CHAPTER IVRIGHT ABOUT, FACE
Tory toiled up the long, hot street, her arms filled with packages, her face flushed.
How different the atmosphere from the cool green shade of Beechwood Forest!
At the end of the street upon a rise of ground stood the Old Gray House. This had been Katherine Moore’s name for the house, accepted and used by the town of Westhaven. To-day it appeared what it actually was: the village orphan asylum.
No longer could Kara’s optimism conceal reality from Victoria Drew.
The house showed blistered and bare of paint. The open space of yard, green and fresh in the springtime, when she and Kara oftentimes sat outdoors to dream and plan, was now baked brown and sere.
The children playing in the yard behind the tall iron fence looked tired and cross, a little like prisoners to Tory’s present state of mind.
She had come in from camp early in theday and had spent several hours at home with her uncle, Mr. Richard Fenton. Their own house was empty save for his presence. Miss Victoria had gone for a month’s holiday to the sea.
After a talk with her uncle and an hour’s shopping, she was now on her way to call upon Kara.
She saw a mental picture of Kara’s small room on the top floor of the Gray House. How proud Kara had been because she need share her room with no one!
And what a place to be shut up in when one was ill!
For Kara’s sake Tory had endeavored to view this room with Kara’s eyes. Kara loved it and the old Gray House that had sheltered her since babyhood, her refuge when apparently deserted by the parents she had never known.
Victoria Drew was an artist. This did not mean that necessarily she was possessed of an artist’s talent, but of the artist’s temperament. Besides, had she not lived with her artist father wandering about the most beautiful countries in Europe[A]until her arrival in Westhaven the winter before?
If this temperament oftentimes allowed Tory to color humdrumness with rose, it also gave her a sensitive distaste to what other people might not feel so intensely.
With half a dozen of the children in the yard of the Gray House, Tory now stopped to talk a few moments. Never before could she recall wanting to see Kara so much and so little at the same time.
Of the two children who had been Kara’s special charges and her own favorites, only the boy remained.
His eyes bluer and more wistful than formerly, Billy Duncan came forward to speak to Tory.
He seemed older and thinner and less the cherub she remembered.
The children who were his playmates could have told her that Billy had altered since the departure of his adored companion, Lucy Martin, the little girl who had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Hammond a few months before.
Lucy Martin had been an odd little girl, full of fire and passion and wilfulness. Blindly and adoringly Billy had followed her until her departure from the Gray House.
Afterwards he never spoke of her or askedfor her, although at first she often demanded his presence and came to the Gray House to see him. Of late, however, Lucy had ceased to appear.
“Do you miss Lucy?” Tory inquired at this instant and was sorry for her own stupidity.
Billy merely shook his head. He always had been a dull little boy. One had been fond of him because of his sweetness and placidity, not for any brilliance.
Slipping a gift inside Billy’s pockets, Tory ran on up to the Gray House, comforting herself with the idea that the little boy was incapable of feeling anything deeply.
The fact that Lucy had lost her affection for Kara, who had been like a devoted older sister, was more serious.
The door stood open so that Tory entered the wide hall of the old house without ringing the bell. She had come often enough during the past winter and spring to be a privileged character.
At the bottom of the long flight of stairs she paused a moment. Warm and out of breath, she did not wish Kara to guess at her rebellious mood when she arrived at the little room up under the eaves.
“You won’t find Kara upstairs in her oldroom. Let me show you where she is,” a voice called, as Tory placed her foot on the first stair.
The big room had been a back parlor in the days when the Gray House had been the residence of a prosperous farmer. This was before the village of Westhaven had drawn so close to it.
By the window in a wheeled chair sat a small figure crouched so low that had she not known it could be no one else, Tory would scarcely have recognized her.
Since her night and Kara’s together on the hillside only a week had gone by. Could one week have altered Kara’s appearance and her nature?
Her impulse to go toward the figure and gather her in her arms, Tory carefully repressed.
Kara’s expression, as she raised her eyes at her approach, was almost forbidding.
Tory also repressed the exclamation that rose to her lips.
How white and thin the other girl’s face appeared! The humorous, gayly challenging look with which she had met former trials and difficulties had vanished. The lines of Kara’s mouth were tired and old, the gray eyes with the long dark lashes, her one claim to beauty, were dark and rebellious.
“You have taken your own time to come to see me, Tory. I have been here at the orphan asylum nearly a week and this is the first time you or any member of my Girl Scout Patrol has honored me with a call. I can’t say I altogether blame you. It certainly is pleasanter at our camp in Beechwood Forest than in this place!”
Tory’s arms went around Kara’s shoulders, her bright red lips touched the other girl’s brown hair.
“You know I have wanted to come to you every minute in the twenty-four hours, dear, and every member of your Patrol has wanted to come as well, besides Miss Mason and Miss Frean and all the rest. To-day I am regarded as the most privileged person in the camp because I am first to see you. Dr. McClain only consented last night to allow me to come. I am to bring you everybody’s love and to demand that you stay away from camp only the shortest time. Otherwise we intend to call on Dr. McClain in a body and assert our authority as Girl Scouts to bring you home to Beechwood Forest. Anyone save a doctor would know you would sooner grow strong again there than here.”
