  The final winter months passed peacefully and fairly uneventfully at the Sunrise cabin, with the girls following a regular routine of school and Camp Fire work and receiving new honors at each monthly meeting of their Council Fire. So far Esther Clark, Mollie O’Neill and, strangely enough, Nan Graham, had earned the greatest number of honor beads, for since Nan’s unpleasant day at home a new incentive seemed to have been added to her first ambition to make herself an attractive and capable woman. What this incentive was she confided only to her two most admired friends, Rose Dyer and Polly, but by a Polly channel the news also reached Betty Ashton’s ears. Nan’s former good-for-nothing brother, Anthony, had disappeared, but had written his sister two letters declaring that he was hard at work, keeping straight, and, though he did not wish anyone to know where he was, some day when he could feel that Nan might be proud instead of ashamed of him, meant to come home. In the meantime he urged Nan to stick close to her Camp Fire friends and to work. Therefore there was only one Wood Gatherer now within the Sunrise club circle and this the small Abbie, whom Dr. Barton and Sylvia had introduced with such an amazing lack of tact on Christmas eve. For several weeks after her arrival the girls had simply permitted her to live on at the cabin enjoying their outdoor life, their healthy diet and watching the faint roses bloom in her cheeks but without the faintest idea of ever asking her to become a member of the Sunrise club. In the first place the child was too impossibly young, a bare thirteen, when most of the other girls were now approaching seventeen and grown-up-ness, and it was an unwritten Camp Fire law that the girls in a single group should be as nearly as possible of the same age. If Abbie had only been as old as her years, but she was not even that, and yet somehow this very babyishness and oddity finally won her admittance to the magic circle paradoxical as it may seem. Perchance the club may have needed a baby now that “Little Brother” had returned, to live in his own home, anyhow, Abbie, almost before any one was aware of it, was occupying this position. Before her arrival Sylvia Wharton had been the youngest member of the Sunrise club, but there had never been anything particularly youthful or clinging about Sylvia; indeed, she had been about the most independent and self-reliant of the girls and therefore she found it very difficult to understand her own special protÉgÉ. Abbie’s name wasn’t Abbie at all, but Abigail Faith Abbott, and once the romantic Polly made this discovery, Faith the little girl became to the entire club. Faith had lived a curiously solitary life apart from all other children. It was true her mother kept boarders in a downtown house in old Boston that had once belonged to her great-grandfather, but Faith had been kept away from them as much as possible and because of her ill health had never been allowed to go to school. It was because of her many illnesses that young Dr. Barton took an interest in the child. Her father was dead and her mother too busy with many cares to see much of her, so most of the young girl’s life had been spent in a small room at the top of an old house, which had an ever-closed window through which she could look out upon miles of chimney tops with every now and then a more aspiring steeple. So was it much of a wonder that the little lonely girl lived with fancies instead of realities and that as a result of all these things she now looked as though a harsh New Hampshire wind might easily blow her away? The children Faith had played with had never been real children at all, but two little spirit sisters whom she had imaged in her own mind for so long now that she could not remember when first she had thought of them. Nevertheless, it was with them that she constantly played and, if left alone, occasionally she spoke to them aloud. Of course Faith was old enough now to understand the absurdity of this and had made up her mind never to betray herself at the cabin. Yet within a short time after her arrival and because of her dreadful homesickness, Miss Dyer made the discovery. Unfortunately Sylvia, who had taken the little visitor’s physical training sternly in hand, also found out the fancy. Faith did not go into town to school with the other girls, for by the doctor’s and Sylvia’s advice she was to spend all her time outdoors on the cabin front porch wrapped up in rugs. It was rather cold and dull with only the Sunrise Hill before her, the now frozen lake, where the girls skated in the late afternoons, and the long, dark avenue of pines. However, in the beginning of her experience Faith confessed to herself that she liked the loneliness far better than so many and such amazingly enterprising girls. With an almost desperate shyness she clung to Rose Dyer as the one grown-up person who faintly suggested her own mother and to Sylvia’s ministrations she yielded herself without protesting, but for some weeks she never spoke one word to any of the older girls except in answering a question addressed to her. Indeed, when evening came and the others gathered about their log fire to talk, the little stranger used to slip away to be cuddled like a baby in old Mammy’s arms until Sylvia, who wished her to retire an hour before any one else and have a special late supper of milk and eggs, would come and bear her off to be put to bed. One morning Rose had been feeling worried at having been compelled to leave Faith so long outdoors alone without even going to the door to speak to her. The guardian’s hands had been unusually full that morning with Mammy, who ordinarily helped a little with the work while the girls were away, laid up with rheumatism. Also Rose knew that Max, the big St. Bernard dog who had arrived almost at the same time with Faith, spent most of his time with the little girl, and so she let the whole matter slip her mind until it was time to carry out her midday lunch. Then she smiled a little ruefully as she paused for a moment before opening the front door, wondering