The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World Part 11

"Oh, I am dreadful to look at, but I must not complain," she answered wistfully. "A Camp Fire girl ought to have learned some lessons in bravery and endurance. Please let's don't talk about me. I want to thank you, for if it had not been for you, I might have--I can't bear to think even now what might have happened to me."

"Then don't," the young man returned brusquely, but Betty did not this time misunderstand his manner. "I did not do anything. I ought to have gotten to you sooner. I have been hating myself ever since for the time I took to reach you. After all you had done for me in the past!"

The next moment the girl put her hand into the boy's hard, work-roughened one. "Ask Nan to tell the others for me. And remember that no matter what has happened or may happen in the future, I shall always feel myself in your debt, not you in mine."

CHAPTER XV

SECRETS

It was sundown. The big Ashton house, although so filled with people, was oddly quiet. Betty Ashton slipped out of her own room into the hall and hurried along the empty corridor. Once only she stopped and smiled, partly from amus.e.m.e.nt and partly from satisfaction. Herr Crippen's door was half open and so was Miss McMurtry's and the Professor was playing on his violin. Such sentimental love ditties!

The air throbbed with German love songs.

And Betty had a mischievous desire to stick her head into Miss McMurtry's room and see if she was engaged in some maiden-like occupation, such as marking school papers or reading the _Woodford Gazette_. Or was she sitting, as she should be, with her hands idly folded in her lap and her heart and mind absorbed in the music? Never had Betty given up her idea that a romance was in the making between their first Camp Fire guardian and Esther's father. And often since their coming to live in her house had she not seen slight but convincing evidences? Why should Donna so often appear with a single white rose pinned to her dress or take to playing the same tunes on the piano that the Professor played on his violin, particularly when she was an exceedingly poor pianist?

Nevertheless it was not awe of her teacher and guardian that kept Betty from investigating the state of her emotions at this moment; neither was it any fear of antagonism between them, for since Esther's departure to study in New York, Miss McMurtry apparently felt more affection for Betty than for any of the other Camp Fire girls. No, it was simply because she had a very definite purpose which she wished to accomplish without interruption or opposition.

The next instant and she had paused outside a closed door and stood listening tensely. There were no noises inside, no voices, nor the stir of any person moving about. Betty put her hand on the k.n.o.b and opened it silently.

Instantly there was a little cry and Betty and Polly O'Neill were in each other's arms.

"Betty, you darling," Polly gasped, "turn on every light in this room and let me stare and stare at you. There isn't anything in the world the matter with you. You are as lovely as you ever were. Oh, I have been so frightened! I have not believed what anybody told me, and it seemed it must be a part of my punishment that you had been injured.

It is absurd of me, I suppose, but I have had a kind of feeling that perhaps if I had been at Meg's party I should have been with you at the time so that it couldn't have happened."

"Foolish Polly! But when was Polly anything but foolish?" the other girl returned, taking off her cap and pushing back her hair. "You see I am a sight, dear, but it does not matter a great deal. I am kind of getting used to myself these last few days. So I didn't see any reason why, since you are better and I am perfectly well, we could not be together. Even if it does give you a kind of a shock to look at me, you'll get over it, won't you?"

In reply Polly had one of her rather rare outbursts of affection. She was never so demonstrative as the other girls. Her devotions had ways of expressing themselves in an occasional compliment tendered perhaps in some whimsical, back-handed fashion, or in a fleeting caress, which came and was gone like the touch of a b.u.t.terfly's wing.

Now, however, she took her friend's face between her two hands and kissed her quietly, almost solemnly upon the line of her injury.

"Never say a thing like that to me again as long as you live, Betty Ashton. Perhaps I haven't as much affection as other people. Mother and Mollie are both insisting it lately. Still I know that----but how silly we are to talk of it! You are not changed. Of course I am sorry that your hair had to be cut off, but it will grow out again and the scar will disappear. I wish I could get rid of my"--Polly hesitated--"blemishes so easily," she finished.

Betty looked puzzled. "What do you mean? Sylvia says you are very much better and that there is no reason why you should not get up. She declares that it is only that you won't and that she does not intend nursing you or letting any one else take care of you after a few days, unless you do what Dr. Barton tells you. Sylvia is a dreadfully firm person. She was quite angry with me when I said that I did not believe you were well and that I was quite strong enough now to take care of you and you should not get out of bed until you had entirely recovered."

