OTHER GIRLS
Besides the four girls who have just returned from the lake there were
six others in the camp at Sunrise Hill, their guardian, Miss McMurtry
and one small imp or angel, according to one's way of looking at things.
For Margaret Everett had joined the summer campers and, in order to
accomplish it, had brought her small brother, Horace Virgil Everett,
along with her. You see, the girls felt they simply must have Meg, so
after a great deal of discussion it was decided that Horace Virgil would
be an excellent person to practice mother craft upon and would certainly
bring into service whatever first aid information might be required.
Meg was so gay, so sweet tempered and so utterly inconsequential. If
things were going well in camp, if the sun was shining and everybody was
feeling amiable then she was entirely happy, but if things were going
wrong, then it was that Meg counted, for she kept her temper through
almost any kind of stress. She did not have so many moods as Polly, she
was not so quiet and reserved as Mollie, nor did she expect the world to
move according to her desires, as Betty Ashton did. Meg's faults were
that she was not a good manager and did try to do too many things at
once and so did none of them well, but she had not had an easy time
since her mother died two years ago. Although her father and older
brother adored her, they were selfish in unconscious masculine ways,
President Everett in devoting too much time to his school and John to
his studies and amusements. Unfortunately neither of them realized that
Meg might now and then grow weary of having a small brother, capable of
originating new kind of mischief at least once an hour, everlastingly
tagging after her. But Meg's cares (if she ever called them by that
name) had for the present been entirely lifted from her, for she had ten
other people now to help, her take care of "Bumps," whom the girls had
rechristened "Hai-yi" or "Little Brother," and if Meg had been asked to
vote upon the happiest week of her life since her mother's death she
would instantly have voted her first week in camp with her own club of
Camp Fire Girls.
Then there was Sylvia Wharton! Did Sylvia really enjoy the change in
her life from staying cooped up in a great house, looked after by
servants and alone a great part of the time when her father was away?
Her brother Frank, who was several years older, seldom paid the least
attention to her. If the little girl did enjoy the woods and the
companionship of the other girls and all the opportunities that the camp
fire life offered her, so far she showed not the slightest sign. Her
one pleasure must have been her chance to haunt Polly O'Neill, for
although she did not seem particularly happy when she was with Polly,
certainly she never left her side unless she were compelled to do her
share of the camp work and only then when Polly insisted upon it.
Already Miss McMurtry felt that Sylvia might become difficult, but then
the child had had no training, and besides Miss McMurtry shared the
belief of almost all other persons that Sylvia was simply stupid.
Curiously enough Eleanor Meade now appeared to have been invited into
the first Woodford Camp Fire circle under a false impression. You see,
the girls at the high school where Eleanor was also a student considered
her a genius, and it is agreeable for a community to have one genius in
its midst. Eleanor did have talent for drawing, and besides she had a
number of characteristics which many persons associate with genius. She
was entirely careless of her other responsibilities, and, if she
happened to wish to paint, considered it entirely unreasonable that
anything or anybody should interfere with her desire. She was often in
the habit of forgetting engagements and at times there was a faraway
expression in her eyes, which may have come from having neglected to
wear her glasses, but which her friends believed due to the thrall of
some wonderful creative idea which might be presented to the world some
day in the form of a great picture. And Eleanor, being but human and
seventeen, had done her best to foster this belief. She would not dress
in modern fashions like the other girls; her parents had little money,
but Eleanor's mother was a clever needlewoman and her eldest daughter
always appeared in gowns made after exactly the same pattern and of some
soft clinging material, whether cashmere or cheesecloth, they were
always short waisted with a folded girdle and deep hem and cut low in
the neck. Then Eleanor's hair, which was heavy and straight and a kind
of ashen brown, was always worn parted in the middle and fixed in a
great loose knot at the back of her neck. Eleanor was not pretty like
Betty and Meg and Mollie and, at times, Polly O'Neill, but she would
have scorned to have been thought pretty--interesting was the adjective
she preferred.
However, since Eleanor's appearance in camp for almost a week she had
forgotten to be a genius. For one thing the girls were all wearing the
regulation Camp Fire uniform, a loose blouse and dark blue serge skirt,
and so she could not dress the part. Then, although the Camp Fire
official log book had been given her to illustrate she had not even
started to paint the totem of the Sunrise Camp on its brown leather
cover, although Sunrise Hill stood, always before her in its changing
beauty. The girls had taken its name for their camp with the thought
that the hill might symbolize their own efforts to look upward always to
the highest and most beautiful things.
But Eleanor should hardly be blamed for not having done much painting so
far, there, had been such a lot of other work to do, in helping to put
things in order in camp, and besides she had developed the most
surprising talent for making an Irish stew, that was the envy and
delight of all the other girls. Eleanor said it was because she had a
soul above science and used her imagination in her stew, but whatever
the reason, since the first day when the cooking of dinner fell to her,
this stew had been one of the greatest successes in camp and Eleanor
received her first honor bead for her genius in cooking instead of in
art.