As she talked, partly as a relief from nervousnessand to hide her consternation over Kara’s changed appearance, Tory was moving about the room arranging her gifts.
In a vase filled with water from a pitcher standing on a table she placed a bouquet of faded wild flowers.
The room became fragrant with the scent of wild hyacinths, ragged robins, cornflowers and daisies. By a low bowl piled with peaches and grapes, she put two magazines and a new book.
“Uncle Richard sent you the things to read, Kara. I should like to have brought more, but could not manage to carry them.”
Still Kara made no reply. She scarcely had glanced at the offerings.
“Sorry the flowers are so faded. I think they will look better after a time. I had not the cruelty to decline to bring them, as Edith Linder and Teresa Peterson rose up this morning and gathered them in the dew to send you. I have brought our camp log for the past week.”
Conscious of the wall between herself and her companion, Tory was aware that she was talking of trivialities until the moment when Kara would admit her inside her closed citadel.
How long before she would speak a second time?
Walking over toward Kara, Tory took a low seat beside the wheeled chair.
With a swift gesture of affection she placed a square book on Kara’s lap. The book was of heavy paper, golden in color back and front and with silver-gray leaves inside. On the outside cover was a painting of an eagle’s wing.
“This is the first time we have ever had a written history of our week at camp, Kara dear. But we decided the other night at our Troop meeting to arrange this to bring to you. So whatever we dropped into the big box in front of Miss Mason’s tent we put inside this book. I have made some sketches and Joan Peters has written a poem dedicated to you. Please look for yourself, won’t you?”
Kara turned away her eyes.
Still Tory had no sensation of anger, only a kind of nervous fear. More than any one who ever knew her could have imagined here was a different Kara!
She now pushed aside the little magazine with a gesture of annoyance.
“I don’t want to know what you have been doing at camp, Tory. I never want to hear any mention of our Girl Scouts again. Youmust erase my name from our Patrol list and find some one else to fill my place.”
A valiant effort, Tory’s to smile, when in the other girl’s voice and manner there was so much to make smiling difficult.
“When that day arrives, Kara, I presume I also shall wish to resign from the Girl Scouts. It is hard to imagine when we both care so deeply. Has anyone or anything offended you? Do you feel I am responsible for your accident? If you realized how many times during the past week I have wondered if this were true. I did ask Miss Mason for permission to allow us to go for the day alone. I told her that I could sketch so much better without any companion save you. She reproaches herself now as much as I do and says as our Troop Captain the mistake was hers. But we promised not to go far from camp and were accustomed to the neighborhood.”
“Don’t be stupid, Tory. I have not forgotten that I first suggested the plan to you. We wanted a day to ourselves.”
Kara had spoken. At least this much had been accomplished, although her tone remained hard and uninterested.
Suddenly her head went down until her face was hidden.
“Don’t you know, Tory, darling? Has no one told you or the other Girl Scouts of our Troop? Dr. McClain promised me that he would tell you. I can’t come back to our camp in Beechwood Forest, I cannot be a Girl Scout. I may never be able to walk again. No, I do not suffer, I never have suffered, that is the dreadful part of it.”
Kara’s hands now clutched the other girl’s shoulders.
“Tory, don’t look at me like that. It may not be true always.”
[A]See “Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing.”
See “Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing.”
CHAPTER VA DISCUSSION
“The land that is always afternoon,” Joan Peters quoted dreamily.
Twelve girls were seated in a circle in a clearing in Beechwood Forest. Save for the fact that fallen logs formed their resting place here was a modern American “Agora of Mycanae,” the well polished circle of stones, where the earliest of civilized peoples sat for council and judgment.
The afternoon sunlight slanted through the deep polished green of the trees.
A few moments before, the other girls had been earnestly talking, then had ensued a thoughtful silence and Jean’s irrelevant speech.
“I never have understood exactly what that expression means, but it always has had a fascination for me,” she continued. “Please don’t think I am forgetting what we have been discussing this last hour. To my mind there can be no two ways of looking at it. The only problem we have is Kara. And, thank goodness, we do not have to decide what is wisest and best for her.”
Seated beside Joan, Tory Drew remained oddly still. Quiet either of body or mind was an unusual phase with her. Life and movement were her natural characteristics, more marked than with most girls.
“I wish I could think as Joan does, that the decision does not rest with us and wemustbe content,” she added finally. “I feel as if Iknewit was the only thing for Kara to come back to us and as if no one and nothing could induce me to think otherwise.”
“Not a very sensible point of view, Victoria,” a voice answered.
In the tone there was a different enunciation. In the voice there was a different emphasis from the other Girl Scouts. Besides, no one of them ever spoke to Tory without using her abbreviated title.
The girl who had made the remark was different in manner, appearance and costume from the rest of the group, although not conspicuously so. Martha Greaves was an English girl who had crossed the ocean early in the summer with Tory Drew’s father and step-mother to spend the summer in Westhaven. She was singularly tall with light brown hair and gray-blue eyes.
After she had spoken she appeared a littleembarrassed as if she regretted having called the attention of the other girls to her presence.
At the beginning of their acquaintance Martha and Tory had felt drawn toward each other. The differences in their temperaments appeared not as a barrier, but an interest.
