worse and she will have to stay in bed now for a few days anyhow. For I won't let Polly O'Neill have her own way this time."
A faint smile showed itself on Betty's lips which Sylvia stooped low enough to see. And then in spite of her own stolid and supposedly cold temperament, the younger girl's expression changed. For it meant a good deal for any one to have succeeded in making Betty Ashton smile in these last few days.
"But you're fonder of Polly than you are of the rest of us, even Mollie, Sylvia, and you let her lead you around," Betty argued.
Sylvia's flaxen head was resolutely shaken. She no longer wore her hair in two tight pigtails, but in almost as closely bound braids wound in a circle about her face. Her complexion was still colorless and her eyes nondescript, but Sylvia's square chin and her resolute expression often made persons take a second look at her. It was seldom that one saw so much character in so young a girl.
"Yes, I am fond of Polly," she agreed, "but you are mistaken if you think I let her influence me. Some one has to take Polly O'Neill sensibly for her own sake." And Sylvia just in time stifled a sigh. For of course her stepsister was in a more serious condition than she had confessed to the other girl. It was well enough to call the illness a bad cold—it was that, but possibly something worse, bronchitis, pneumonia—Dr. Barton had not yet given it a name. She was only to be kept quiet and watched. Later on he would know better what to say. Her constitution was not strong.
Some telepathic message, however, must have passed from one friend to the other, for at this instant Betty sat up suddenly with more energy than she had yet shown.
"If anything dreadful happens to Polly, I shall never forgive Esther as long as I live. It is all very well for Polly and your mother to insist that Esther was not in any possible way responsible. Mollie and I both feel differently. Esther should have told——"
By the fashion in which Sylvia Wharton arose and walked away from the bed, Betty realized how intensely their opinions disagreed, although the younger girl moved quietly, with no anger or flurry and made no reply.
"Here are some more roses, Betty, that John Everett sent you. Shall I put them near enough your bed to have you enjoy their fragrance?" Sylvia asked. "John seems to be buying up all the flowers near Dartmouth. I told Meg that you would rather he did not send so many. But she says she can't stop him. For somehow John feels kind of responsible for your getting hurt, as he arranged for you to sit under those particular candles. Then he did not notice when you first called for help and let Anthony Graham rescue you. Meg is downstairs now with your mother. Would you like to see her?"
Betty shook her head. "Please don't let Meg know, but I don't feel like talking, somehow. The girls are so sweet and sympathetic. And I try to be brave, but until I know——"
With magically quick footsteps the younger girl had again crossed the room and her firm arms were soon about her friend's shoulders.
"You are going to be all right, dear. Dr. Barton is almost sure of it and I am quite. There won't be any scars that will last and your eyes—why, you protected them marvelously, and they only need resting. You are too beautiful, Betty dear, to have anything happen that could in any way mar you. I can't, I won't believe it."
And somehow Sylvia was one of those people in whose judgment and faith one must always find healing. Betty said nothing more, only put out her hand with an appealing gesture and caught hold of Sylvia's dress.
"I don't want to talk or to see people, and I'm tired of being read to. What is there for me to do, Sylvia child, to make the hours pass?"
Rather desperately the younger girl looked about the great, sunshiny room. It was not Betty's old blue room, but the room once used as a store-room and afterwards occupied by Esther, into which Betty had moved a short while before her accident. Imagination was not Sylvia Wharton's strong point. She was an excellent nurse, quiet, firm and patient and always to be relied upon. But what to do to make Betty Ashton stop thinking of what might await her at the end of her weeks of suffering must have taxed a far more fertile brain than Sylvia's. However, the suggestion did not have to come from her; for at this instant there was a knock at the door, so gentle that it was difficult to be sure that it really was a knock.
Outside stood the German professor with his violin under his arm. And he looked so utterly wretched and uneasy that Sylvia wondered how he could feel so great an emotion over Betty, although the entire village seemed to be worrying as though in reality she had been their own "Princess." No one could talk of anything else until her condition became finally known; but Herr Crippen was a newcomer and Betty had never cared for him.
"Would the littleFräuleinlike it that I should play for her?" he now asked gently.
And Sylvia turned to the girl on the bed.
At first Betty had shaken her head, but now she evidently changed her mind.
"You are very kind. I think I should enjoy it," she answered. And a few moments afterwards Sylvia stole away.
