Читать книгу The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows - Vandercook Margaret - Страница 3

However much of a fairy Princess Betty Ashton’s friends may have considered her, Sunrise cabin had not arisen like “Aladdin’s Wonderful Palace” in a single night, although six months would seem a short enough time in which to see one’s dream come true. Particularly a dream which in the beginning had appeared to have no chance of ever becoming a reality.

For in the first place “The Lady of the Hills,” Miss McMurtry, on that very afternoon when coming across the fields to the Camp Fire she had there been told of the plan for keeping the Sunrise Camp Fire club together for the winter, had not approved the idea. The country would certainly be too cold and too lonely for the girls and the getting back and forth from the cabin to school too difficult. Fathers and mothers could never be persuaded to approve and, moreover, there would be no guardian, since Miss McMurtry could not attend to her work at the High School and also look after a permanent winter camp fire.

In a measure of course even the greatest enthusiasts for the new idea had known that there might be just these same difficulties to be overcome. Yet in conference they had decided to meet the obstacles one by one and in turn by following the old axiom of not climbing fences before coming to them. So as the money for building the cabin was a first necessity Betty Ashton had written at once to her brother Dick. Sylvia Wharton had seen her father, who had in September returned to Woodford, and Polly and Mollie had sent off appealing letters to Ireland asking for their mother’s approval and whatever small sum of money they might be allowed to contribute. Indeed each Sunrise Camp girl had met the demands of the situation in the best way she knew how. But really, although help and interest developed in various directions, once the business of building the cabin had been fairly started, it was from Richard Ashton that the first real aid and encouragement came. For Dick was a student in the modern school of medical science which believes in fresh air, exercise and congenial work as a cure for most ills instead of the old-time methods of pills and poultices, and having seen the benefit of a summer camp upon twelve girls he had faith enough for the winter experiment. Besides this plan had appeared to him as a solution for certain personal problems which had been worrying him for a number of weeks. His father and mother were not returning to America this fall as they had expected, since Mr. Ashton’s health required a milder climate than New Hampshire. It had seemed almost impossible for Dick to give up the graduating year of his study of medicine in Dartmouth in order to come home to Woodford to look after his sister and her friend, Esther Clark, who rather, through force of circumstances, appeared now to be Betty’s permanent companion.

So an offering from Dick Ashton with Betty’s fifty dollars, which had been returned to her by Polly O’Neill, had actually laid the foundation of Sunrise Cabin, although every single member of the club gave something big or little so that the house might belong alike to them all. As Esther and Nan Graham had no money of their own and Edith Norton very little and no parents able to help, the three girls added their portions by doing work for their friends in the village which they had learned in their summer camp fire. At last they were able to stock the new kitchen with almost a complete set of new kitchen utensils, the summer ones having suffered from continuous outdoor use.

Of course all the summer club members could not share the winter housekeeping scheme, but that did not affect their interest nor desire to help. Meg and “Little Brother” to everybody’s despair had to return home, since with John leaving for college, that same fall, their professor father could not live or keep house without them. But then they were to be allowed to come out to the cabin each Friday for week ends, and Edith Norton, whose work in the millinery store made living in town imperative, was to take her Sunday rests in camp. Of the summer Sunrise Camp Fire girls, only Juliet and Beatrice Field had really to say serious farewells when returning to their school in Philadelphia, but they departed with at least the consoling thought that they were to come back to the cabin for their Christmas holidays. So that there remained only seven of the original girls pledged to give this experiment of winter housekeeping as a Camp Fire club a real test. And as they worked, pleaded and waited, one by one each difficulty had been overcome until now there remained but one – the necessity for finding a new guardian able to give all of her time to living at Sunrise cabin and to working with the girls.

One evening toward the early part of November after the cabin had been completed, Betty Ashton had called a meeting at her home for the final discussion of this serious problem. As there were no outsiders present, before mentioning the subject the girls had arranged themselves in their accustomed Camp Fire attitudes, in a kind of semi-circle about the great drawing room fire, in order to talk more freely. For the past week each girl had been asked to search diligently for a suitable guardian. Yet when Betty looked hopefully about at the faces of her friends without speaking she sighed, shading her gray eyes with her hand. Only by an effort of will could she keep her tears from falling – not a line of success showed in a single countenance.