But with the opening of the camp in Beechwood Forest, Tory had neglected her responsibilities. Her affection for Katherine Moore had made her less mindful than she should have been of a stranger in a new environment.
Fortunately Martha Greaves was an English Girl Guide. She was wearing the uniform of the Guides at this moment. Shy she might appear upon suddenly expressing her opinion, yet assuredly she had made a number of friends among the Girl Scouts. Moreover, she was too vitally interested in the differences between the two organizations, the Girl Guides of England and the Girl Scouts of the United States, to be especially self conscious.
She understood and liked Tory’s impulsive nature with its capacity for romantic affection, so unlike her own. She considered herself to be a matter-of-fact person with only a few enthusiasms.
At Martha’s sensible statement Tory had the sensation of being suddenly plunged into cold water.
A moment she was nonplussed and slightly angry. Then she had the good sense to realize that Martha had not intended to be unkind. What she had said was undoubtedly true.
If she were rarely sensible at any time, Tory appreciated that she had become less so since her last talk with Kara.
Not an hour since had the problem of Kara been out of her mind.
Indeed, since the news of the result of what had first seemed a simple accident had reached the camp of the Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest, the entire summer to which they had looked forward so joyously seemed to offer only disappointment.
They were only fourteen in number and Kara was individually dear to each one of them. Seven of the group were in Kara’s own Patrol, the others, members of her Troop of the Eagle’s Wing.
If they suffered some disadvantages over the larger summer camps for girls they had the advantage of a peculiar and intimate feeling for one another. The fact that Martha Greaves was the one outsider added a specialinterest. Rarely a half day passed that one of the Girl Scouts did not make some inquiry of Martha concerning their respective organizations.
She was glad enough to answer and they were learning from each other.
The Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing had worked at their scouting during the past winter with pleasure and faith, but occasional meetings could not bring the results these past few magical weeks at camp had accomplished.
All day long they were outdoors, at night the tent flaps were oftentimes left open for a better view of the sky and the feel of the wind.
All their own work had they undertaken and life had never appeared more practical, simple and delightful.
Then like a cloud darkening the serenity of their summer had come the news of Katherine Moore’s accident with its unexpected, tragic result.
Tory Drew sighed.
“You are probably right, Martha. I have been told often enough by Aunt Victoria and sometimes by Kara herself that I have too great an opinion of my own judgment, when in reality my judgment isn’t very good.
“Yet this time I simply can’t feel that Iam mistaken. Kara will be happier here at camp with us than at the Gray House or in a sanitarium. We all understand her and will do anything in the world to make her happier. Dr. McClain says that Kara’s state of mind worries him a great deal. Yet how can it be different? Surely we can make her physically comfortable in the evergreen house and all of us will wish to wait on her. I—”
Tory hesitated and could not go on.
“I agree with you entirely, Tory,” Margaret Hale answered sympathetically. Tory’s Patrol leader, a dignified girl of gentle breeding, she was not the most gifted member of the Patrol, yet possessed the greatest personal influence. One could always trust to Margaret’s sense of justice. She was never prejudiced and never unfair.
“I feel as Tory does. If there is nothing the doctors can do for Kara at present, save to watch her carefully, she had far better be here with us. I know they will do everything that is possible at the Gray House; I know too that Mr. Fenton has offered to pay Kara’s expenses should the doctors decide she had best go to a sanitarium. Yet will either of these places alter Kara’s state of mind?
“Since Tory told us of her talk with KaraI have scarcely been able to think of anything else. Kara, with her optimism and humor vanished; Kara, hard and bitter and wretched! It seems so incredible! Why, she has always faced her difficult existence with such courage. When one thinks of Kara it is to recall the humorous expression of her eyes, the laughter that always was waiting its chance. No one ever had so gay a laugh as Kara!”
Unconscious of what she was doing, at this instant Tory jumped up. Leaving her seat she stood alone in the center of the circle looking toward the other girls.
The first rays of the sunset slanted through the trees, turning the green to gold. One ray fell directly upon Tory Drew, her bright, red-gold hair, her thin, eager face and graceful figure.
About her the other girls were more in darkness.
There was almost a mystic quality in the late afternoon atmosphere, here in the heart of an ancient woods, with no one near save the circle of Girl Scouts.
“Margaret has suggested just what I want to make clear to all of you. The old Kara for the time being seems to have disappeared. And perhaps for the reasons Margaret has mentioned.
“Kara has had too much to bear. She has always made the best of the fact that she had no parents, no family! Cleverer and sweeter than anyone, she was found in a deserted house with no explanation as to why she had been left there.
“Kara found happiness in the life at the Gray House because everybody cared for her at the asylum and in the village. But she was always thinking that the day was coming when she would be able to earn her own living at some congenial work.
“Now, Kara told me the other day that this hope has been taken from her and she sees nothing left. I am frightened about her. The doctors tell her she may walk again some day, but not for a long time. She insists this is only to encourage her. If we, her own Troop of Girl Scouts, can do nothing for her, I don’t see who can.”
Louise Miller, seated beside her most intimate friend, Dorothy McClain, uttered an unexpected exclamation.
Under ordinary circumstances she talked less than any one of her companions. Usually it was conceded that Louise alone among all of them thought of what she was going to say before making a remark.