So there was no one in the room to notice how frequently Herr Crippen had to wipe his glasses as he looked down upon the girl of whose face he could see nothing now save the delicately rounded chin and full red lips.
The professor had to wipe his glassesThe professor had to wipe his glasses
The professor had to wipe his glassesThe professor had to wipe his glasses
Then without worrying her he began to play: in the beginning not Beethoven nor Mozart, nor any of the classic music he most loved, but the Camp Fire songs, which he had lately arranged for the violin because of his interest in the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire girls, and which he was playing for the first time before an audience.
And Betty listened silently, not voicing her surprise. The song of "The Soul's Desire," what memories it brought back of Esther and their first meeting in this room! No wonder that Esther had so great talent with such a queer, gifted father. Betty wondered idly what the mother could have been like. She was an American and beautiful, so much she remembered having been told.
Then ceasing to think of Esther she began thinking of herself. Could she ever again even try to follow the Law of the Camp Fire, which had meant so much to her in the past few years, if this dreadful tragedy which hovered over her, sleeping or waking, should be not just a terrible fear, but a living fact. Should she be scarred from her accident, or worse fear, should her eyes be affected by the scorching heat of the flames?
Softly under her breath, even while listening with all her soul to the music, Betty repeated the Camp Fire Law.
"Seek Beauty?" Could she find it, having lost her own? Then she remembered that the beauty which the Camp Fire taught was not only a physical beauty, but the greater kind which is of the spirit as well as of the flesh.
"Give Service?" Well, perhaps some day in ways she could not now imagine, she might be able to return a small measure of the service that her friends had been so generously bestowing upon her.
"Pursue Knowledge, Be Trustworthy." No misfortune need separate a girl from these ideals.
"Hold on to Health." This might mean a harder fight than she had ever yet had to make before, but Betty felt a new courage faintly struggling within her.
"Glorify Work." That was not an impossible demand of her as a Torch Bearer among her group of Camp Fire girls. It was the last of the seven points of their great law that she dreaded to face at this moment, here in the darkness alone.
"Be Happy." Could she ever again be happy even for a day or an hour? And yet the law said: "If we have pain, to hide it, if others have sorrow, be quick to relieve it."
But what the rest of the law read she could not now recall. For Herr Crippen was beginning to play one of the most exquisite pieces of music that can ever be rendered on the violin, Schubert's Serenade.
"Last night the nightingale woke me,Last night when all was stillIt sang in the golden moonlight"
Betty wondered why the music should sound so strangely far away, as though she were dreaming and it were coming to her somewhere out of the land of dreams.
Another moment and Betty was sound asleep. Nevertheless the Professor, with his eyes still upon her, played softly on, played until Mrs. Ashton noiselessly entered the room.
Then he ceased and the man and woman, standing one on either side of Betty's bed, looked at each other with expressions it would be difficult to translate. For each face held a certain amount of pleading and of defiance.
"She is like her mother;nicht wahr?" the Professor murmured, and then withdrew.
Afterwards for several moments Mrs. Ashton's eyes never ceased regarding the curls of Betty's red brown hair, that lay outside on her pillow. Her long braids had been cut off and latterly she had been wearing a little blue silk cap, which had now slipped off on account of her restlessness.
Mrs. Ashton, glancing in a mirror at her own faded flaxen hair, sighed. Then, seating herself in a chair near by she waited in absolute patience and quietness, until suddenly from a movement upon the bed she guessed that Betty was waking.
And actually her child's lips were smiling upon her not only bravely but cheerfully, as though her sleep had brought both comfort and faith.
"Sit close by me, mother," Betty said, "and don't let any one else come in for a long time. You know I have been trying to get you to tell me the history of this old room for ages and now this is such a splendid comfy chance. I am just exactly in the mood for hearing a long, thrilling story."
"Tell me exactly what you think, Dr. Barton, please, and don't try to deceive me," Betty Ashton pleaded. "I want to be told the truth at once before mother or any one else joins us. Always I shall be grateful to Rose for suggesting that you come here to me alone and when no one was expecting you, so that there need be no unnecessary suspense."
Betty Ashton was seated in a low rocking chair one morning a few days later, with Dr. Barton standing near and carefully unwrapping the bandages from about her head. The room was not brightly lighted, neither was it dark, for a single blind had been drawn up at the window on the opposite side of the room.
