VIIIELIZABETH AT HOME
In a tiny hall bedroom in one of the small brick houses that cover many blocks in certain sections of Washington, Elizabeth Page was standing a week later, trying to screw up her courage to a deed of daring; and because it was for herself it seemed almost impossible for her to do it. With her white face, her anxious eyes, and trembling hands, she seemed again the Poor Thing who had shrunk from every one those first days at the camp—every one but Olga.
Three times Elizabeth started to go downstairs and three times her courage failed and she drew back. So long as she waited there was a chance—a very faint one, but still a chance—that the thing she so desired might come true. But the minutes were slipping away, and finally, setting her lips desperately, she fairly ran down the stairs.
Her stepmother glanced up with a frown as the girl stood before her.
“Well, what now?” she demanded, in the sharp, fretful tone of one whose nerves are all a-jangle.
“I’ve done everything—all the supper work, and fixed everything in the kitchen ready for morning,” Elizabeth said, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement, “and O, please may I go this evening—to Miss Laura’s? It’s the Camp Fire meeting, andone of the girls is going to stop here for me, and—and O, I’ll doanythingif only I may go!”
The frown on the woman’s face deepened as Elizabeth stumbled on, and her answer was swift and sharp.
“You are not going one step out of this house to-night—you can make up your mind to that—not one step. I knew when I let you go off to that camp that it would be just this way. Girls like you are never satisfied. You want the earth. Here you’ve had a month—a whole month—off in the country while I stood in that hot kitchen and did your work for you, and now you are teasing to go stringing off again. You arenot going.”
“But,” pleaded Elizabeth desperately, “I’ve worked so hard to-day—every minute since five o’clock—and I washed and ironed Sadie’s white dress before supper. If there was any work I had to do it would be different. And—and even servant girls have an afternoon and evening off every week, and I never do. And I’m only asking now to go out one evening in a month—justone!”
“There it is again!” Mrs. Page flung out. “Not this one evening, but an evening every month; and if I agreed to that, next thing you’d be wanting to go every week. I tell you—no. Now let that end it.”
The tears welled up in Elizabeth’s eyes as she turned slowly away; and the sight of those tears awakened a tumult in another quarter. Four-year-old Molly had been rocking her Teddy Bear to sleep when Elizabeth came downstairs, and had listened, wide-eyed and wondering, to all that passed. But tears in Elizabeth’s eyes were too much. The Teddy Bear tumbled unheeded to the floor as Molly rushed acrossto Elizabeth and, clinging to her skirts, turned a small flushed face to her mother.
“Naughty, naughty mamma—make ‘Lizbet’ky!” she cried out, stamping her small foot angrily. “Molly love ‘Lizbet’hard!”
Elizabeth caught up the child and turned to go, but a sharp command stopped her. “Put that child down. I won’t have you setting her against her own mother!”
Elizabeth unclasped the little clinging arms and put the child down, but Molly still clutched her dress, sobbing now and hiding her face from her mother. The tinkle of the doorbell cut the tense silence that followed Mrs. Page’s last command. Sadie, an older girl, ran to open it, flashing a triumphant glance at Elizabeth as she passed her.
As Sadie flung open the door, Elizabeth saw Olga on the step, and Olga’s quick eyes took in the scene—the frowning woman, Elizabeth’s wet eyes and drooping mouth, and little Molly clinging to her skirts as she looked over her shoulder to see who had come. Sadie stared pertly at Olga and waited for her to speak.
“I’ve come for Elizabeth. I’m Olga——”
“Elizabeth can’t go. Mother won’t let her,” interrupted Sadie with ill-concealed satisfaction in her narrow eyes.
Elizabeth started towards the door. “O Olga, please tell Miss Laura——” she was beginning when Sadie unceremoniously slammed the door and marched back with a victorious air to her mother’s side.
Olga was left staring at the outside of the door, and if a look could have demolished it and annihilated Miss Sadie, both these things might have happened thenand there. But the door stood firm, and there was no reason to think that anything untoward had happened to Sadie; so after a moment Olga turned, flew down the steps, and hurrying over to the car-line, hailed the first car that appeared. Fifteen minutes later she was ringing the bell at the door of Judge Haven’s big stone house on Wyoming Avenue. The servants in that house never turned away any girl asking for Miss Laura, so this one was promptly shown into the library. Laura rose to meet her with a cordial greeting, but Olga neither heard nor heeded.
“She can’t come. Elizabeth can’t come!” she cried out. “They wouldn’t even let me speak to her, though she was right there in the hall—nor let her give me a message for you. Her sister slammed the door in my face. Miss Laura, I’d like tokillthat girl and her mother!”
“Hush, hush, my dear!” Laura said gently. “Sit down and tell me quietly just what happened.”
Olga flung herself into a chair and told her story, but she could not tell it quietly. She told it with eyes flashing under frowning brows and her words were full of bitterness.
“Elizabeth’s just a slave to them—worse than a servant!” she stormed. “She never goes anywhere—never! They wouldn’t have let her go to the camp if she hadn’t been sick and the doctor said she’d die if she didn’t have a rest and change, and so Miss Grandis got her off. O Miss Laura, can’t you do something about it? Elizabethwantedso to come—she was crying. I know how she was counting on it before we left the camp.”
Laura shook her head sorrowfully. “I don’t knowwhat I can do. You see she is not yet of age, and her father has a right—a legal right, I mean—to keep her at home.”
“But it isn’t her father, it’s that woman—his wife,” Olga declared. “She won’t even let Elizabeth call her mother—not that I should think she’d want to—but when I asked Elizabeth why she called her Mrs. Page she said her stepmother told her when she first came there that she didn’t want a great girl that didn’t belong to her calling her mother.”
“Elizabeth is seventeen?” Laura questioned.
Olga nodded. “She won’t be eighteen till next April.Iwouldn’t stay there till I was eighteen. I’d clear out. She could earn her own living and not work half as hard somewhere else, and go out when she liked, too.” She was silent for a moment, then half aloud she added, “I’ll find a way to fix that woman yet!”
“Olga,” Laura looked straight into the sombre angry eyes, “you must not interfere in this matter. Two wrongs will never make a right. If there is anything that can be done for Elizabeth, be sure that I will do it. And if not—it is only seven months to April.”