She was not good looking. Her features were heavy and she had grown too rapidly. She had peculiar light gray eyes under thick dark brows which held a kind of fascination. Yet Louise’s only real claim to beauty was a mass of coppery, red-brown hair.
She was not happy or congenial with her own family. They were poor and her mother, a pretty woman, resented Louise’s lack of beauty as well as their poverty. On Louise’s part there was no effort to conceal the fact that she had been happier these past weeks at their Girl Scout camp in Beechwood Forest than at any time since she could remember.
“There is something to be considered in this situation beside Kara,” she began, with a kind of awkward earnestness. The statement had not a happy sound, but the other girls waited, knowing that Louise had an odd fashion of expressing herself. One could not at first be altogether sure of her meaning.
“We must remember that it is not for Kara’s sake only that we are to keep her here, if Dr. McClain agrees it will be wise, but for our own sakes as well. While Tory has been talking I have been wondering if we were equal, as Girl Scouts, to the test.
“You look surprised, Tory, as if therecould be no question save the joy of having Kara to take care of and her pleasure in being with us. There will be other sides to it. Some one of us will always have to stay with Kara day and night. She must never be left alone for any length of time, when we may be wanting to go off together on a hike or a swimming party. It may be hard now and then to be left out. We must not expect Kara always to be cheerful and patient.”
Louise had been looking toward Tory Drew. She now turned her head and her glance traveled from one face to the other.
The group of girls, except for a few additional ones, was the same that had gathered in the old Fenton home in Westhaven on a momentous evening the winter before.
On that evening they had formed the first Patrol of the Girl Scouts of the Eagle’s Wing Troop. Margaret Hale remained the Patrol Leader and Dorothy McClain her Corporal. The other girls were Victoria Drew, Joan Peters, Louise Miller, Teresa Peterson and Katherine Moore. Edith Linder had been asked later to become the eighth member and so complete the favored number.
To-day, amid the outdoor council in the woods, there were four girls from a second Patrol in the same Girl Scout Troop.
“Honor, loyalty, duty, a sister to every other Girl Scout, courtesy, cheerfulness. These are some of our Scout principles. I wonder if bringing Katherine Moore here as an invalid to be cared for by us would not put our Scout principles into a crucible?” one of the four remarked unexpectedly.
Tory Drew frowned upon her, and then realizing the truth of what she had said, her expression changed and she nodded agreement.
Why should she expect that all the other girls must appreciate as she did the degree of Kara’s misfortune and the necessity to do something to make her lot easier without delay.
The girl she was looking down upon always had amused Kara and herself. She was so unlike any of them. Her light hair was almost as short as a boy’s and was boyish in appearance, save that it curled in an almost babyish fashion. Her eyes were wide open and a light china blue. Here her doll-like attributes ended. She had a short, determined nose, a square chin, and a large mouth filled with small, even teeth.
She had an odd, boyish name as well, Evan Phillips. No one knew a great deal about her. She had come with her mother to livein Westhaven the winter before in order to go to school. She had spoken of living in California before that time. A member of a Girl Scout Patrol in the west, she had asked to be admitted into the Eagle’s Wing Troop in Westhaven.
The three other members of the second Patrol were Julia and Frances Murray and Ann Fletcher.
“What is a crucible, Evan?” Tory inquired. “I don’t care in the least how many of our Scout principles are cast into it, if only Kara is here at camp with us. I know what Louise means, but no one need be troubled. If Kara will permit it, I shall wish to be with her always.”
“You will not be allowed, Tory. Remember, Kara is our friend as well as yours, and we have known her longer,” Dorothy McClain and the other girls protested, almost in the same words and at the same instant.
“Suppose you do not argue any more for the present,” a quiet voice interrupted, the same voice that so often gave Tory the sensation that she had been quietly and politely restrained from too great intensity.
“I am sure I hear some one coming, three people in fact.”
It was slightly annoying to the American Girl Scouts that in many ways their English guest had a better outdoor training than any one of them. However, this was not her first camping experience.
A moment or so later Dr. McClain appeared at an opening between two of the trees in the encircling grove. He was accompanied by Sheila Mason and Miss Frean. The two women remained outside. Alone Dr. McClain entered the charmed circle. At once a dozen girls were crowding about him.
A quarter of an hour after Tory Drew and Dorothy McClain were walking with him toward the road that led back into Westhaven.
“We will have the little evergreen house made comfortable for Kara. Miss Mason and all of us have decided she will be safer and easier to care for there than in one of the tents. You are sure it will be best for her? She must become stronger and in better spirits being with us,” Dorothy McClain insisted, clinging to her father’s arm as if she were unwilling to let him go. “I declare it is wonderful to have a Girl Scout doctor—father!”
Dr. McClain made a sound half pleasure, half displeasure.
“So this is what I have come to after more than a quarter of a century of hard work, a Girl Scout Doctor! Hope you girls may have no further need for me. Hard luck about little Kara. Things may turn out better for her later on. By the way, you and Tory do not know, and perhaps had best not mention it, but the very log cabin where you are planning to install Kara is the house where the child was found deserted years ago.”