Dr. Barton's face showed lines of anxiety and sympathy. Indeed, Rose Dyer could hardly have been persuaded to believe how nervous and shaken he appeared and how, instead of his usual look of hardness and austerity, he was now as tender and gentle as a woman.
"But my dear Betty," he returned in a more cheerful voice than his expression indicated, "what I say to you about yourself is by no means the last word. My opinion, you must remember, is of blessedly little importance. If there are any scars left by my treatment of your burns, there are hundreds of wonderful big doctors who can perform miracles for you. And then time is the eternal healer."
"Yes, I know," the girl answered, "but just the same, please hurry and let me know what you yourself honestly think. At least, I shall be able to tell myself whether my eyes are injured, as soon as you let me try them in a bright light."
For a fraction of a moment Dr. Barton delayed his work. "Won't you allow me to call your mother, or Miss Dyer or Miss McMurtry? Miss Dyer is in the house. I happen to have seen her. And it may be better, in case you do not feel yourself, to have some one else here to care for you. There is Sylvia. Actually I believe she has been of as much use to you and Polly O'Neill as your professional nurses."
At this instant, although she had set her lips so close together that only a pale line showed, Betty's chin quivered, and although her hands gripped the sides of her chair so hard that her arms ached, her shoulders shook.
If only Dr. Barton would cease his perfectly futile efforts to distract her attention. Could any human being think of another subject or person at a time like this?
And Dr. Barton did recognize the clumsiness of his own efforts, only his conversation was partly intended to conceal his own anxiety.
"Don't I hear some one coming along the hall? Are you sure you locked the door?" Betty queried uneasily.
Dr. Barton did not reply. At this instant, although the linen covering still concealed his patient's eyes, he had removed the upper bandages, so that now her forehead was plainly revealed to his view.
And Betty Ashton's forehead had always been singularly beautiful in the past, low and broad with the hair growing in a soft fringe about it and coming down into a peak in the center. Now, however, across her forehead there showed a long crimson line, almost like the mark from the blow of a whip. Dr. Barton examined it closely, touched it gently with the tips of his fingers and then cleared his throat and attempted to speak. But apparently the needed words would not come. On either side the ugly scar the girl's skin was white and fine as delicate silk and on top of her head, which had been protected by her heavy hair, the burns had almost completely healed.
"It is all right, Miss Betty," Dr. Barton said in a curiously husky voice. "You are better than I even dared hope. There is a scar now, but I can promise you that it will be only a faint line in the future, or else will disappear altogether. The very fact that the trouble has concentrated into the one scar shows that the healing has taken place all about it."
Betty's own hands slipped the final covering from about her eyes. Then for a moment her heart seemed absolutely to have stopped beating. For the room swam around her in a kind of disordered dimness. She could see nothing clearly. In a panic she sprang to her feet, when Dr. Barton took a firm hold on her shaking shoulders.
"Be quiet, child. Pull yourself together for just a minute. You are frightened now, you know. In another moment things will clear up and grow more distinct."
And even before he had finished speaking Betty realized this to be the blessed truth.
There in the far end of the big room stood her bed and, on a table near, a bunch of John's pink roses. She could even see their bright color vividly. In another direction was her dressing table and about it hung the photographs of Rose, of Miss McMurtry, of the eleven Camp Fire girls.
Dropping back into her chair Betty, covering her face with her hands, began to sob. And she cried on without any effort at self-control until she was limp and exhausted, although all the while her heart was saying its own special hymn of thanksgiving. And young Dr. Barton kept patting her upon the shoulder and urging her not to cry, because now there was nothing to cry about, until Betty would like to have laughed if the tears had not been bringing her a greater relief. How like a man not to understand that she could now permit herself the indulgence of tears, when for the past two weeks she had not dared, fearing that once having given way there would be no end.
"Would you mind leaving me for a few minutes and trying to find mother?" Betty at last managed to ask.
She wanted to be alone. But a few seconds after the doctor's disappearance, Betty got up and with trembling knees managed to cross her room, feeling dreadfully weak and exhausted from the long suspense. For she wished to look into a mirror with no one watching. And as Betty Ashton got the first glimpse of herself, although vanity had never been one of her weaknesses, she honestly believed that she never had seen any one look so tragically ugly before in her entire life. She hardly recognized herself. Her face was white and thin, almost bloodless except for the scar upon her forehead. Then her hair had been cut off, and though in some places the curls still remained heavy and thick, in others she looked like a badly shorn lamb.