“Seven months!” echoed Olga passionately. “Miss Laura, how would you live through seven months without ever getting outanywhere?”
Laura shook her head. “We will hope that Elizabeth will not have to do that,” she said gently. “But I hear some of the girls. Come.”
In the wide hall were half a dozen girls who had just arrived, and Laura led the way to a large room on the third floor. At the door of this room, the girls broke into cries and exclamations of pleasure.
“It’s like a bit of the camp,” Mary Hastings cried, and Rose Anderson exclaimed,
“It’s just the sweetest room I ever saw!” and she sniffed delightedly the spicy fragrance of the pines and balsam firs that stood in great green tubs about the walls. On the floor was a grass rug of green and wood-colour, and against the walls stood several long low settees of brown rattan, backs and seats cushioned in cretonne of soft greens and cream-colour, and a few chairs of like pattern were scattered about. Curtains of cream-coloured cheesecloth, with a stencilled design of pine cones in shaded browns, draped the windows, and in the wide fireplace a fire was laid ready for lighting. The low mantelpiece above it held only three brass candlesticks with bayberry candles, and above it, beautifully lettered in sepia, were the words,
“‘Whoso shall stand by this hearthstone,Flame-fanned,Shall never, never stand alone:Whose house is dark and bare and cold,Whose house is cold,This is his own.’”
And below this
“‘Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten.’”
Bessie Carroll drew a long breath as she looked about, and said earnestly, “Miss Laura, I never, never saw any place so dear! I didn’t think there could be such a pretty room.”
Laura bent and kissed the earnest little face. “I am glad you like it so much, dear,” she said. “I likeit too. You remember the very first words of our Camp Fire law—‘Seek beauty’? I thought of that when I was furnishing this. It is our Camp Fire room, girls, and I hope we shall have many happy times together here.”
“I guess they couldn’t help being happy times in a room like this—and with you,” returned Bessie with her shy smile, which remark was promptly approved by the other girls—except Olga, who said nothing.
“You look as glum as that old barn owl at the camp, Olga,” Louise Johnson told her under cover of the gay clamour of talk that followed. “For heaven’s sake, do cheer up a bit. That face of yours is enough to curdle the milk of human kindness.”
Olga’s only response was a black scowl and a savage glance, at which Louise retreated with a shrug of her shoulders and an exasperating wink and giggle.
Within half an hour all the girls were there except Elizabeth. Olga, glooming in a corner, thought of Elizabeth crawling off alone to her room to cry. Torture would not have wrung tears from Olga’s great black eyes, and she would have seen them unmoved in the eyes of any other girl; but Elizabeth—that was another thing. She glanced scornfully at the others laughing and chattering around Miss Laura, and vowed that she would never come to another of the meetings unless Elizabeth could come too. If Miss Laura, after all her talk, couldn’t do something to help Elizabeth——But Miss Laura was standing before her now with a box of matches in her hand.
“I want you to light our fire to-night, Olga,” she said gently. Ungraciously enough, Olga touched a match to the splinters of resinous pine on the hearth,and as the fire flashed into brightness, Miss Laura, turning out the electric lights, said, “I love the fire, but I love the candles almost as much; so at our meetings here, we will have both.” The girls were standing now in a circle broken only by the fire. Miss Laura set the three candlesticks with the bayberry candles on the floor in the centre of the circle and motioned the girls to sit down. Lightly they dropped to the floor, and Laura, touching a splinter to the fire, handed it to Frances Chapin, a grave studious High School girl who had not been at the camp. Rising on one knee, Frances repeated slowly,
“‘I light the light of Work, for Wohelo means work,’” and lighting the candle, she added,
“‘Wohelo means work.
We glorify work, because through work we are free.
We work to win, to conquer, to be masters. We work
for the joy of the working and because we are free.
Wohelo means work.’”
As Frances stepped back into the circle, Laura beckoned to Mary Hastings, the strongest, healthiest girl of them all, who, coming forward, chanted slowly in her deep rich voice,
“‘I light the light of Health, for Wohelo means health!’”
Lighting the candle, she went on,
“‘Wohelo means health.
We hold on to health, because through health we
serve and are happy.
In caring for the health and beauty of our persons we
are caring for the very shrine of the Great Spirit.
Wohelo means health.’”
As Mary went back to her place Laura laid her hand on the shoulder of Bessie Carroll, who was next her.With a glance of pleased surprise Bessie took the third taper and in her low gentle voice repeated,
“‘I light the light of Love, for Wohelo means love.’”
The room was very still as she lighted the third candle, saying,
“‘Wohelo means love.
We love love, for love is life, and light and joy and sweetness.
And love is comradeship and motherhood, and fatherhood and all dear kinship.
Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten.
Wohelo means love.’”
As she spoke the last words a strain of music, so low that it was barely audible, breathed through the room, then deepened into one clear note, and instantly the wohelo cheer rose in a joyful chorus.
After the roll-call and reports of the last meeting there was no more ceremony. Miss Laura had set the three candles back on the mantelpiece, where they burned steadily, sending out a faint spicy odor that mingled with the pleasant fragrance of the firs. The fire snapped and sang and blazed merrily, and Laura dropped down on the floor in front of it, gathering the girls closer about her.
“To-night,” she began, “I want to hear about your good times—the ‘fun’ that every girl wants and needs. Tell me, what do you enjoy most?”
“Moving pictures,” shouted Eva Bicknell, a little bundle-wrapper of fifteen.
“Dances,” cried another girl.
“O yes, dances,” echoed pretty Annie Pearson, her eyes shining.
“I like the roller skating at the Arcade,” another declared.
“The gym and swimming pool and tennis.” That was Mary Hastings.
“Hear her, will ye?” Eva Bicknell muttered. “Great chancewehave for tennis and gym.!”
“You could have them at the Y.W.C.A. That’s where I go for them when you go to your dances and picture shows,” retorted Mary.
“But the picture shows is great fun, ’specially when the boys take ye in,” the other flung back.
There was a laugh at that, and the little bundle-wrapper added, “an’ finish up with a promenade on the avenue in the ’lectric lights.”