“But gracious, Dr. McClain!” Tory argued, “I have always been told that Kara was found in a desertedfarmhouse. Our evergreen cabin was never a farmhouse. Mr. Hammond once spoke of finding Kara when I was with them, and he was not aware that Kara was the child he had discovered.
“Then Jeremy Hammond does not know a farmhouse when he sees one. The house was a deserted hut in those days where no one had lived for a great many years. That is why the mystery was the greater. A bridle path then led past the door and joined a road that was a short cut into Westhaven. The path is now overgrown with grass.
“I remember very well, because I came out myself next day to see if Hammond, who was a young fellow, may have overlooked anymethod by which we might trace Kara’s history. Save for the piece of paper pinned to the child’s dress and bearing her name no other information was ever forthcoming. Good-by, here is my car waiting. I’ll bring Kara out myself in a few days. Remember, this is only to be an experiment. If she is not happier and does not improve we must try something else. Much depends upon you. ‘Be Prepared’.”
CHAPTER VI“THE CHOROS”
In the open space a solitary figure was dancing.
The enclosure was not the circular place where the Girl Scouts held their councils, but deeper in the woods, although not a great distance away.
The space was larger. Instead of being surrounded by giant beech trees, a new grove of young beeches was here growing up to take the places of older trees that had died or been cut down. Their slender trunks were high and arched, their branches curved downward. They seemed to stoop, as young things that have grown too tall for their own strength. The green of their leaves was paler and more transparent. Underneath the trees the ground was covered with a finer, softer grass.
The girl was dancing barefoot. She wore a thin white dress. On the ground not far away was the khaki costume which she must have discarded for the time being.
Her hair was short and fair, and she had asquare, determined, lightly freckled face. She was short and her figure not particularly graceful in repose. Watching her dancing one thought of neither of these things. The square head with the light fringe of curling hair was perfectly poised, the body showed strength and lightness.
At this moment the girl was moving in a wide circle inside the fringe of young beeches. Her arms were extended above her head; at regular intervals she poised and stood upon her toes, then danced more rapidly. At length, with a little fluttering movement like a swallow about to alight, she dropped on the grass, her arms covering her head.
From a short distance away came exclamations of pleasure.
Stiffening with surprise, anger, and what might have been alarm, the small figure arose.
Tory Drew, pushing a wheeled chair with a good deal of difficulty, slowly advanced. Seated in the chair was Katherine Moore.
“Evan, I am sorry we have intruded upon you and stopped your dance. It did not occur to me until this moment that you did not hear us approaching. Kara was bored and I thought if I could manage we would come down here to our ‘Choros.’ Isn’t it learnedto have called our dancing ground by the name of the first dancing grounds ever discovered and built by Daedalus, the famous artificer of Crete? However, we are obliged to give Miss Frean the credit for most of our erudition.
“We will go on again to the lake as soon as I have rested a little. May I say that it was wonderful to see you? I did not dream that any one of our Girl Scout Troop could dance as you do. I am sure Kara must have enjoyed watching you. So you will forgive my not having told you we were near.”
The girl in the wheeled chair lifted her head.
“I wonder, Tory, why you think I enjoy seeing another person dance? Isn’t it hard enough to sit everlastingly watching you walking, swimming, doing whatever you wish, while I am more helpless than a baby? Naturally it affords meespecialjoy to behold another girl who can do all these other things and dance like a wood nymph besides!”
In the young voice there was a note that made her companions stare helplessly toward her and then drop their eyes as if they were responsible and ashamed.
“Kara, dear, it is my fault. Things always seem to be my fault, I am so stupid thesedays! I never realized that you would mind the dancing. I had forgotten how much you used to care for dancing. Besides, I did not suppose we would find any one here, and thought we could enjoy the cool and the quiet.
“Good-by, Evan. Youarea wood nymph. Kara was right.”
Tory had placed her hands on the back of the wheeled chair and was about to move on, when again a querulous voice interrupted:
“Oh, no, let us not go at once. You are always tiring yourself to death for me these days. Don’t think I never overhear Miss Mason and the other girls speaking of it, Tory. One learns to hear more than one should in my position. I was not always an eavesdropper. Neither did I suppose you would have to be a martyr for my sake, Tory. I wish you would try not to be; a martyr is a noble character, but one does not wish one for a constant companion.”
Tory Drew made no reply. Instead she shoved the heavy chair into a cool, green shelter and dropped down on the ground beside it.
The other girl followed, anxious to be useful and not knowing what she should do.
A week had passed since Kara’s return to her friends in their Girl Scout camp in BeechwoodForest. The Kara who had gone away after her accident and the Kara who had come back seemed two utterly different human beings.
The courageous, gay, sweet-tempered girl was now rebellious, fretful, impatient. Indeed, she had become more difficult than any one who had known her previously could have imagined.
The little group of Girl Scouts were being tested, and more than any one of them, Tory Drew. So far not once had she faltered. Knowing Tory six months before, one could scarcely have believed this possible. Always she had been sweet and charming, but self centered and spoiled. Now, was it her affection for Katherine Moore or the months of her Scout training that had given her a new spirit?
“Suppose you tell us how you learned to dance in that beautiful fashion, Evan? Then, if Kara wishes, perhaps you will dance for us again?”