And this time the tears crowding Betty's eyes were not of relief but of wounded vanity.
"I never saw any one so hideous in my life," she remarked aloud. "And I am truly sorry for the people who must have the misfortune of looking at me."
Betty was wearing an Empire blue dressing gown and slippers and stockings of the same color. Her eyes were dark gray and misty with shadows under them. She looked ill, of course, and unlike her usual self, and yet it would be difficult for any misfortune to have made Betty Ashton actually ugly. For beauty is one of the most difficult things in the world to define and one of the easiest to see—a possession that is at once tangible and intangible. And Betty possessed the gift in a remarkable degree.
Therefore she did not look unattractive to the eyes of the young man who was now staring at her in astonishment, fear and delight, from her own open doorway, which Dr. Barton, on leaving the room, had neglected to close.
"I am sorry. Oh, I am so glad!"
Anthony Graham murmured. "I was passing your room; I didn't mean to intrude. But nothing matters now you are well again and looking like yourself. It's so wonderful, so splendid, so——" And the young man, who was ordinarily quiet and reserved, fairly stammered with the rush of his own words.
Betty walked shyly toward him with her eyes still filled with tears.
"Oh, I am dreadful to look at, but I must not complain," she answered wistfully. "A Camp Fire girl ought to have learned some lessons in bravery and endurance. Please let's don't talk about me. I want to thank you, for if it had not been for you, I might have—I can't bear to think even now what might have happened to me."
"Then don't," the young man returned brusquely, but Betty did not this time misunderstand his manner. "I did not do anything. I ought to have gotten to you sooner. I have been hating myself ever since for the time I took to reach you. After all you had done for me in the past!"
The next moment the girl put her hand into the boy's hard, work-roughened one. "Ask Nan to tell the others for me. And remember that no matter what has happened or may happen in the future, I shall always feel myself in your debt, not you in mine."
It was sundown. The big Ashton house, although so filled with people, was oddly quiet. Betty Ashton slipped out of her own room into the hall and hurried along the empty corridor. Once only she stopped and smiled, partly from amusement and partly from satisfaction. Herr Crippen's door was half open and so was Miss McMurtry's and the Professor was playing on his violin. Such sentimental love ditties! The air throbbed with German love songs.
And Betty had a mischievous desire to stick her head into Miss McMurtry's room and see if she was engaged in some maiden-like occupation, such as marking school papers or reading theWoodford Gazette. Or was she sitting, as she should be, with her hands idly folded in her lap and her heart and mind absorbed in the music? Never had Betty given up her idea that a romance was in the making between their first Camp Fire guardian and Esther's father. And often since their coming to live in her house had she not seen slight but convincing evidences? Why should Donna so often appear with a single white rose pinned to her dress or take to playing the same tunes on the piano that the Professor played on his violin, particularly when she was an exceedingly poor pianist?
Nevertheless it was not awe of her teacher and guardian that kept Betty from investigating the state of her emotions at this moment; neither was it any fear of antagonism between them, for since Esther's departure to study in New York, Miss McMurtry apparently felt more affection for Betty than for any of the other Camp Fire girls. No, it was simply because she had a very definite purpose which she wished to accomplish without interruption or opposition.
The next instant and she had paused outside a closed door and stood listening tensely. There were no noises inside, no voices, nor the stir of any person moving about. Betty put her hand on the knob and opened it silently.
Instantly there was a little cry and Betty and Polly O'Neill were in each other's arms.
"Betty, you darling," Polly gasped, "turn on every light in this room and let me stare and stare at you. There isn't anything in the world the matter with you. You are as lovely as you ever were. Oh, I have been so frightened! I have not believed what anybody told me, and it seemed it must be a part of my punishment that you had been injured. It is absurd of me, I suppose, but I have had a kind of feeling that perhaps if I had been at Meg's party I should have been with you at the time so that it couldn't have happened."
"Foolish Polly! But when was Polly anything but foolish?" the other girl returned, taking off her cap and pushing back her hair. "You see I am a sight, dear, but it does not matter a great deal. I am kind of getting used to myself these last few days. So I didn't see any reason why, since you are better and I am perfectly well, we could not be together. Even if it does give you a kind of a shock to look at me, you'll get over it, won't you?"