Laura’s heart sank at these frank expressions of opinion. What had she to offer that would offset picture shows, dances and “the boys” for such girls as these? But now one of the High School girls was speaking. “We have most of our good times at the school. There is always something going on—lunches or concerts or socials or dances—and once a year we get up a play. Some girl in the class generally writes the play. It’s great fun.”
Laura brightened at that. Here were three at least who cared for something besides picture shows. For half an hour longer she let the talk run on, and that half-hour gave her sidelights on many of the girls. Except Olga—she had not opened her lips during the discussion.
When there came a little pause, Laura spoke in a carefully careless way. “I told you, girls, that this is our Camp Fire room and I want you to feel that it belongs to you—every one of you owns a share in it.We shall have the Council meetings here every Saturday, but this room is not to be shut up all the other evenings. We may have no moving pictures, but you can come here and dance if you wish, or play games, or sing—I’m going to have a piano here soon—or if you like you can bring your sewing—your Christmas presents to make. What I want you to understand is that this room is yours, to be used for your pleasure. You haven’t seen all yet.”
Rising, she touched a button, and as the room was flooded with light, threw open a door. The girls, crowding after her, broke into cries of delight and admiration; for here was a white-tiled kitchen complete in all its appointments, even to a small white-enamelled gas range and a tiny refrigerator. On brass hooks hung blue and white saucepans and kettles and spoons, and a triangular corner closet with leaded doors revealed blue and white china and glass.
“All for the Camp Fire Girls,” Laura said, “and it means fudge, and popcorn, and toasted marshmallows and bacon-bats and anything else you like. You can come here yourselves every Wednesday evening, and if you wish, you can bring a friend with you to share your good times.”
“Boy or girl friend?” Lena Barton’s shrewd eyes twinkled as she asked the question, with a saucy tilt to her little freckled nose.
“Either,” returned Laura instantly, though until that moment she had thought only of girls.
“Gee, but you’re some Guardian, Miss Laura!” Lena replied.
As the girls reluctantly tore themselves away fromthe fascinating kitchen, two maids entered with trays of sandwiches and nutcakes, olives and candy.
“It is the first time I have had the pleasure of having you all here in my own home,” Miss Laura said, “so we must break bread together.”
“Gee! This beats the picture shows,” Lena Barton declared. “Three cheers for our Guardian—give ’em with claps!” and both cheers and clapping were given in generous measure.
When finally there was a movement to depart, Laura gathered the girls once more about her before the fire. “I hope,” she began, “you have all enjoyed this evening as much as I have——”
“We have! Wehave!” half a dozen voices broke in, and Lena Barton shrilled enthusiastically, “More!”
Laura smiled at them; then she glanced up at the words above the mantelpiece. “Thejoy of service,” she said. “That, to me, is the heart—the very essence—of the Camp Fire idea. And while I am planning good times and many of them for ourselves in these coming months, I wish that together we might do some of this loving service for some one beside ourselves. Think it over—think hard—and at our next Council meeting, if you are willing, we will consider what we can do, and for whom.”
“You mean mish’nary work?” questioned Eva Bicknell doubtfully.
“No—at least not what you probably mean by missionary work,” Laura answered.
“Christmas trees for alley folks, and that sort of thing?” ventured another.
“I mean, something for somebody else,” Laura explained. “It may be an old man or woman, a childor—or anything,” she ended hastily, intercepting an exchange of glances between Lena and Eva. “I just want you to think over it and have an idea to suggest at our next meeting.”
“Huh! Thought the’d be nickels wanted fer somethin’,” Eva Bicknell grumbled as she linked her bony little arm through Lena’s when they were outside in the starlight.
“Come now—you shut up!” retorted Lena. “Miss Laura’s given us a dandy time to-night, an’ I ain’t goin’ back on her the minute I’m out of her house. An’ I didn’t think it of you, Eva Bicknell.”
“Who’s goin’ back on her?” Eva’s hot temper took fire at once. “Shut up yourself, Lena Barton!” she flared. “I ain’t goin’ back on Miss Laura any more than you are. Mebbe you’re so flush that you can drop pennies an’ nickels ’round promiscuous, but me—well, I ain’t—that’s all,” and she marched on in sulky silence.
On the next Wednesday evening, some of the girls came to the Camp Fire room, and played games, which some enjoyed and others yawned over, and made fudge which all seemed to enjoy. On the next Wednesday they sang for a while, Laura accompanying them on the piano, and Rose Anderson played for them on her violin. After that they sat on the floor before the fire and talked; but Laura was a little doubtful about these evenings. She feared that these quiet pleasures would not hold some of the girls against the alluring delights of dances and moving pictures and boys.
Meantime she did not forget Elizabeth, and on the first opportunity she went to see Mrs. Page. Sadieopened the door, and was present at the interview. She was evidently very conscious of the fact that her braids were now wound about her head and adorned with a stiff white bow that stuck out several inches on either side.
Mrs. Page received her visitor coldly, understanding that she came to intercede for Elizabeth. She said that Elizabeth’s father did not want his daughter to go out evenings; that she had a good home and must be contented to stay in it “as my own children do,” she ended with a glance at Sadie, who sat on the edge of a chair with much the aspect of a terrier watching a rat-hole. When Miss Laura asked if she might see Elizabeth, Sadie tossed her head and coughed behind her handkerchief, as her mother answered that Elizabeth was busy and could not leave her work.
“But wouldn’t she do her work all the better if she had a little change now and then, and the companionship of other girls?” Laura urged gently.
“She has the companionship of her sister—she must be satisfied with that,” was the uncompromising reply.
With a sigh, Laura rose to leave, but as she glanced at Sadie’s triumphant face, she had an inspiration. The child was certainly unattractive, but perhaps all the more for that reason she ought to have a chance—a chance which might possibly mean a chance for Elizabeth too. She smiled at the girl and Laura’s smile was winning enough to disarm a worse child than Sadie.
“If you do not think it best for Elizabeth to attend our Council meetings regularly, perhaps you would be willing to let her come this next Saturday and bring her sister. After the business is over, we are goingto have a fudge party. I have a little upstairs kitchen just for the girls to use whenever they like. I think your daughter might enjoy it—if she cared to come—with Elizabeth.”