"But I have entirely recovered and I am well and somehow I can't manage to deceive Sylvia Wharton no matter how hard I try," Polly announced in a half-amused and half-annoyed manner.

"Then why are you trying to?" Betty naturally queried. Of course one never actually expected to understand Polly O'Neill's whims, but now and then one of them appeared a trifle more mysterious than the others.

"If you are still tired and feel you prefer to remain in bed, that is a sure sign you are not strong enough to get up, and Dr. Barton and Sylvia ought to realize it," she continued, still on the defensive.

But Polly only smiled at her. "But, dear, I don't prefer to remain in bed. I am so deadly bored with it that as soon as I am left alone I get up and dance in the middle of the floor just to have a little relief. Can't you and mother and Mollie understand (I don't believe any one does except Sylvia) that I don't want to get up because I don't want to have to face the music?"

Still the other girl looked puzzled.

"Can't you see that as long as I have been able to be sick n.o.body has dared to say very much to me about my escapade in New York? Oh, of course I know what they think and mother did manage to say a good deal before we came home; still, there is a great deal more retribution awaiting me. In the first place, I shall have to go home to the Wharton house. I realize it has been dreadful, my being sick here, but I am everlastingly grateful to you and your mother. Mr. Wharton won't say anything much; he really is very kind to me; but naturally I know what he thinks. And then when Frank Wharton is there it will be so much worse. You see, Frank and I quarreled once, because I thought he was rude to mother. And of course he considers my disobedience worse than his rudeness. And as he is perfectly right, I can't imagine how I shall answer him back the next time we argue."

As Polly talked she had risen into a sitting posture in bed and was now leaning her chin on her hand in a characteristic att.i.tude and quite unconscious of the amusing side to her argument until Betty laughed.

Polly had on a scarlet flannel dressing sacque and her hair was tied with scarlet ribbons. And indeed her cheeks were almost equally vivid in color.

"But there isn't anything funny about my punishment, Betty dear. And the worst of it is that I know I deserve all of it and more and shan't ever have the right to complain. Mother declares that she does not expect to allow me to leave Woodford again until I am twenty-one, since she has no more faith in me. And then, and then--" Polly's entire face now changed expression--"has any one told you that my behavior is to be openly discussed at the next meeting of our Camp Fire Club? Perhaps I won't be allowed to be a member any longer."

Instantly Betty jumped up from her kneeling position by the bed and commenced walking up and down the length of the room, saying nothing at first, but with her lips set in obstinate lines.

"But it isn't the custom of Camp Fire clubs to act as both judge and jury, is it, Polly?" she inquired. "At least, I have never heard of any other club's undertaking such a task. We are allowed, I know, to be fairly free in what we do in our individual clubs, but somehow this action seems unkind and dangerous. For if once we begin criticising one another's faults or mistakes, after a while there won't be any club. Right now Edith Norton is behaving very foolishly, I think, but I wouldn't dream of even discussing her with you or any one of the girls. I----" Betty paused to get her breath, her indignation and opposition to Polly's information overwhelming her.

But Polly held out both hands, entreating her to sit beside her again.

"You are mistaken. I did not explain the circ.u.mstances to you as I should have. It is all my idea and my plan to have the girls consider my misconduct and find out how they feel about me," Polly explained quietly. "I spoke of it first to Rose and then to Miss McMurtry and at first they thought in a measure as you do. But I don't agree with you.

You remember that our honor beads come to us for obedience and service to our Camp Fire laws. Why should not disobedience make us unworthy to wear them? In the old days if an Indian offended against the laws of his tribe he was made to suffer the penalty. And I don't want you girls to keep me in our club just because you are sorry for me and are too kind to be just. Mollie has told me how horrified Meg and Eleanor and Nan are, and of course Rose and Donna have not pretended to hide their disapproval, even during their consolation visits to me as an invalid. But you will forgive me, won't you, Betty?" Polly ended with more penitence than she had yet shown to any one save her mother.

"Of course I forgive you. But if you had not gotten well I should never have forgiven Esther," the other girl answered.