In reply Polly had one of her rather rare outbursts of affection. She was never so demonstrative as the other girls. Her devotions had ways of expressing themselves in an occasional compliment tendered perhaps in some whimsical, back-handed fashion, or in a fleeting caress, which came and was gone like the touch of a butterfly's wing.
Now, however, she took her friend's face between her two hands and kissed her quietly, almost solemnly upon the line of her injury.
"Never say a thing like that to me again as long as you live, Betty Ashton. Perhaps I haven't as much affection as other people. Mother and Mollie are both insisting it lately. Still I know that——but how silly we are to talk of it! You are not changed. Of course I am sorry that your hair had to be cut off, but it will grow out again and the scar will disappear. I wish I could get rid of my"—Polly hesitated—"blemishes so easily," she finished.
Betty looked puzzled. "What do you mean? Sylvia says you are very much better and that there is no reason why you should not get up. She declares that it is only that you won't and that she does not intend nursing you or letting any one else take care of you after a few days, unless you do what Dr. Barton tells you. Sylvia is a dreadfully firm person. She was quite angry with me when I said that I did not believe you were well and that I was quite strong enough now to take care of you and you should not get out of bed until you had entirely recovered."
"But I have entirely recovered and I am well and somehow I can't manage to deceive Sylvia Wharton no matter how hard I try," Polly announced in a half-amused and half-annoyed manner.
"Then why are you trying to?" Betty naturally queried. Of course one never actually expected to understand Polly O'Neill's whims, but now and then one of them appeared a trifle more mysterious than the others. "If you are still tired and feel you prefer to remain in bed, that is a sure sign you are not strong enough to get up, and Dr. Barton and Sylvia ought to realize it," she continued, still on the defensive.
But Polly only smiled at her. "But, dear, I don't prefer to remain in bed. I am so deadly bored with it that as soon as I am left alone I get up and dance in the middle of the floor just to have a little relief. Can't you and mother and Mollie understand (I don't believe any one does except Sylvia) that I don't want to get up because I don't want to have to face the music?"
Still the other girl looked puzzled.
"Can't you see that as long as I have been able to be sick nobody has dared to say very much to me about my escapade in New York? Oh, of course I know what they think and mother did manage to say a good deal before we came home; still, there is a great deal more retribution awaiting me. In the first place, I shall have to go home to the Wharton house. I realize it has been dreadful, my being sick here, but I am everlastingly grateful to you and your mother. Mr. Wharton won't say anything much; he really is very kind to me; but naturally I know what he thinks. And then when Frank Wharton is there it will be so much worse. You see, Frank and I quarreled once, because I thought he was rude to mother. And of course he considers my disobedience worse than his rudeness. And as he is perfectly right, I can't imagine how I shall answer him back the next time we argue."
As Polly talked she had risen into a sitting posture in bed and was now leaning her chin on her hand in a characteristic attitude and quite unconscious of the amusing side to her argument until Betty laughed.
Polly had on a scarlet flannel dressing sacque and her hair was tied with scarlet ribbons. And indeed her cheeks were almost equally vivid in color.
"But there isn't anything funny about my punishment, Betty dear. And the worst of it is that I know I deserve all of it and more and shan't ever have the right to complain. Mother declares that she does not expect to allow me to leave Woodford again until I am twenty-one, since she has no more faith in me. And then, and then—" Polly's entire face now changed expression—"has any one told you that my behavior is to be openly discussed at the next meeting of our Camp Fire Club? Perhaps I won't be allowed to be a member any longer."
Instantly Betty jumped up from her kneeling position by the bed and commenced walking up and down the length of the room, saying nothing at first, but with her lips set in obstinate lines.
"But it isn't the custom of Camp Fire clubs to act as both judge and jury, is it, Polly?" she inquired. "At least, I have never heard of any other club's undertaking such a task. We are allowed, I know, to be fairly free in what we do in our individual clubs, but somehow this action seems unkind and dangerous. For if once we begin criticising one another's faults or mistakes, after a while there won't be any club. Right now Edith Norton is behaving very foolishly, I think, but I wouldn't dream of even discussing her with you or any one of the girls. I——" Betty paused to get her breath, her indignation and opposition to Polly's information overwhelming her.
But Polly held out both hands, entreating her to sit beside her again.