Marvellous was the effect of those few words on Sadie. Seeing a refusal on her mother’s lips, she burst out eagerly, “O mother, I want to go—Iwantto go! Youmustlet me.”
Taken entirely by surprise, Mrs. Page hesitated—and was lost. What Sadie wanted, her mother wanted for her, and she saw that Sadie’s heart was set on accepting this invitation. “I suppose they might go, just for this once,” she yielded reluctantly.
Laura allowed no time for reconsideration. “I shall expect both of them then, on Saturday,” she said and turned to go. She longed to look back towards the kitchen where she felt sure that Elizabeth must have been wistfully listening, but Mrs. Page and Sadie following her to the door, gave her no chance for even a backward glance.
“Good-bye,” Sadie called after her as she went down the steps, and the child’s small foxy face was alight with anticipation.
Slamming the door after the caller, Sadie flew to the kitchen.
“There now, Elizabeth,” she cried, “I’m going to her house next Saturday and you’re going—you can just thank me for that too. Mother wouldn’t have let you go if it hadn’t been for me.”
Elizabeth’s face brightened, but there was a little shadow on it too. Of course it was better to go with Sadie than not to go at all—O, much better—but still——
When Saturday came Sadie was in a whirl of excitement. She even offered—an unheard-of concession—to wipe the supper dishes so that Elizabeth might get through her work the sooner, and she plastered a huge white bow across the back of her head, and pulled down the skirt of her dress to make it as long as possible. Sadie would gladly have thrown away three years of her life so that she might be sixteen, and really grown up that very night.
Olga was waiting at the corner for them, Miss Laura having told her that Elizabeth was to go. Her scathing glance would have had a subduing effect on most girls, but not on Sadie! Sadie did most of the talking as the three walked on together, but the other two did not care. It was enough for Elizabeth to be with Olga again, and as for Olga, she was half frightened and half glad to find a little glow of happiness deep down in her heart. She was afraid to let herself be even a little happy.
When the three entered the Camp Fire room Laura met them with an exclamation of pleasure. “We’ve missed you so at the Councils, Elizabeth,” she said, “but it’s good to have you here to-night, isn’t it, Olga? And Miss Sadie is very welcome too.”
Sadie smiled and executed her best bow, then drew herself up to look as tall as “Miss” Sadie should be; but the rest of the evening her eyes and ears were so busy that for once her tongue was silent. She vowed to herself that she would give her mother no peace until she—Sadie—was a really truly Camp Fire Girl like these.
When in the last hour they were all gathered on the floor before the fire, Mary Hastings asked, “MissLaura, have you decided yet what our special work is to be—the ‘service for somebody else’?” she added with a glance at the words over the mantelpiece.
“That is for you girls to decide,” Laura returned. “Have you any suggestion, Mary?”
“I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t help support some little child—maybe a sick child in a hospital, or an orphan.”
“Gracious! That would take a pile of money,” objected Louise Johnson, “and I’m always dead broke a week after payday.”
“There are fifteen of us—it wouldn’t be so much, divided up,” Mary returned.
“Sixteen, Mary—you aren’t going to leave me out, are you?” Miss Laura said.
“I think it would be lovely,” cried Bessie Carroll, “if we could find a dear little girl baby and adopt her—make her a Camp Fire baby.”
“Huh!” sniffed Lena Barton. “If you had half a dozen kids at home I reckon you wouldn’t be wanting to adopt any more.”
“Right you are!” added Eva Bicknell, who was the oldest of eight.
“We might ‘adopt’ an old lady in some Home, and visit her and do things for her,” suggested Frances Chapin. “There are some lonely ones in the Old Ladies’ Home where I go sometimes.”
But the idea of a pretty baby appealed more to the majority of the girls.
“O, I’d rather take a baby. We could make cute little dresses for her,” Rose Anderson put in, “all lacey, you know.”
“Say—where’s the money comin’ from for the laceydresses and things you’re talkin’ about?” demanded Lena Barton abruptly.
There was an instant of silence. Then Mary threw back a counter question. “How much did you spend for moving pictures and candy last week, Lena Barton?”
“I d’know—mebbe a quarter, mebbe two. What of it?” Lena retorted, her red head lifted defiantly.
“Well now—couldn’t you give up two picture shows a week, for the Camp Fire baby?” Mary demanded. “If sixteen of us give ten cents a week we shall have a dollar sixty. That would be more than six dollars a month.”
“Gracious! Money talks!” put in Louise. “Think of this crowd dropping over six dollars a month for picture shows and such. No wonder they’re two in a block on the avenue.”
“You see,” Laura said, “we could easily provide for some little child, at least in part. Girls, I’d like to tell you about one I saw at the Children’s Hospital yesterday. Would you care to hear about him?”
“Yes, yes, do tell us,” the girls begged.
“He is no blue-eyed baby, but a very plain ordinary-looking little chap, nine years old, whose mother died a few weeks ago, leaving him entirely alone in the world. Think of it, girls, a nine-year-old boy without any one to care for him! He’s lame too—but he is the bravest little soul! The nurse told me that they thought it was because he was so homesick—or rather I suppose mother-sick—that he is not getting on as well as he should.”
“O, the poor little fellow!” Frances Chapin said softly, thinking of her nine-year-old brother.
“Tell us more about him, Miss Laura,” Rose Anderson begged. “Did you talk with him?”
“Yes, I stayed with him for half an hour, and I promised to see him again to-morrow. He wanted a book—about soldiers. I wonder if any of you would care to go with me. You might possibly find your blue-eyed baby there; and anyhow, the children there love to have visitors—especially young ones.”
Two of the High School girls spoke together. “I’d like to go.”
“And I too,” added Alice Reynolds, the third.
“I guess I’d like to, maybe—if there isn’t anything catching there.” It was pretty little Annie Pearson who said that.
“I’d love to go, but I can’t,” Elizabeth whispered to Olga, who frowned at her and demanded,
“What do you want to go for?”
“I’d so love to do something for that little fellow,” Elizabeth answered. “I’ve been lonesome too—always—till now.”