if Dr. Barton could guess just how much this child had added to her responsibilities and whether he would care seriously if he did. With his own devotion to looking after the sick (really he seemed totally indifferent to people who were well) doubtless he would take everything as a matter of course. In his visits to the cabin since Christmas certainly nothing more had been said on the subject. Rose laughed and then sighed, pausing with the door to the porch half open and listening. Faith was evidently not alone, for she could distinctly hear her talking to some one although unable to catch any answers. “I think perhaps I can keep on bearing it, Anastasia,” Faith said in a voice that was only fairly brave, “if only you will stay with me and not let all those strange girls drive you and Gloria away. When they talk so much it seems as though I can’t remember you and it makes me want to go home.” Her voice broke and Rose peering out was deeply mystified. The little half-sick girl was plainly alone and plainly dreadfully homesick, but with whom could she be talking? “I don’t mind the Rose one so much, Gloria,” she continued, “but Dr. Ned said she was as nice as my mother, even nicer I believe he thought her. Yet he does not even look at her and hardly speaks to her when he comes to visit me.” And here Faith dropped her pale face into her small gloved hands and began to cry just as Rose appeared with her lunch. Nevertheless, by the exercise of as much tact and patience as Miss Dyer had ever used in her society days to charm the coldest and most obdurate of her critics, finally she managed to persuade Faith to explain to her with whom she had been talking and just who were the mysterious persons Gloria and Anastasia. Of course, with many blushes Faith made her confession, understanding that she was now far too old for any such fanciful nonsense. Yet she did tell Rose with a good deal of pleasure toward the last that the two names represented two older sisters with whom she had been pretending to play ever since she was a baby and who were really dearer to her and more actual than real people. Naturally the new Camp Fire guardian was puzzled over this wholly new problem, with a so much younger girl, and after thinking it over for a long time made up her mind to consult with Dr. Barton. For if ever the little girl were to recover her normal health under their Camp Fire rules she must certainly put away her morbid fancies. But the consultation gave the new guardian no satisfaction, appearing to estrange her more than ever from the young physician. For he and Rose disagreed about the method of Faith’s cure completely and it was ever the young man’s obstinacy that Rose had found it hardest to forgive. Actually Dr. Barton had the stupidity to lecture Faith about her cherished secret and even to betray her to Sylvia, who tried reasoning with her every night while putting her to bed. Fortunately, however, Rose Dyer had not had a colored Mammy for nothing, having grown up on splendid fairy and folk-lore stories, so that by degrees she managed to interest little Faith in the things outside her own mind, in real Camp Fire games and work, and finally in the girls themselves, until, growing less afraid, Faith found Mollie, Polly and Betty better substitutes than the sisters of her dreams. And by and by through their guardian’s advice the little girl was permitted to enter the Sunrise club as a Wood Gatherer. There she grew to be more and more faithful to its rules and ideals, until after a while her too vivid imagination seemed to be fairly well under her control. If later in life, however, her fancy was to lead her into strange experiences, soon no one would have guessed it, for March found Faith stronger than ever before in her life and utterly attached to Rose Dyer. Still looking like our little golden haired Christmas angel, Polly once remarked, but like the angel after she had eaten the Christmas dinner. Nevertheless, though Sylvia fully understood that all Faith’s devotion was now bestowed on their Camp Fire guardian, now and then she used to wonder why Faith did not show any liking for her. Certainly she had given her the tenderest physical care, making her follow faithfully every Camp Fire health rule, live outdoors, sleep and eat all she should. It was also puzzling to Sylvia, just as it has often been to older persons, why after a few weeks every girl in the Sunrise camp seemed to feel a special affection for little Faith. She never appeared to do anything to try to deserve it, except to be pretty and have curly light hair, big gentle, blue eyes and a timid and appealing manner, while Sylvia, who spent most of her time making herself as useful as possible to her friends, was not particularly loved, not even by Polly. And for Polly O’Neill, Sylvia Wharton’s devotion has never for a single instant wavered and never will, even when the future puts it to many difficult tests. For faithfulness to an idea, a conviction or a person will ever be Sylvia’s predominant trait of character, and while it may not make her appear on the surface as loving or lovable as some of her companions, it would be well if she could now know that it will be to her the other girls will always turn in after years when they stand in need of sensible advice or even of real practical assistance. And this was to be particularly true of Polly O’Neill in her not very peaceful life, so it was unfortunate that poor Sylvia had now to fight down many pangs of foolish jealousy through seeing that Polly as well as the other girls made a special pet and plaything of the newest comer. But if Faith had unconsciously made Sylvia suffer now and then, she also accomplished another result. Just at first Betty Ashton had imagined that there might be some unknown bond of interest between Rose Dyer and young Dr. Barton, cemented before Rose’s entrance into their club as guardian. But now she gave up the impression, believing thoroughly that Rose found the cold, puritanical young man actually distasteful in spite of his many acts of kindness to the Sunrise Camp Fire girls. |
|