"You are mistaken. I did not explain the circumstances to you as I should have. It is all my idea and my plan to have the girls consider my misconduct and find out how they feel about me," Polly explained quietly. "I spoke of it first to Rose and then to Miss McMurtry and at first they thought in a measure as you do. But I don't agree with you. You remember that our honor beads come to us for obedience and service to our Camp Fire laws. Why should not disobedience make us unworthy to wear them? In the old days if an Indian offended against the laws of his tribe he was made to suffer the penalty. And I don't want you girls to keep me in our club just because you are sorry for me and are too kind to be just. Mollie has told me how horrified Meg and Eleanor and Nan are, and of course Rose and Donna have not pretended to hide their disapproval, even during their consolation visits to me as an invalid. But you will forgive me, won't you, Betty?" Polly ended with more penitence than she had yet shown to any one save her mother.
"Of course I forgive you. But if you had not gotten well I should never have forgiven Esther," the other girl answered.
Two fingers were laid quickly across Betty Ashton's lips.
"Don't be unfair and absurd," Polly protested; "for some day you may be sorry if you don't understand just how big and generous Esther Crippen is. It isn't only that she would sacrifice her own desires for other people's, but that she actually has. I would not be surprised if Esther did not have some secret or other." And Polly stopped suddenly, biting her tongue. Not for worlds would she even in the slightest fashion betray a suspicion or inference of her own concerning the friend who had been so loyal and devoted to her.
Fortunately Betty was too intent upon her own thoughts to have heard her.
"I have to go back to my own room now, but you are not to worry, Polly mine, not about anything. In the first place, you are not to go home very soon. I have talked to your mother and mine and persuaded them that I need to have you stay on here with me. I do need you, Polly. It is queer, but I want you to come and sleep in the old back room with me. I have gotten nervous being in there by myself. There is a mystery about the room greater than I have dreamed. I have only been joking half the time when I have spoken of it. But the other day I got mother to the point where there was no possible excuse for her not explaining the entire reason for her attitude and Dick's toward the place, when suddenly she broke down and left me. We might amuse ourselves while we are invalids discovering whether or not it is haunted. Only I don't exactly wish to make the discovery alone."
Mollie O'Neill walked slowly toward the Ashton house one afternoon not long afterwards at about four o'clock, looking unusually serious and uncomfortable. She was wearing a long coat buttoned up to her chin and coming down to the bottom of her dress, and was carrying a big book.
"Mollie, there isn't anything the matter? Neither Betty nor Polly is worse again?" Billy Webster inquired, unexpectedly striding across from the opposite side of the street and not stopping to offer his greeting before beginning his questioning.
Mollie shook her head, although her face still retained so solemn an expression that the young man was plainly alarmed. Ordinarily Mollie's blue eyes were as untroubled as blue lakes and her forehead and mouth as free from the lines of care or even annoyance.
Billy Webster put the book under his arm and continued walking along beside her.
"If there is anything that troubles you, Mollie, and you believe that I can help you, please don't ever fail to call on me," he suggested in the gentle tones that he seemed ever to reserve for this girl alone. "I know that Polly is dreadfully angry over my interference in New York, but so long as you and your mother thought I did right and were grateful to me, I don't care how Polly feels—at least, I don't care a great deal. And I believe I should behave in exactly the same way if I had it all to do over again."
Shyly and yet with an admiration that she did not attempt to conceal Mollie glanced up at her companion. Billy was always so determined, so sure of his own ideas of right and wrong, that once having made a decision or taken a step, he never appeared to regret it afterwards. And this attitude under the present circumstances was a consolation to Mollie. For oftentimes since Polly's return and while enduring her reproaches, she had experienced twinges of conscience for having concerned an outsider in their family affairs, though somehow Billy did not seem like an outsider. Polly had insisted that she had been most unwise in asking him to look up Esther and herself immediately upon his arrival in New York. How much better had she waited and let Polly make her confession to their mother later, thus saving all of them excitement and strain! However, since Billy was still convinced that he would do the same thing over again in a similar position, Mollie felt her own uncertainty vanish.
