  “It was Sylvia who really arranged things for me,” Polly explained confidentially. The girls were in Betty Ashton’s own blue room, having said good-bye to Sunrise cabin and turned their backs upon it for a time at least. But the cabin had been left ready to receive its owners at any time when they might be able to come back to it and week-end parties and Council Fire meetings were often to take place there, besides more important events which the girls could not well anticipate now. But to-day was Betty Ashton’s birthday and although she was in too deep mourning for any kind of gayety, her Camp Fire friends had planned to stop by her house during the afternoon to leave little gifts for her, along with their best wishes. And Mollie and Polly O’Neill had arrived first. “I shall miss you terribly, Polly,” Betty returned wistfully; her bright color had gone in the last few weeks and there were slight shadows under her gray eyes. “Still I feel sure that under the circumstances it is best for you to go. You are too restless anyhow to have wanted to stay in Woodford and the new life with the new people and sights will make you much happier. You will probably have a good deal of liberty at a New York boarding school and you’ll be able to go to the theater now and then and do many of the things you will like. But Mollie and I hope you will come back for Christmas and will write us pretty often.” Polly looked thoughtfully from her friend to her sister. “I know I am an absolutely selfish person and I would rather neither one of you would even attempt to deny it. I am not leaving my home though simply because I am restless. The truth is I simply can’t get used to mother’s being married to Mr. Wharton and to living in their great ugly house instead of our own beloved cottage. I don’t like Frank Wharton and though Mr. Wharton is very kind and wants to do everything for Mollie and me, he is one of those dreadfully literal persons, so I am afraid we never will understand one another.” “But you used to say, Polly, that you were tired of our small house and that you wanted to live in a big one with lots of money and servants. And now you have it you are dying to get away.” And Mollie sighed, for the thought of being parted from her sister even as far away as the next fall, was very hard to bear, and yet she would not leave her mother, since for both of her daughters to go away would look like a reflection upon her marriage. “Heigh, ho!” laughed Polly. “Perhaps I have made some such statement in the past but I suppose I wanted to get rich in my own little way, like I wish to do everything else. And inconsistency, which is not a jewel, is certainly Polly O’Neill. But don’t let’s talk about me any more, it’s Betty’s birthday. However, I would like to register this statement— Sylvia Wharton is the most extraordinary person I ever met. And what Sylvia starts out to do in this world she’ll do. It was Sylvia who saw I wasn’t happy in her home, Sylvia who talked things over first to me, and then suggested my departure to mother and her father. And though our parents were both horribly opposed to the idea at first, Sylvia brought them around without any arguments or excitement simply by continuing to make plain statements of the facts.” “Well, the wheel of fortune we hear so much about has truly turned, dear, and you’re rich and I’m poor and now we must wait to see what will happen next,” Betty remarked, hearing a faint knock at her bedroom door and moving forward to open it, but in passing she stopped and kissed Polly lightly on the forehead. “Don’t look as though you were the wheel, Polly child, and had made the changes. I am not going to be half so miserable being poor as you girls think I will. Just think of how much more self-respecting I am going to feel if, when I go to bed some night, I can say to myself: ‘Betty Ashton has earned her salt to-day.’” Betty now opened her door and there on the threshold stood Rose Dyer with a bunch of pink roses and Faith with a pot of lemon verbena in her hand. Faith was not yet well enough to go home to the boarding house in Boston, so Miss Dyer had brought her to her own home in Woodford, where she and Mammy were still to look after the odd child. On the arrival of Polly and Mollie a few moments before, Betty had not been in the least surprised. The two girls usually ran in to see her every afternoon now and had been giving her birthday presents for nearly as many years as she could remember, but when Rose and Faith also appeared she realized that the members of the Sunrise club might all be coming in to see her during the afternoon in just this same quiet fashion. And the next instant she was convinced when Sylvia solemnly appeared with a box of candy, which she thrust awkwardly at her. “It’s against our Camp Fire rules to eat candy, Betty, and I don’t approve of it or like it very much myself, but I couldn’t think of anything else to bring when Polly and Mollie went off without me; and there won’t be enough to make so many people sick.” During the laughter over Sylvia’s remark, Nan Graham walked shyly in through the now open door, bearing a loaf of cake. “I couldn’t bring a real present, Betty,” she explained with far more grace and sweetness than one could have dreamed possible of so rough and untrained a girl the year before, “but this is the kind of cake you used to like when I made it at the cabin and I thought you wouldn’t mind eating a piece on your birthday for old times’ sake.” Feeling a sudden rush of emotion, Betty gave Nan a swift embrace and then excusing herself from her friends for a moment slipped out of the room for two purposes: she wanted to find her mother and make her join her friends and she wanted to prepare a great pitcher of lemonade for her guests, for