The girl with the odd, boyish name gazed at Tory Drew reflectively. Since their arrival in camp she had conceived a deep admiration for Tory. She had never spoken of it to any human being. Tory possessed this charm, ofwhich she was unconscious, which was to gain her friends all her life.
Evan sat down on the ground nearby.
She was a year younger than the other two girls. At this moment, in her shabby, simple white dress, she appeared a good deal younger.
“Would you really like to know about my dancing? I have been wanting to tell some one. It would be absurd to pretend I had not been taught, no one with any judgment would believe me. Besides, when one is a Girl Scout I do not think one desires to keep secrets from the other girls. Perhaps you won’t approve of me afterwards, but I shall run that risk.”
Tory laughed.
“You are a dear! I approve of nearly every one. What could there be to object to in your wonderful dancing? Don’t you know every girl who sees you must envy you.”
A little fearfully Tory glanced upward toward Kara.
Had she been tactless again? Everything she said or did appeared the wrong thing these days.
At present apparently Kara was not looking or listening to either of them. Her gray eyes, which showed so wistfully in her thinface, were fixed on a far-off line of the sky between two clumps of trees.
“Well, you might as well hear the worst at the start,” Evan went on, smiling and revealing her small, even teeth.
“In the first place, I received my ridiculous name because my father died a short time after I was born. It was intended I should be a boy, so I was named for him. We were poor and mother had to make her own living and mine. She did not feel troubled over this because she had studied dancing and loved it. So she gave dancing lessons in California, and before I was two years old I was a member of her class. We never would have stopped save that mother was ill and we were forced to come east to consult a doctor. We came to Westhaven to live so she could be near New York and I at school. Mother is better, and next winter intends to begin teaching again.”
“So you wish to be a dancing teacher?” Katherine Moore asked. The other girls were under the impression that she had not heard what they were saying.
Evan jumped up quickly.
“Never, I should hate it! I mean to study folk dancing and some day originate newdances that shall be as American as possible. We talk of the folk dancing of the Irish and Spanish, and the Austrians and the Dutch and any number of other nations. When we speak of American folk dancing it is supposed we dance like the Indians. I don’t see why we can’t create a national folk dance of our own.”
Evan made a cup of her hands and dropped her chin into it.
“Please don’t laugh; I think an American folk dance might be like these young beech trees. I know that sounds absurd. What I mean is, the dance should show youth and freshness and grace, beautiful things like a primeval American forest. Oh, I don’t suppose you understand me. I am sure I don’t quite understand myself!
“Since I have been at camp Miss Mason has allowed me to come here an hour each morning to practice. May I show you the dance I have been trying to compose. I don’t mind if you laugh at the dance or at me, I do it so badly. I shall learn some day. I like to call it ‘The Dance of the Young Beeches’.”
Without waiting for Kara’s or Tory’s agreement, Evan was up and away. Slowlyshe again circled around the beautiful dancing ground, her arms and body waving with gentle, fanciful undulations.
Now and then she seemed to be swept by light winds; again a storm pressed upon her and she bowed and swayed as if resisting with all her strength. Afterwards, wishing to suggest that the storm had passed and the sun was shining and the birds singing, she tiptoed about, her arms gently undulating, her face looking upward.
The dancing was crude and yet would have been attractive to eyes more accustomed to trained dancing than Tory’s or Kara’s.
Tory’s first sensation was one of pure, artistic pleasure. Then glancing at Kara she felt a deeper joy. A moment Kara appeared to have forgotten her own misfortune. She looked more interested, more entertained than in many days.
“Don’t you think, Evan, that if your mother is well she might be persuaded to come to your camp and teach us dancing?” Kara demanded, as if she too could be included in the lessons. “I know when we first decided to have our camp in Beechwood Forest one of the things we talked of doing was learning outdoor dancing. We hoped Miss Masonwould be able to teach us. She only knows ordinary dances, and insists she does not even know the newest of these. She has not gone into society since the death of the young officer to whom she was engaged,” Kara confided. “Sometimes I wonder if being Captain of our Girl Scout Troop has not helped her almost as much as the rest of us?”
She stopped abruptly.
Farther off in the woods the three girls heard a strange sound.
It was as if some one were calling. Yet the noise was not the Girl Scout signal.
Ten minutes later, on the way back to camp, unexpectedly the three girls beheld Teresa Peterson hurrying on alone. She looked surprised, even a little frightened, by their appearance.
When Tory inquired where she had been, as Teresa made no reply, the question was dropped.
No one was supposed to leave the camp without special permission from the Troop Captain. There was no reason, however, to suppose that Teresa had not received this permission.
CHAPTER VIIOTHER GIRLS
The other girls in the camp in Beechwood Forest were not passing through so trying an ordeal as Victoria Drew and Katherine Moore, after Katherine’s return to camp.
Sympathetic they were with Kara’s misfortune, yet upon them it did not press so heavily.
Frankly two of the girls acknowledged that the few weeks at camp were the happiest of their entire lives. These two girls were Louise Miller and Teresa Peterson. Neither of them was particularly congenial with their home surroundings.