"No, there isn't anything you can help about this afternoon," she replied. "I am only going to a monthly meeting of our Council Fire. The girls told me that if I liked I need not come, yet it seems almost cowardly to stay away. For you see Polly has insisted that we talk over her conduct and decide whether or not we wish her to remain a member of our club. Or at least whether some of her honor beads should be taken from her and her rank reduced. There is a good deal of difference of opinion. For some of the girls are convinced that once our honor beads are lawfully won, nothing and no one has the right to take them from us; while others feel that breaking the law of the Camp Fire should render one unworthy of a high position in the Council and that even though one is not asked to resign, at least one should be relegated to the ranks again. But of course all this is a secret and must never be spoken of except in our club."
"Like an officer stripped of his epaulettes," Billy murmured. And afterwards: "See here, Mollie, if this is a club secret then you ought not to have told me and I ought not to have listened. For it is pretty rough on Polly. But I promise not to mention it and will try to forget. We must not make her any more down upon me than she is already."
The young man and girl had now come to the Ashton front gate, and as they stopped, Billy gave the book to Mollie and could not forbear patting her encouragingly upon the coat sleeve. She looked so gentle and worried. Polly always seemed to be getting her into hot water without really intending that Mollie should be made to suffer.
"It will turn out all right, I am sure," he insisted in a convincing tone. "Your sister will always have too many friends to let things go much against her in this world."
Mollie found that the other girls had already assembled in the Ashton drawing room and, as she was late, the camp fire had been laid and lighted, following the same ceremony as if it had taken place outdoors.
The members were all present excepting Polly, who had declined coming down to make her own defense, and Esther, who was still at work in New York. The two Field girls, Juliet and Beatrice, completed the original number, as they were both in Woodford for the winter attending the High School. Rose Dyer, with Faith's hand tight in hers, appeared uneasy and distressed. In her rôle of Camp Fire Guardian she was not assured of the wisdom of their proceedings and could find no precedent for it among other Camp Fire clubs. However, Miss McMurtry had consented to join their meeting and, as she had been the original and was now the head Guardian of all the clubs in Woodford, the responsibility might honestly be shared with her.
For the first time since her accident Betty Ashton was able to attend a gathering of the Council Fire; and although she was the center of the greater part of the attention and affection in the room, Betty appeared as nervous and worried as Mollie O'Neill.
To both of the girls this open discussion of one of their club member's misdeeds was abhorrent. And that the accused should be their adored but often misguided Polly made the situation the more tragic and distasteful.
Although she was not yet in a position to be positive, Betty felt reasonably convinced that Edith Norton was at the bottom of this formal judgment of Polly. So skilfully and quietly had the older girl gone to work that both Rose Dyer and Miss McMurtry were under the impression that the original suggestion had come from the culprit herself.
Yet the truth was that Edith Norton had a smaller nature than any other member of the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire Club and she and Polly had never been real friends since the night long ago of the Indian "Maiden's Feast," when Edith thinking to fix the guilt of a theft upon Nan Graham, had wakened Polly to a sudden sense of her own responsibility. And it was following a visit of condolence to Polly's sick room by Edith that swift as a flash Polly had announced herself as willing and ready to have her conduct considered by the club council. For it afterwards appeared that Edith had casually mentioned that the other girls had been talking among themselves of this question of Polly's fitness or unfitness to continue a "Torch Bearer" in the club. So with her usual recklessness and impulsiveness she had insisted that her offense be openly considered and that she receive whatever punishment might be considered just. Never had she planned denying her misdeed nor taking refuge behind her friends' affection.
Therefore both Betty and Mollie had been entreated, even ordered, to listen quietly to whatever might be said of her behavior and without protest. And Mollie had agreed. Betty had reserved the right to use her own discretion and had no intention of not making herself felt when the moment arrived.
After the regular business of the meeting had been concluded a marked silence followed, the girls hardly daring even to glance toward one another.
Rose Dyer coughed nervously, yet as she had been chosen to set Polly's case plainly before the other girls and to ask for their frank opinions of what action, if any, the Sunrise Hill Club desired to take, her responsibility must not be evaded. Of course all of the girls had previously heard the entire story, but perhaps in a more or less highly colored fashion. And particularly Polly O'Neill insisted that Esther Crippen's part in her action be explained. For Esther must not be held in any way accountable, as both Betty and Mollie had been inclined to feel.
When Rose had finished a simple statement of the facts of the case and had asked to hear from the other club members, no one answered. Betty kept her eyes severely fastened upon Edith Norton's face. Surely Edith must be aware of her knowledge of certain facts that were as much to her discredit as Polly's disobedience. Of course nothing could induce her to make capital of this knowledge, since Betty Ashton's interpretation of Camp Fire loyalty was of a different kind from Edith Norton's, as the older girl was one day to find out. Nevertheless there was nothing to prevent Betty from using her influence with the hope that Edith might be discouraged from making any suggestion that would start the tide of feeling rolling against the culprit.