Betty was neither foolish nor selfish in her sorrow, and if her friends had come to her to bring their good wishes, she desired that the afternoon might pass as pleasantly as possible. Things had not gone quite so badly with the Ashton fortune as Dick Ashton had originally feared, although conditions were surely bad enough. For Mrs. Ashton still had the house and Betty a small income settled on her by Mr. Ashton years before as a dress allowance, which now had to cover many other needs. For the completion of Dick’s medical course there were several thousand dollars that an aunt had left him as a legacy when he was only a small boy and to use the capital in this way now seemed the wisest investment he could make. To keep the big Ashton house and try and make it yield an income was perhaps not quite so wise, but this had been Betty’s dearest desire, and her mother and brother had agreed to it for her sake. To give up the home of her ancestors, to see the beloved old portraits stored away in some one’s attic or stuck up in a small room where they would seem absurdly out of place, Betty felt that she could bear everything, do anything if only their old home remained! And so she was allowed at least to try the experiment of renting rooms or taking boarders, whichever might turn out the simpler plan. But when Mrs. Ashton was finally persuaded to join Betty’s friends, it was fairly plain that the greater part of the planning and work for the future must fall upon Betty and not her mother, for Mrs. Ashton looked dazed by misfortune and was already a semi-invalid, querulous and rebellious against more evil fortune than she had character or health to withstand. It was no wonder therefore, that even Betty’s best friends doubted whether she would be able to meet the responsibilities that had so unexpectedly come upon her, although rejoicing that a year of Camp Fire training found her far better prepared than most girls of her age and position. Esther had been sitting in the room with Mrs. Ashton when Betty found them, as the older woman seemed to enjoy the society of her daughter’s companion more than any one’s else these days, so the two girls soon brought the lemonade back to Betty’s room. In her absence Betty found that her writing table had been cleared and was now decorated with Rose’s flowers, Nan’s cake and Sylvia’s candy, with sandwiches which Meg had just brought in and which “Little Brother” was rapidly devouring, and with a little pile of gifts at the head. Betty’s eyes filled with tears, but instinctively her hands flew toward a small square of canvas that stood facing her leaning against one of her candlesticks. It was a painting of the Sunrise cabin which Eleanor had made after Betty had returned home and quite the best piece of work she had ever done. The painting had been made in the dawn and the colors of the sunrise flooded the log cabin, touching the tops of the tall pines standing a little in the foreground and making a crown of light for the high peak of the Sunrise Hill. “It is too lovely; I ought not to have it,” Betty exclaimed, extending her picture toward Miss McMurtry, for she and Edith Norton had at this moment joined the party; but seeing that their first Camp Fire guardian shook her head, Betty then turned to Rose Dyer. “Oughtn’t you to have it then, Rose, and let the Sunrise Camp Fire girls just come in and look at it now and then?” But at this Eleanor Meade laughed. “Look here, Princess, we all know your passion for giving away your possessions, but do you think you ought to thrust my gift upon some one else while I am standing here watching you? I would like humbly to mention that I painted that picture of the Sunrise cabin for your particular birthday gift and that I would prefer to have you keep it.” “And I would like to add,” said Miss McMurtry, with an affectionate, even an admiring glance toward the Betty for whom she had once felt so keen a disapproval, “that among us there is no one with quite the same claim upon whatever has to do with our Sunrise club as Betty Ashton. For though she may have forgotten, we have not, that it was to Betty’s enthusiasm and a great deal to her efforts that we owe the organization of our club.” The chief guardian now leaned over, lighting three candles on Betty’s tea table—“Work, Health, Love.” “We wish you all the good things that following the law of the Camp Fire may bring you, Betty dear,” she whispered. “Seek beauty Give service Pursue knowledge Be trustworthy Hold on to health Glorify work Be happy.” While the older woman was speaking, Esther had slipped quietly over to Betty’s own piano, which had been brought home from the cabin to her room, and now in order to relieve the atmosphere of emotion which was making ordinary conversation impossible at this moment, she commenced singing her own and Betty’s favorite Camp Fire song, the other girls joining in an instant later. “Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame, O Master of the Hidden Fire, Wash pure my heart and cleanse for me My soul’s desire. In flame of sunrise bathe my mind, O Master of the Hidden Fire, That when I wake, clear-eyed may be My soul’s desire.” And before the song had ended, half a dozen of the girls in the room at least were wondering whether they were any nearer to the all-important knowledge of what their soul’s desire might be. * * * * * * * * A year the Sunrise Camp Fire girls have tried living and working together, following to the best of their different abilities the Camp Fire law, but while the third volume in this series will show them still under its influence, they will be pursuing their own careers under utterly different circumstances in a story to be called: “The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World.” |
|