Mollie O’Neill, understanding equally well, made no such effort at self-control. Placing her head on her sister’s shoulder she frankly gave way to tears, while Polly stared moodily into the fire with Sylvia Wharton’s square hand clutching hers despairingly. Esther and Eleanor frowned. Nan Graham, who had more at stake than the other girls, not trusting herself, jumped up and running across to a far corner of the big room flung herself face downward on a sofa. So there was a most unusual silence in the Sunrise Camp Fire circle and yet when a light knock sounded on the door no one said “Come in.” An instant later, however, the knock was repeated, but this time, not waiting for an answer, the door opened and a figure walked slowly toward the center of the floor. It was a lovely figure, nevertheless, there was scarcely a person in Woodford whom the girls at this moment desired less to see. Certainly there was no one who had been more bitterly opposed to the whole Camp Fire idea and particularly to Betty Ashton’s having a part in it.

“I don’t know whether you allow an outsider to come into one of your meetings,” the intruder began, dropping into a near-by chair.

From her place on the sofa Nan Graham lifted her head. She alone of the little company did not know their visitor’s name. She saw a young woman of about twenty-six or seven with light golden brown hair and eyes with the same yellow lights in them, dressed in a lovely crepe evening gown with a bunch of roses at her belt and a scarf thrown over her shoulders. Nan’s eyes glowed with a momentary forgetfulness, having long cherished just such an ideal and never before seen it realized.

But Betty only shook her head, answering with little enthusiasm:

“Oh, it doesn’t matter this evening, Rose, you may stay if you like, though we don’t generally have strangers at our meetings.” And then, though she usually had good manners, Betty fell to studying the dancing lights in the fire without making any further effort at conversation. She had no desire to be rude, but it was trying to have Rose Dyer, her mother’s intimate friend, the one older girl, held up as a model for her to follow, who had done her best to prejudice Mrs. Ashton against the Camp Fire plan the summer before, come into their midst at an hour when their very existence as a club seemed to be in peril.

For a few moments Miss Dyer waited without trying to speak again. Although Polly and Esther were both endeavoring to make themselves agreeable, the atmosphere of the drawing room continued distinctly unfriendly.

“I – I am afraid I am in the way although you were kind enough not to say so,” Rose suggested, finding it difficult to explain what had inspired her visit with so many faces turned away from hers. “I think I had best go; I only came to ask you a great favor and now – ” She was getting up quietly, when Betty with a sudden realization of her duties as a hostess made a little rush toward her and taking both the older girl’s hands drew her into the center of their circle.

“Please forgive our bad manners and do stay, Rose,” she pleaded. “We really have no business to attend to to-night and perhaps company may cheer us up.”

But although Rose, without the least regard for her lovely gown, had immediately dropped down on the floor in regular Camp Fire fashion, apparently she had not heard what Betty had suggested, for straightway her expression became quite as serious as any one else’s.

“You may not care for what I am going to say and you must promise to be truthful if you don’t,” Rose began, as timidly as though she were not ten years older than any other girl in the room, “but I have been hearing for the past two months that you were looking for a Camp Fire guardian to spend the winter with you and I have been wondering – ” Here pulling the flowers from her belt she let her gaze rest upon them. “I have been wondering if you would care to have me?”

The silence was then more conspicuous than before and Rose flushed hotly.

“I am sure you are very kind,” Polly began in a perfectly unfamiliar tone of voice and manner since she too had known Rose all her life.

“We appreciate your kindness very much,” Eleanor added, fearing that Polly was about to break down.

But Betty Ashton dropped her chin into her hands in her familiar fashion and stared directly at their visitor. “My dear Rose, whatever has happened to you?” she demanded. “Why it’s too absurd! You know you don’t care for anything but parties and dancing and having a good time. You simply haven’t any idea of what it means to be a Camp Fire guardian; why it is difficult enough when you have only to preside at weekly Camp Fire meetings and to watch over the girls in between, but when it comes to living with us and teaching us as Miss McMurtry did last summer – ” Betty bit her lips. She did not wish to be discourteous and yet the vision of the fashionably dressed girl before her fulfilling the requirements of their life together in the woods was too much for her sense of humor.

Then suddenly, to Betty’s embarrassment and the surprise of everyone else, Miss Dyer’s eyes filled with tears.

“Please don’t, Betty,” she said a little huskily. “You know, dear, one can get rather tired of hearing one’s self described as an absolute good-for-nothing. Oh, I know I was opposed to your Camp Fire club last summer, but I have watched you more carefully than you dream and have entirely changed my mind. I am not asking you to let me come into your club to help you. I am afraid I am selfish, I can’t explain it to you now, but I want to help myself. Of course I am not wise enough to be your guardian, but I have been talking to Miss McMurtry and she has promised to help me and it is only because you don’t seem able to find anyone else that I dare offer myself.”

At this moment Nan Graham, whom Rose had not seen before, tumbled unexpectedly off her sofa. It was because of her eagerness to reach the other girls. They, at a quick signal from one to the other, had arisen, and now, forming a circle, danced slowly about their new guardian chanting the sacred law of the Camp Fire.