“Humph!” grunted Olga, the hardness melting out of her black eyes as she looked into Elizabeth’s wistful blue ones.
It was finally agreed that the three High School girls, Frances Chapin, Elsie Harding, and Alice Reynolds, with Mary Hastings, Annie Pearson, and Rose, should go with Miss Laura to the hospital.
“I c’n see kids enough at home any time,” Lena Barton declared airily. “I’d rather walk down the avenue on Sunday than go to any hospital.”
“I guess I’ll be excused too,” said Louise Johnson. “Hospital visiting isn’t exactly in my line. I’ve a hunch that I’d be out of place amongst a lot of sickkiddies. But I’ll agree to be satisfied with any blue-eyed baby girl you and Miss Laura pick out for our Camp Fire Kid. Say, girlies”—she looked around the group—“I move we make those seven our choosing committee—Miss Laura, chairman, of course.”
“But, Johnny,” one girl objected, “maybe they won’t find any girl to fit our pattern over at the hospital.”
“It is not at all likely that we shall,” Laura hastened to add, “and if we did, it would probably be one with parents or relatives to care for it after it leaves the hospital.”
“Blue-eyed angel babies, with dimples, don’t come in every package. I s’pose you’d want one with dimples too?” Eva Bicknell scoffed.
“O, of course, dimples. Might as well have all the ear-marks of a beauty to begin with, anyhow,” giggled Louise. “She’ll probably develop into a homely little freckle-faced imp by the time she’s six, anyhow.”
“There’s worse things in the world than freckles,” snapped Lena Barton, whose perky little nose was well spattered with them.
“So there are, Lena—so there are,” Louise teased. “Yours will probably fade out by the time you’re forty.”
A cuckoo clock called the hour, and the girls reluctantly agreed that it was time to go. But first Laura, her arms around as many as she could gather into them, with a few gentle tender words brought their thoughts back to the deep meaning of the thing they were planning to do—trying to make them realize their opportunity for service, and the far-reachingresults that must follow if a little life should come under their care and influence.
For once Louise was silent and thoughtful as she went away, and even Lena Barton was more subdued than usual until, at last, with a shrug of her shoulders, she flung out the vague remark,
“After all, what’s the use?” and thereupon rebounded to her usual gay slangy self.
But Elizabeth went home with Miss Laura’s words echoing in her heart. “I don’t suppose I can do much for our Camp Fire baby,” she told herself, “but there’s Molly. Maybe I can do more for her and—and for Sadie and the boys—perhaps.”
IXJIM
In the first ward of the Children’s Hospital the next afternoon, No. 20 lay very still—strangely still for a nine-year-old boy—watching the door. He had watched it all day, although he knew that visitors’ hours were from two to four, and none would be admitted earlier. No. 18 in the next cot asked him a question once, but No. 20 only shook his head wearily. Some of the children had books and games, but they soon tired of them, and lay idly staring about the long, sunny room, or looking out at the sky and the trees, or watching the door. Sometimes mothers or fathers came through that door, and if you hadn’t any of your own, at any rate you could look at those that came to see other fellows, and sometimes these mothers had a word or a smile for others as well as their own boys. No. 20, however, didn’t want any other fellow’s mother to smile down at him—no indeed, that was the last thing in the world he wanted—yet. He wished sometimes, just for a moment, that there weren’t any mothers to come, since theonecould never come to him again. But they did come and smile at him, and pat his head—these mothers of the other boys—came drawn by the hungry longing in his eyes—and he set his teeth and clinched his hands under the bedclothes, and when they went away gulped down the great lump thatalways jumped into his throat, all in a minute—but he never cried. One day when a kind-hearted nurse asked him about his mother, he bore her questioning as long as he could, and then he struck at her fiercely and slipped right down under the bedclothes where nobody could see him; but he didn’t cry, though he shook and shook for a long time after she went away.
But—Miss Laura—she was different. She didn’t kiss him, nor pat him, nor ask fool questions. She just talked to him—well, the right way. And she’d promised to come again to-day. Maybe she’d forget though; people did forget things they’d promised—only somehow, she didn’t look like the forgetting kind. And she was awful pretty—most the prettiest lady he had ever seen. But hospital hours were so dreadfully long! Seemed like a hundred hours since breakfast. Ah! He lifted his head and looked eagerly towards the door—somebody was coming in. O, only some other fellow’s mother. He dropped down again, choking back an impatient groan that had almost slipped out. When the next mother came in he turned his back on the door, but soon he was watching it again. A half-hour dragged wearily by; then a crowd of girls fluttered through the doorway. No. 20 gazed at them listlessly until one behind slipped past the others; then his eyes widened and his lips twitched as if they had almost a mind to smile, for here was the pretty lady coming straight to him.
“Jim” she said, shaking hands with him just as if he had been a man, “I’ve brought some of my girls to see you to-day. I hope you are glad to see us all, but you needn’t say you are if you are not.”
Jim didn’t say—and Rose Anderson laughed softly. Jim flashed a glance at her, but he saw at once that it wasn’t a mean laugh—just a girly giggle, and he manfully ignored it.
“I have to speak to Charley Smith over there,” Miss Laura went on, “but I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
As she crossed to the other cot, Frances Chapin slipped into the chair by Jim’s—there was only one chair between each two cots. “I think you are about nine, aren’t you, Jim?” she asked.
“Goin’ on ten,” Jim corrected stoutly.
“I’ve a brother going on ten,” she said.
Jim looked at her with quick interest. “Tell about him,” he ordered. “What’s his name?”
“David Chapin. He’s in the sixth grade——”
“So’m I—I mean I was ’fore I came here,” Jim interrupted. “What else?”
“—and he’s—he’s going to be a Boy Scout as soon as he’s twelve.”
Jim’s plain little face brightened into keen interest. “That’s bully!” he cried. “I’m going to be a Scout soon’s I’m big enough—if I can.” The wistful longing in the last words brought a mist into Frances’s eyes, but Jim did not see it. He was looking at the other girls. “Any of the rest of you got brothers?” he demanded.
“I have one, but he’s a big fellow, twice as old as you are,” Alice Reynolds said.
“And I’ve six,” Mary Hastings told him. “Two of them are Scouts.”