An odd contradiction, Louise Miller was oftentimes so quiet, so slow and awkward in her movements that many persons regarded her as stupid. This was never true among the friends who knew her intimately, if for no other reason, than because of Dorothy McClain’s attitude. From the time they were children the two girls had admired and lovedeach other, notwithstanding the difference in their natures. Dorothy was one of the happy persons whose attraction was so apparent that few natures resisted it. She was handsome and straightforward and sweet tempered. One girl in a family of six brothers, she had learned a freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and her father had been such intimate friends that she had not felt the keenness of her loss as she must have under different circumstances.
Indeed, Louise Miller, whose parents were living, endured a deeper loneliness.
There had never been any pretence of anything else. Her father was a business failure. This had narrowed and embittered his nature. He was devoted to his wife but to no one else.
She had cared for society and beautiful surroundings and been forced to do without them. To have Louise, her oldest child, another disappointment, was difficult to bear.
If Louise had been pretty, if she had appeared to be clever, if she had cared for her home life and been anxious to assist her mother with the younger children, Mrs. Miller would have been quick to appreciateany one of these characteristics. But Louise was not handsome, she insisted upon disliking every character of household work, and her position at school was not always above the average. In certain classes she did excel. Louise herself was the last person who could have explained why there were days when she was so absorbed that she seemed more than ordinarily dull even in the subjects that sometimes interested her.
She was never a favorite with her teachers or with strangers. But for one thing Louise was always grateful. Her own troop of Girl Scouts sincerely liked her, for her own sake as well as Dorothy’s. Only Dorothy she believed really understood and cared for her deeply in spite of her faults and idiosyncrasies.
With Dorothy alone she felt able to say and behave exactly as she desired. She could drop into one of her moods of self-absorption, or speak as if she were thinking aloud. Not always were her ideas clear even to herself until she had slowly evolved them.
Now these days in the woods Louise felt freer, less awkward and self-conscious. Mysteriously, unexpectedly, she was finding herself.
With the other girls nature study was apastime, or merely a necessity of their outdoor Scout training. With Louise it was becoming a passionate delight.
The note of the first bird singing deep among the beechwoods found her awake and guessing the name before slipping noiselessly outdoors to see if the warbler could be discovered.
The other girls were amused by the fact that Louise wandered about all day carrying a nature book in her hand. She studied the trees and flowers, even the stones, silent most of the time while her companions chattered. If one of them asked a question concerning the outdoors that she could answer, she would become eloquent enough. But to Dorothy McClain alone she confided her deeper spiritual and mental reactions.
“It is as if I had been asleep all my life before, Dorothy, dear, and was only beginning to wake up. Somehow I cannot explain it, even to myself, I feel so convinced that this summer in the woods will have a tremendous influence on my future life. I am going to find something in these woods that I have been looking for in a stupid fashion since I was a little girl.”
“We are what the winds and sun and watersmade us,” Dorothy quoted, glad to recall at this moment the lines her father so often repeated.
Louise shook her head.
“No, I mean something different. We all are what you have just said. I feel lately that the outdoors is going to do something special for me. Actually I mean I am going to find something here the rest of you may not find.”
Louise laughed. She had a large mouth with strong, white teeth. “That speech of mine would annoy my mother dreadfully. She says I am always dreaming and never interested inrealthings. Nothing ever seemed real to me until this summer in Beechwood Forest.”
Carefully she smoothed the brown army blanket on her cot bed.
She and Dorothy McClain were straightening their tent preparatory for inspection in the hour after breakfast. Their flag raising and Scout drill were the first features of the long summer day.
The tent was scrupulously neat.
Dorothy McClain stooped to pick up a fallen book. She was paying a slightly puzzled attention to the other girl’s odd conversation.
“Would it not be difficult to persuade your mother to believe, Louise, that you and I are interested in our camp housekeeping? Miss Mason said the other day you probably would earn a merit badge before the summer was past for cooking over a camp fire. Is this because you are preparing to spend your entire life out of doors?”
Dorothy appeared amused and incredulous. She was devoted to athletics and a thoroughly normal and delightful person. Nevertheless, the two people for whom she cared most, excepting her father, were her brother Lance and her friend Louise Miller, both of whom were unusual.
“You are an angel, Dorothy, to try to be sympathetic with me. You can’t know what I am talking about, if I don’t myself. There is only one other person in the world to whom I could speak, Miss Frean. When I know better what I am only dreaming of at present I shall confide to her and ask her advice. Isn’t it fine to think of her nearby in her little House in the Woods, always ready to give us help and advice. Tory declares she would never have dared to insist we have Kara at camp with us when she is so ill and unhappy except for Miss Frean’s nearness.”
Her task accomplished, Louise turned aside from her cot bed and put her arm about the other girl’s shoulders.
“Dorothy, I know I am selfish with you. I suppose because I am so tongue-tied with other people I pour forth everything upon you. I have not forgotten you said you wanted to speak to me about something this morning when we were alone. What is it?”
Dorothy stooped and glanced in the small square mirror which hung suspended from one of the tent poles.
Her bright chestnut hair was braided and twisted about her head. Ordinarily her father objected to this grown up fashion. At camp Dorothy insisted that two long plaits were always in one’s way. Her eyes were a clear blue with a slight hint of gray, her skin healthy and freshly colored. A fine, frank line formed her lips. Altogether she was the type of American girlhood who represents many of our highest ideals.