This Council Meeting might be a greater test of the entire Camp Fire organization than any one of the girls realized. Possibly it had been a mistake to allow the fitness or unfitness of a fellow member to be openly discussed; especially when the girl was Polly O'Neill, for Polly was a powerful influence always and the club might easily split upon a criticism of her. Whatever should happen, however, Betty Ashton intended using every effort to keep the Sunrise Hill Camp together, saving Polly also if she could.
In spite of her friend's restraining glance, Edith apparently failed to regard her, for instead she glanced insinuatingly toward Eleanor Meade and Meg Everett. Both these girls had expressed themselves as deeply shocked and grieved over Polly's behavior, though neither of them appeared to be ready to make any statement of their views on this occasion. It was one thing to express an informal opinion of another girl's action, but quite another to make a formal accusation against her in the club where they had lived and worked and grown together in bonds almost closer than family ones.
Next Edith studied Sylvia Wharton's expression. Day and night had Sylvia nursed Polly with infinite patience, and yet she had made no effort to conceal her disapproval of her stepsister's conduct and Sylvia might always be relied upon for an honest and straightforward statement of her opinion. Yet Sylvia's face at the present moment was as empty as though she had never had an idea in her life.
Just why this continuing silence should make the original Sunrise Hill Camp Fire guardian smile, no one understood. However, the Lady of the Hill knew very well why and was feeling strangely relieved. For had she not permitted a dangerous test of the Camp Fire spirit to be tried and were the girls not responding just as she had hoped and believed they would? Surely during these past two years they had been developing a real understanding of comradeship, the ability to stick together, to keep step. And girls and women had for so many centuries been accused of the inability to do this.
"I think that no one of us holds Esther Crippen in any way responsible for Polly O'Neill's action or for continuing to keep her family in ignorance of what she was doing," Edith finally began in a rather weak voice, seeing that no one else showed any sign of speaking. "It is one of the things that I think she is most to be blamed for, since it is hardly fair to bring another club member into a difficulty on account of her feeling of personal loyalty."
Betty frowned. There was so much of truth in Edith's speech that it could hardly fail to carry a certain amount of conviction.
But before any one could reply, Sylvia Wharton got up from the floor, where she had been sitting in Camp Fire fashion, and crossing the room, stood before the flames, facing the circle of girls with her hands clasped in front of her and her lips shut tight together. Her usually sallow skin was a good deal flushed.
"I am going to make a motion to this club," she announced, "but before I do I want to say something, and everybody knows how hard it is for me to talk. I can do things sometimes, but I can't say them. Just now Edith Norton used the word, 'loyalty.' I am glad she did, because it is just what I want to speak of—because it seems to me that loyalty is the very foundation stone of all our Camp Fires. Of course Polly has broken a part of our law. She has failed to be trustworthy, but I am not going into that, since each one of you can have your own opinion of her behavior and would have it anyway no matter what I said. But the whole point is, won't every single girl in the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire Club possibly break some of the rules some day? As we are only human, I think we are pretty sure to. So I move that we say nothing more about Polly. Perhaps others of us have done things nearly as bad or will do them. But more important and what I would so much like to persuade you to feel about as I feel is this:"—and Sylvia's plain face worked with the strength of an emotion which few people had ever seen her display before—"I want us to promise ourselves and one another that no matter what any fellow member of the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire Club ever does, or what mistake she may make, or even what sin she may commit, that no one of us will ever turn her back upon her or fail to do anything and everything in our power to help her and to make things happy and comfortable again. I wish I could talk like Betty and Polly, but you do understand what I mean," Sylvia concluded with tears compounded of embarrassment and earnestness standing in her light blue eyes.
"Hear, hear!" whispered Miss McMurtry a little uncertainly.
Rose Dyer clapped her hands softly together. The sound gave the necessary suggestion to the other girls, and poor Sylvia crept back to her place in the circle in a storm of applause. It was the simplest method by which the girls could reveal their deeper emotions. A few moments afterward Sylvia's proposal was put into the form of a regular motion and carried without a dissenting voice.