“Fine!” exulted Jim. “Say—tell me what they do, all about it,” he pleaded, and sitting down on theedge of his cot, Mary told him everything she could think of about the scouting.
When Miss Laura came back Jim’s face was radiant. “She’s been telling me about her brothers—they’re Boy Scouts,” he cried eagerly, pointing a stubby finger at Mary. “I wish,” he looked pleadingly into Mary’s eyes, “I do wish they’d come and see me; but I guess boys don’t come to hospitals ’thout they have to,” he ended with a sigh.
“I’ll get them to come if I can,” Mary promised, “but——”
“I know,” Jim nodded, “I guess they won’t have time. There’s so many things for boys to do outdoors!”
“Jim,” said Miss Laura, “there are so many things for you to do outdoors too. You must get well as fast as you can to be at them.”
Jim’s lips took on a most unchildlike set, and his eyes searched her face with a look she could not understand. “I—I d’know——” he said vaguely.
He could not put into words his fear and dread of the time when he must go out into some Home where he would be only one of a hundred boys and all alone in a big lonesome world. That was the black dread that weighed on Jim’s heart night and day. He had seen that long procession of girls and boys from the Orphan Asylum going back from church on Sundays, the girls all in white dresses, the boys in blue denim suits, all just alike except for size. He had peeped through knotholes in the high fence that surrounded the Asylum yard too, and had seen the boys playing there on weekdays; and some not playing, but standing off by themselves looking so awful lonesome.Jim had always pitied those lonesome-looking ones. More than once he had poked a stick of chewing-gum through a knothole to one of them—a little chap with frightened blue eyes. Jim felt that he’d almost rather die than go to the Asylum; and he’d heard the nurse tell Charley Smith’s mother that he’d have to go there when he got well. That was why Jim was in no hurry to get well.
The girls all shook hands with him before they went off to search the other wards for their blue-eyed baby. Miss Laura did not go with the girls; she stayed with Jim, and somehow, before long, he was telling her all about the Asylum boys and how he dreaded to get well and go there to live till he was fourteen. And, unconsciously, as he told it all, his stubby little fingers crept into Miss Laura’s hand that closed over them with a warm pressure very comforting to Jim.
And then—then a wonderful thing happened, for Miss Laura put her head down close to his and whispered, “Jim, you shall never go to the Asylum, I promise you that. If you will try very hard to get well, I’ll find a home for you somewhere, and I’ll take care of you until you can take care of yourself.”
Jim caught his breath and his eyes seemed looking through hers deep into her heart, to see if this incredible thing could be true. What little colour there was in his face faded slowly out of it and his lips quivered as he whispered, “You—you ain’t—jest foolin’? You mean it, honest Injun?”
“Yes, Jim—honest.”
He struggled to a sitting posture. “Cross your heart!” he ordered breathlessly.
She made the sign that children make. “Cross my heart, Jim. You are my boy now,” she said.
With a long, happy breath Jim fell back on his pillow. His eyes began to shine, and a spot of red burned in each thin cheek. “O gee!” he cried exultantly, and again, “Ogee! I’ll get well in a hurry now, Miss Laura.” Then eagerly, “Where’ll I live?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll find a place,” she promised.
He nodded, happily content just then to leave that in her hands.
“An’ I’ll grow big soon,” he crowed, “and I can earn a lot of money when I’m well, carryin’ papers an’—an’ other ways. An’ you’ll let me be a Boy Scout soon’s I’m big enough, an’ a soldier when I get over being lame?”
Laura nodded, and again Jim drew a long rapturous breath. When Laura went away his eyes followed her, and as from the door she looked back at him, he waved his hand to her and then settled down on his pillow to dream happy waking dreams. He was somebody’s boy once more.
Laura found the girls waiting for her in the reception room.
“Did you find your blue-eyed baby?” she asked.
“We found one——” Alice Reynolds began, and Rose broke in,
“But, O Miss Laura, her mother was with her and she wouldn’t hear of giving her up. I don’t wonder—such a darling as she is!”
“You can try at the Orphan Asylum,” Miss Laurasaid, the words sending her thoughts back in a flash to Jim.
“Miss Laura, I wish we could have Jim. I think he’s a dear!” Mary Hastings said as they left the hospital.
“Jim’s pre-empted. He’s my boy now,” Laura answered quickly.
“O Miss Laura, I wanted him too for our Camp Fire child,” Frances said. “Are you really going to adopt him—have him live with you?”
“I don’t know, Frances, about the living. When I found that he was fairly dying of loneliness and dread of the Orphan Asylum, I just had to do something; so I told him he should be my boy and I would take care of him. I know my father won’t mind the expense, but he may object to having the boy live with us. Of course, if he does I shall find a good home for him elsewhere.”
“But, Miss Laura, why can’t we all ‘adopt’ him?” Frances pleaded. “I’d so much rather have him than any baby. And there are always people ready to adopt pretty blue-eyed baby girls, but they don’t want just boys—like Jim.”
“That’s true,” Alice Reynolds agreed. “My mother is a director at the Orphan Asylum, and she says nine out of ten who go there for a child to adopt, want a pretty baby girl.”
“But you can find some other boy for the Camp Fire,” Miss Laura returned.
“Not another Jim. Please share him with us, anyhow, Miss Laura,” Alice urged.
“I don’t want to be selfish about it,” Laura replied, “but somehow Jim has crept into my heart and Ithought I would take him for my own special Camp Fire ‘service.’ And perhaps the other girls won’t be willing to give up their pretty baby.”
“I—I’d hate to, though I like Jim too,” Rose admitted.
“You couldn’t make pretty lacey dresses for Jim,” Laura reminded her with a little laugh. “Rose is hankering for a live doll to dress, girls, so you’d better wait and see what the others say about it.”
“When can Jim leave the hospital?” Alice inquired.
“To judge from his face when I left him, he will get well quickly, now,” Miss Laura answered.
And he did. The next time she went to see him, he welcomed her with a beaming smile. “I’m getting well,” he exulted. “She says I can sit up to-morrow,” he nodded towards the nurse.
“He is certainly getting better,” the nurse agreed. “He has seemed like another boy since Sunday. How did you work such magic, Miss Haven?”