Two fingers were laid quickly across Betty Ashton's lips.

"Don't be unfair and absurd," Polly protested; "for some day you may be sorry if you don't understand just how big and generous Esther Crippen is. It isn't only that she would sacrifice her own desires for other people's, but that she actually has. I would not be surprised if Esther did not have some secret or other." And Polly stopped suddenly, biting her tongue. Not for worlds would she even in the slightest fashion betray a suspicion or inference of her own concerning the friend who had been so loyal and devoted to her.

Fortunately Betty was too intent upon her own thoughts to have heard her.

"I have to go back to my own room now, but you are not to worry, Polly mine, not about anything. In the first place, you are not to go home very soon. I have talked to your mother and mine and persuaded them that I need to have you stay on here with me. I do need you, Polly.

It is queer, but I want you to come and sleep in the old back room with me. I have gotten nervous being in there by myself. There is a mystery about the room greater than I have dreamed. I have only been joking half the time when I have spoken of it. But the other day I got mother to the point where there was no possible excuse for her not explaining the entire reason for her att.i.tude and d.i.c.k's toward the place, when suddenly she broke down and left me. We might amuse ourselves while we are invalids discovering whether or not it is haunted. Only I don't exactly wish to make the discovery alone."

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAW OF THE FIRE

Mollie O'Neill walked slowly toward the Ashton house one afternoon not long afterwards at about four o'clock, looking unusually serious and uncomfortable. She was wearing a long coat b.u.t.toned up to her chin and coming down to the bottom of her dress, and was carrying a big book.

"Mollie, there isn't anything the matter? Neither Betty nor Polly is worse again?" Billy Webster inquired, unexpectedly striding across from the opposite side of the street and not stopping to offer his greeting before beginning his questioning.

Mollie shook her head, although her face still retained so solemn an expression that the young man was plainly alarmed. Ordinarily Mollie's blue eyes were as untroubled as blue lakes and her forehead and mouth as free from the lines of care or even annoyance.

Billy Webster put the book under his arm and continued walking along beside her.

"If there is anything that troubles you, Mollie, and you believe that I can help you, please don't ever fail to call on me," he suggested in the gentle tones that he seemed ever to reserve for this girl alone.

"I know that Polly is dreadfully angry over my interference in New York, but so long as you and your mother thought I did right and were grateful to me, I don't care how Polly feels--at least, I don't care a great deal. And I believe I should behave in exactly the same way if I had it all to do over again."

Shyly and yet with an admiration that she did not attempt to conceal Mollie glanced up at her companion. Billy was always so determined, so sure of his own ideas of right and wrong, that once having made a decision or taken a step, he never appeared to regret it afterwards.

And this att.i.tude under the present circ.u.mstances was a consolation to Mollie. For oftentimes since Polly's return and while enduring her reproaches, she had experienced twinges of conscience for having concerned an outsider in their family affairs, though somehow Billy did not seem like an outsider. Polly had insisted that she had been most unwise in asking him to look up Esther and herself immediately upon his arrival in New York. How much better had she waited and let Polly make her confession to their mother later, thus saving all of them excitement and strain! However, since Billy was still convinced that he would do the same thing over again in a similar position, Mollie felt her own uncertainty vanish.

"No, there isn't anything you can help about this afternoon," she replied. "I am only going to a monthly meeting of our Council Fire.

The girls told me that if I liked I need not come, yet it seems almost cowardly to stay away. For you see Polly has insisted that we talk over her conduct and decide whether or not we wish her to remain a member of our club. Or at least whether some of her honor beads should be taken from her and her rank reduced. There is a good deal of difference of opinion. For some of the girls are convinced that once our honor beads are lawfully won, nothing and no one has the right to take them from us; while others feel that breaking the law of the Camp Fire should render one unworthy of a high position in the Council and that even though one is not asked to resign, at least one should be relegated to the ranks again. But of course all this is a secret and must never be spoken of except in our club."

"Like an officer stripped of his epaulettes," Billy murmured. And afterwards: "See here, Mollie, if this is a club secret then you ought not to have told me and I ought not to have listened. For it is pretty rough on Polly. But I promise not to mention it and will try to forget. We must not make her any more down upon me than she is already."