Besides these seven girls already described, there was an eighth girl in
the Sunrise camp, the stranger whom Betty had brought home with her on
the day their club had first been discussed--the girl whose face was so
familiar to Mrs. Ashton but whose name was unknown. There had been a
question as to whether or not this particular girl could come to summer
camp, not because the other girls were unwilling to have her, but because
she worked in a milliner's shop in Woodford and had to go back and forth
to be at work every day. Quite by accident on the eventful afternoon
Betty had stooped by this shop in her journey to Meg's to ask about her
new spring hat, and being so full of her plan had poured it into Edith
Norton's ear, while the little milliner was trying on her hat.
Naturally Edith thought it a wonderful plan, so Betty, with one of her
sudden impulses, immediately insisted that the young milliner come home
with her to become a member of their new Camp Fire club. This seemed at
the time a perfectly impossible dream to Edith, who was a poor girl with
her own living to make, but then she did not understand Betty's ability
to make things happen. Every obstacle had been smoothed away, Edith was
now riding Betty's bicycle back and forth from camp to town every day
and, already the headaches, which had first wakened Betty's sympathy,
because of the pallor of her face and the dark circles under her eyes,
had begun to grow better from the daily fresh air and exercise. Of the
Camp Fire Girls Edith was the oldest; she was about eighteen and had
blonde hair and delicate features, with brown eyes. She might have been
pretty, but that she needed to grow stronger in body and character, and
already the girls and their guardian had discovered that Edith was too
fond of tea and coffee and sweets and modern novels for her own health
or happiness. The trouble was that her home was too filled with small
brothers and sisters and a father and mother too poor to make them
comfortable, so that the eldest daughter had been forced to find her own
pleasures.
The last two members of the Sunrise Hill camp were unknown to the other
girls until a few days before. They were two sisters, daughters of a
favorite doctor, cousin of Miss McMurtry's, who had been pupils in a
fashionable boarding school in Philadelphia. They were not alike,
either in appearance or character, for the older one of them thought too
much about clothes and wealth and position, and so immediately fell to
admiring and imitating Betty, while the other was an impossible tomboy,
more like a feminine Puck, the very incarnation of mischief, whose one
idea of happiness seemed to lie in playing pranks.
Juliet Field, the older girl, had light brown hair and eyes, was rather
pretty and had a plump girlish figure, round fat cheeks with a good deal
of color and a piquant, turned-up nose, while Beatrice, whom everybody
called "Bee," wore her curly dark hair cut short, had a melancholy brown
face entirely unlike her character and was as slender and small and
quick in her movements as a tiny wren.
The two sisters and Sylvia Wharton slept in the tent with Miss McMurtry,
while the third tent sheltered Eleanor, Edith, Meg and, of course,
"little brother".
When Miss McMurtry had wakened to discover that four of the Camp Fire
girls had gone in swimming without the others, she had not been pleased,
more because she felt that Betty and Polly were too much inclined to be
leaders among the girls and to disregard her advice. They had not yet
openly disobeyed her, so of course she had been unable to say anything
to them, but now she made up her mind to hang in each tent the rules for
each day's camp routine so that there could be no more uncertainty.
Miss McMurtry had merely been waiting to decide what rules were wisest
before making her schedule.
As soon as their first masculine visitor departed Eleanor, Meg and
Juliet announced breakfast. At a comfortable distance from the kitchen
fire a large white cloth had been spread on the grass and in the center
stood the great basket of fresh strawberries just brought over by the
young man to whom Polly had given such an uncomfortable reception. A
big coffee pot and two jugs of milk stood at opposite ends of the cloth
besides toast and a dozen boiled eggs in a chafing dish, while from the
nearby fire came the most delicious food odor in the world: bacon fried
before open coals. Nevertheless the girls did not sit down to breakfast
at once although they were dreadfully hungry. Already they had
established certain Camp Fire customs, and one was their morning habit
of reciting some verse of thanksgiving in unison before beginning the
real living of their day. The hymn, which first introduced Betty to
Esther was always sung at the close of each day, but this morning verse
had always to be original and one girl at a time was allowed to make the
selection. To-day it had fallen to Polly's lot and she had taught it to
the other girls over their camp fire the night before.
So now the ten girls with their guardian in the center stood in a
semicircle facing Sunrise Hill. The sun had fully risen and the earth,
as the Indians used to say, had "become white." Led by Polly they
slowly recited this ancient chant:
"Shine on our gardens and fields, Shine on our working and weaving;
Shine on the whole race of man, Believing and unbelieving; Shine on us
now through the night, Shine on us now in Thy might, The flame of our
holy love And the song of our worship receiving."
And when they had finished, Polly O'Neill, with a note of reverence in
her voice that gave it an unconscious dramatic quality she would have
vainly tried to have at any other time, added: "We Camp Fire girls
worship not the fire but Him of whom in ages past it was the chosen
symbol because it was the purest of all created things."
And then without further ceremony there was a sudden rush for breakfast.