Laura looked at Jim and his eyes met hers steadily. “Hasn’t he told you?” she asked the nurse.
“He has told me nothing.”
Laura smiled at him as she explained, “Jim is my boy now—we agreed on that, Sunday. When he leaves the hospital he is coming to me.”
“Jim, I congratulate you. You are a lucky boy,” said the nurse, who knew all about Judge Haven and his daughter.
“I think I too am to be congratulated,” said Laura quickly, and the nurse nodded.
“Yes, Jim is a good boy,” she answered. Then she went away and left the two together. This time Jim did not talk very much. It was enough for him tohave his pretty lady where he could look at her, and be sure it was not all a dream.
Not many days later, after a telephone conference with the nurse, Laura went to the hospital again. She found the boy lying there with a look of patient endurance in his eyes, but they widened with half-incredulous joy when she told him that she had come to take him away.
“Not—notnow!” he cried out, with a little break in his voice.
“Yes, now—just as you are. We are going to wrap you in a blanket and put you into a carriage, and before you have time to get tired we shall be home.”
“Home!” echoed Jim, his eyes shining.
“What makes you look so sober?” Miss Laura asked him as they drove away. “You aren’t sorry to leave the hospital?”
“Sorry?” Jim gave a shaky little laugh, then suddenly was grave again. “Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s for all the other fellows that nobody’s coming for,” he explained.
“I wish I could have taken them all home with us,” Laura answered quickly. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Jim. If you’ll get well very fast, maybe you and I can give a little Christmas party in your ward, to those other boys who have to stay there.”
“Hang up stockin’s an’—an’ a tree an’ all?” Jim questioned breathlessly.
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Gee!” was Jim’s rapturous comment. “You bet I’ll get well fast—if I can,” the afterthought in a lower tone.
The room Laura had prepared for the boy had beena nursery, and had a frieze, representing in gay colours the old Mother Goose stories. Jim was put on a cot beside the open fire, where he lay very still, but it was not the dull hopeless stillness of the hospital. Now he was resting, and his eyes travelled happily along the wall as he picked out the old familiar characters.
“Makes me feel like a little kid—seeing all those,” he said, pointing at them.
The thin white face and small figure under the bedclothes looked like a very “little kid” still, Laura thought. The gray eyes swept over the large sunny room and then back to Miss Laura’s face, and suddenly Jim’s lips trembled.
“I—I—I think you’rebully!” he broke out, and instantly turned his face to the wall and was still again. Laura slipped quietly out of the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she brought a supper tray.
“You and I are going to have supper here to-night, Jim,” she announced cheerfully, “because my father is away, and I should be lonesome all alone downstairs and you might be lonesome up here. You must have a famous appetite, you know, if you are to get well and strong for that Christmas party at the hospital.”
“I’m hungry, all right,” Jim declared, his eyes lingering on the tempting food so daintily served; but after all he did not eat very much.
After supper he lay quietly watching the leaping flames for a long time. Suddenly he broke the silence with a question.
“I’ll be back there then?”
“Back where, Jim? I don’t understand,” Miss Laura said.
“At the hospital—when we have that Christmas party.”
“Oh. Why, yes, of course, you and I will both be there.”
“Yes, but I mean—I mean——” Jim’s eyes were very anxious, “will I be back there to stay, or where will I be stayin’?”
Laura’s hand dropped softly over one of his and held it in a warm clasp. “No, Jim, you won’t go back there to stay—ever—not if you do your best to get well, as of course you are going to. I told you I would find a good home for you and I will, but there’s plenty of time to think of that before your two weeks here are over.”
“You’re the—the best ever, Miss Laura,” Jim said. “I—I didn’t s’pose,” he stumbled on, trying to put his feeling into words, “ladies like you ever—cared about boys that get left out of things—like I have.”
Laura longed to put her arms about him and hold him close, but there was something about the sturdy little fellow that warned her, so, waiting a moment to steady her voice, she answered, “O yes, there are many that care and do all they can; but you see there are so very many little fellows that—get left out, Jim.”
Jim nodded, his face very sober. “I wonder why,” he said, voicing the world-old query.
When she had settled him for the night, she stood looking down at the dark head on the pillow. “Shall I put the light out, or leave it?” she asked.
“Just as you like, Miss Laura,” he said, but she thought there was a little anxiety in his eyes.
“It makes no difference to me, of course. I want it whichever way you like best. I know you are not afraid of the dark.”
A moment’s silence, then in a very small voice, “Yes—I am—Miss Laura.”
“Afraid!” Miss Laura caught herself up quickly.
“Yes’m,” said Jim in a still smaller voice, his eyes hidden now.
“O—then I’ll leave the light, of course.” But there was just a shade of disappointment in Miss Laura’s voice and Jim caught it. “Good-night, dear,” she added, with a light touch on the straight brown hair.
“G’night,” came in a muffled voice from the pillow.
Laura turned away, but before she reached the stairs the boy called her. She went back at once.
“What is it, Jim? Do you want anything?”
“Yes’m, the light. I guess—you better put it out.”
“Not if you are afraid in the dark, Jim.”
“Yes, Miss Laura, that’s why.”
“But I don’t understand. Can’t you tell me?” she urged gently.
Jim gulped down a troublesome something in his throat before he said in a whisper, “Put your head down close, Miss Laura.”
She turned out the light and as she dropped down beside the bed, a small arm slipped around her neck and a husky little voice whispered in her ear, “It’s ’cause I’m ’fraid inside that I mustn’t have the light left.” Another gulp. “Mother—she said you wasn’t a coward just ’cause you was ’fraid inside, but only when you let the ’fraid get out into the things youdo. She said lots of brave men were ’fraid inside sometimes. An’—an’ she said I mustn’t ever be a cowardnor tell lies, an’ I promised—cross my heart—I wouldn’t. So that’s why, Miss Laura.”
Again Laura longed to hug the little fellow and kiss him as his mother would have done, but she said only,
“Yes, Jim, I quite understand now, and I know you will never be a coward. Here’s the bell, you know. You can press the button if you want anything, and the maid sleeps in the next room. She’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Yes’m.” A little drowsiness was creeping into Jim’s voice already.
“Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night,” Jim murmured and Laura went away, but she left the door open into the lighted hall, and when she slipped back a little later the boy was asleep.
When the other Camp Fire Girls learned about “Miss Laura’s boy” they were all interested in him, and begged that he might come to the next Council meeting. Jim was sitting up most of the day now, and his wheelchair was rolled into the room after all the girls had come. He was dressed and sat up very straight, but though he was much better, his face was still very thin and white.
“All but one of my girls are here to-night, Jim,” Miss Laura told him. “I’m going to introduce you to them and see how many of the names you can remember.”
“Why isn’t that other one here?” he demanded.
“She couldn’t come this time,” Laura said with a glance at Olga, sitting grave and silent a little apart from the others.
The girls gathered about the wheelchair and Jimheld out his hand to each one as Laura mentioned her name. His gray eyes searched each face, but he said nothing until Lena Barton flung him a careless nod and would have passed on, but he caught her hand and laughed up into the freckled face with the bunch of red frizzes puffed out on each side in the “latest moment” fashion.
“Hello, Carrots,” he called in the tone of jovial good-fellowship, “I like you, ’cause you look like a fellow I used to sit with in school. His name was Barton too—Jo Barton. O, I say,” leaning forward eagerly, “mebbe he’s your brother?”
“You’re right, kiddie—he’s one of the bunch,” Lena answered, her face softening as she looked down into the eager gray eyes.
“Gee! Jo’s sister!” Jim repeated. “I wish Jo was here too. I s’pose,” he glanced at Miss Laura, “you couldn’t squeeze in just one more boy?”
Laura shook her head. “Not into these meetings. But you can invite Lena’s brother to come and see you, if you like.”
“O bully!” Jim cried out and turned again to Lena. “You tell him, won’t you?”
“I will, sure,” she promised, and Jim reluctantly released her hand.
The girls begged that he might stay, and though Jim’s tongue was silent his eyes pleaded too, so Miss Laura conceded, “Just for a while then, if you’ll be very quiet so as not to get too tired,” and with a contented smile Jim leaned back against his cushions and looked and listened. When the girls chanted the Fire Ode his eyes widened with pleasure and he listened with keen interest to the recital of “gentledeeds.” Even Olga gave one this time. Jim’s eyes studied her grave face, his own almost as grave, and when later she passed his chair, he caught her dress and said very low, “Put down your head. I want to ask you something.”
Olga impatiently jerked her dress from his grasp, but something in his eyes held her against her will, and under cover of a burst of laughter from another group, she leaned over the wheelchair and ungraciously enough asked what he wanted. Jim’s eyes, very earnest and serious now, were looking straight into hers.
“I know what makes you keep away from the others and look so—so—dif’rent. You’re lonesome like I was at the hospital. Is it your mother, too?”
Olga’s face went dead white and for an instant her eyes flamed so fiercely that the boy shrank away with a little gasp of fear. But the next moment she was looking at him with eyes full of tears—a long silent look—then, without a word, she was gone.
The first time that Jim came downstairs to dinner he was very shy and spoke only in answer to a question. But his awe of Judge Haven and the servants soon wore off, and his questions and comments began to interest the judge. When one evening after dinner Laura was called to the telephone, the judge laid aside his paper and called the boy to him. Jim promptly limped across the room and stood at the judge’s knee, his gray eyes looking steadily into the keen blue ones above him.
“Are you having a good time here?” the judge began.
“O, splendid!”
“And you are almost well, aren’t you?”
“Almost well,” Jim assented, a little shadow of anxiety creeping into the gray eyes.
“Let me see—how many days have you been here?”
Jim answered instantly, “Nine. I’ve got five more,” this last very soberly.
“Five more?” the judge questioned.
Jim nodded gravely. “Miss Laura said I could stay here two weeks, you know.”
“Oh! And then what—back to the hospital?”
“O no!” Jim was very positive about that. “No, I don’t know where I’ll be after the five days. I—I kind o’ wish I did. It would be—settleder, you know. But,” his face brightening, “but of course, it will be a nice place, because Miss Laura said she’d find me a good home somewhere, and she don’t ever forget her promises. And besides, I’m going to be her boy just the same when I go away from here—she promised that too.”
The judge nodded, his eyes studying the small earnest face.
“Miss Laura must find that good home right away,” he said. “Of course you want to know where you are going.”
“I hope she’ll be the kind that likes boys,” Jim said after a thoughtful pause. “Do you think she will?”
“Who?”
“The woman in that good home. They don’t all, you know. Some of ’em think boys are dreadful noisy and bothering, and some think they eat too much. Ieat a lot sometimes——” he ended with an anxious frown.
The judge found it necessary just then to put his hand over his eyes. He muttered something about the light hurting them, and then Laura came in and told Jim it was bedtime. He said good-night, holding out his small stubby hand. The judge’s big one grasped it and held it a moment.
“We had a nice talk, didn’t we?” Jim said, and with the smile that made his homely little face radiant for a moment, he added, “It sure is nice to talk with aman,” and he went off wondering what the judge was laughing about.
He was not laughing when Laura came downstairs again after tucking up the boy in bed. She so hated to turn out the light and leave him in the dark, but she always did it. Now she told her father what Jim had said about that the first night.
The judge made no comment, but after a moment he remarked, “The boy is rather worried about the home you are to find for him. It ought to be settled. Have you any place in view?”
“No. To tell the truth, father, I can’t bear to have him go away. Would you mind if I keep him here a while longer? You are so much away, and he is company for me, and very little trouble. I shall miss him dreadfully when he goes.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” her father said. “Only, Laura, is it fair to keep him here—fair to him, I mean? The longer he stays the harder it will be for him to go to a strange place.”
“I suppose you are right,” Laura admitted with a sigh, “and I must find the home for him at once.”
“But be sure it is a good place, and with a woman who will ‘mother’ him,” the judge added. “Poor little chap—only nine and lame, and alone in the world. It’s hard lines.”
“It would seem so,” his daughter admitted, “and yet, Jim is such a brave honest little fellow, and he has such a gift for making friends, that perhaps he is not so badly handicapped, after all. I shall miss him dreadfully when he leaves us.”