At the present moment a frown appeared between her brows.
“I did want to ask your opinion about something, Louise. Yet nothing is more important to me than to see how happy you are this summer and how the life in the forest ischanging you. What I wanted to ask is your view concerning the apology the Boy Scouts have made us for their rudeness. Shall we or shall we not bury the hatchet and agree to forgive them? The situation is particularly uncomfortable for me. I don’t like to take any special position in the matter, because Lance and Don are my brothers. Lance has confessed he was principally responsible for their effort to frighten or tease us soon after our arrival at camp. So far as I have been able to find out we seem about evenly divided on the subject. Tory Drew wishes to forget all about it. She is so grateful to Don and Lance for rescuing Kara that she refuses to consider anything else. Edith Linder agrees with Tory besides Evan Phillips and several other girls.
“Strangely the persons most opposed to forgiving the boys and making friends again are Margaret Hale and Joan Peters.
“We are to vote on the question to-night.
“But here comes Teresa. Perhaps she will tell us how she feels on the subject. I wonder what is the matter? She looks worried, and she has been so happy at camp.”
At the tent opening Teresa appeared.
“Do come on down to the lake and let ussit there a half hour and talk if you have finished your work?” she asked.
Teresa’s olive coloring had deepened in the weeks in the sunshine and fresh air, her cheeks were more rose colored, her wide eyes with their half mature, half childish expression were slightly plaintive at this instant.
The shores of the lake, not a great distance from the camping ground, were a favorite resting place for the Girl Scout Troop.
Not only did they rest here and hold long conversations, of necessity here a good deal of the camp work took place. Clothes and dishes were washed, water was had for cleaning. Farther up on the left-hand side, where a shore of bright pebbles ran down into the lake, was the bathing beach for the campers. The water for drinking was obtained at a pure spring up the hill of the Three Pines which rose not far off from the camp.
At present, as the greater number of the girls were still busy in their tents, the vicinity of the lake was agreeably solitary.
As the three girls sat down Louise Miller said suddenly:
“There is a legend of a lake where every night at midnight a maiden arises bearing in her hands a silver bowl. One may make a wish and cast it into the silver bowl. Thenthe maiden disappears. On another night, one can never know exactly when, the maiden returns and on this night grants your wish.”
“I wish she would appear at once,” Teresa grumbled. “I have a wish she might be persuaded to grant. I want something more exciting to happen at camp. Oh, I am enjoying it of course, but of late the days have been a good deal alike.”
“What is it you want, Teresa?” Louise Miller demanded a little scornfully. Two girls could not have been more unlike. Because Louise was intellectual she could not altogether refrain from regarding the other girl with a mixture of pity and amused contempt, as well as occasional envy.
Teresa was so pretty, so gentle and confiding and pleasure loving. When she failed to live up to the Scout rules, as all of the girls, being human, did now and then, no one ever blamed Teresa. Nor did Louise Miller understand that Teresa represented the type of girl who oftentimes has a stronger will than any other, hidden beneath her apparent gentleness. Teresa was not conscious of possessing a strong will. In fact, she would have denied the fact, believing she was telling the exact truth.
She only knew that in a quiet fashion she wanted what she wanted very intensely and that it was almost impossible to give up any wish. She might try her best, she might even pretend to herself that she had given up. The desire was inclined to be only asleep and to wake again. One must remember this characteristic in hearing of Teresa Peterson’s after career.
Teresa shrugged her shoulders.
“I am not anxious to talk to you, Louise, only it is so impossible to see Dorothy without you.”
Teresa flushed prettily.
“There, I don’t mean to be rude. One is now and then without intending it. I suppose you are such a profoundly intellectual individual you cannot bear with my frivolous character.
“I only want to say to Dorothy that I am specially anxious to have our camp of Girl Scouts make friends with the Boy Scouts. I have a special reason and promised to do my best with the girls. But of course I know I have not a great deal of influence, like you have Dorothy, or Margaret Hale, or Tory Drew.”
Teresa’s voice and manner became vaguely plaintive.
“Then we could have occasional dances, or supper parties, something to vary the outdoor monotony. Oh, of course I love the camp better than being at home. I only thought we were going to have some other associates beside just our own Troop. Most of the boys are our old friends and Don and Lance are your brothers, Dorothy. I don’t see any point in our always avoiding each other.”
“I see, Teresa, feminine society is not enough for you. I wonder if it ever will be,” Louise remarked with such profound disgust and annoyance that Dorothy shook her head reproachfully.
“Don’t be so cross, Ouida, I am sure Teresa does not mean any great harm. I like boys, I am obliged to like them with six brothers of my own. Besides, I feel as Teresa does that it is stupid and self righteous of us to continue to refuse to have anything to do with the Boy Scouts simply because they once offended us. Certainly I miss the opportunity to see Lance and Don now and then.”
Anxious to be out of the conversation, Louise Miller picked up a book of nature studies on the New England country, by John Burroughs, and began reading.
Teresa Peterson’s nature was not a straightforwardone. Without actual proof Louise Miller felt this instinctively. Of course there was no great harm in her. But then all the more reason why she might make mischief without intending it.
A few moments later the three girls moved back toward camp. Tent inspection was over and they were going for an all-day hike through the woods.