THE END OF THE SUMMER CAMP
Good-by to summer, good-by, good-by, Good-by to summer
Esther's plaintive song ceased abruptly, for Betty Ashton leaning over
suddenly put her hand to her lips. And at the same moment Meg Everett
holding fast to Little Brother dropped down on the ground by the girls
with one arm full of early goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies.
"No use to make Esther stop singing, it won't help matters, Betty, dear,
the summer has gone," she exclaimed. "Little Brother and I have just
seen quail whirring about in the underbrush. See I lay our autumn
bouquet at your feet," and she tossed her flowers over to Betty. "Where
is Miss McMurtry?"
Betty made a wry face. "Gone into town, if you please, to see about
some books--school books. Oh, it wasn't because I didn't agree with
Esther's song that I made her stop singing, it was because it was so
dreadfully true that I felt at the moment I couldn't bear it. You are
sorry too, aren't you, Nan?" she queried, turning to the girl on the
other side of her who was sewing industriously on a soft blue cashmere
frock, almost similar in color and texture to the one Betty had at this
moment inside her trunk. The gown represented the complete restoration
of peace between Nan and Betty. At first there had been some difficulty
in persuading Nan to accept it, but after all Betty had been kinder than
most of the other girls! Moreover, there had been many other expressions
of apology in words and deeds that Nan had accepted and stored away in
her heart.
"I just can't bear to think of it either," she replied slowly, letting
her hands rest idly in her lap for a moment. "I guess you other girls
can't ever know what these weeks in camp have been to me and what a lot
I've learned. I hope I ain't going to forget it ever and Miss Martha
says she is going to try to get them to let me come back to the High
School. It will be all right if any one will trust me enough to give me
work to do afternoons."
Before replying Esther Clark put several pine logs and a great bundle of
pine cones on the fire around which she and her friends were seated, and
the girls were quiet for a moment watching them sparkle and blaze.
"I expect I know, Nan, at least better than any one else," Esther
answered finally, "for you see this is the first summer of my whole life
that I haven't spent at the asylum scrubbing and cooking and nobody
caring anything about my work except that I got it done. Work this
summer has seemed like play, hasn't it? And I wouldn't be here, except
for The Princess. I wonder if I shall ever be able to repay her?"
"Oh, wonder something else, Esther," Betty returned ungraciously, for
references of this kind always made her uncomfortable. "Here comes
Polly and Mollie and, of course Sylvia. Bee, will you go find Eleanor
and Juliet and let us have tea here by the camp fire. Donna and Edith
will probably be here before we finish. Suppose each one of us places a
stick on the fire and while it burns make a good wish for the Sunrise
Camp. Hello, Polly, yes Sylvia is perfectly right, you must not sit
down on the ground without something under you, yes, and you must let
her put that wrap over your shoulders, the sun will be going down pretty
soon and then it will be quite cool."
Polly submitted to Sylvia's attentions none too graciously, but a moment
later turned toward the younger girl. "You are a trump, Sylvia," she
murmured. "I am sure I don't know what I should have done without you
these past two weeks while I will have been ill. It is funny how you
should happen to know just what to do for people who are sick when you
are so young!"
Sylvia sat stolidly down next the speaker. "I am going to be a trained
nurse when I am old enough, that's why," she answered calmly, apparently
not even observing the surprise of her companions. "You see if I
thought I had sense enough I would try to be a doctor, but as I haven't
I shall just take care of sick people. I have already learned a good
many things this summer."
Polly whistled and several of the girls laughed. "I don't doubt it for
a moment, Sylvia Wharton!" Polly exclaimed, "for heaven alone can tell
what you do know! But it is absurd to talk about your being a nurse,
when you will be the richest one of us, child, perhaps even richer than
'The Princess'."
There was no reply from Sylvia, only her lips shut tight and her chin
looked oddly square and determined for a young girl. But then Sylvia
looked like her father, who, one must remember, was a self-made man.
And sometimes the daughter also inherits the traits of character that
have made the father a success.
Eleanor and Juliet at this moment appearing with the tea things, the
kettle was hung above the fire on an arrangement of three pronged sticks
and not until tea was over did the girls or Betty remember her
suggestion. Then she handed Polly a pine knot first. "Thrust this into
the fire, Polly, dear, and make a parting wish for Sunrise Camp," Betty
explained, "for a few days more you know, and we must fold our tents and
say farewell to our summer."
Polly quickly thrust her torch into the hottest blaze. "I wish," she
said at once, her cheeks hot from the closeness of the flames and from
her own thoughts, "that everybody in Sunrise Camp would promise to
forgive me for my foolish behavior two weeks ago and all the anxiety and
trouble I caused. The camp has given me a new motto this summer that I
shall at least try to live up to. It reads: 'Think first!"
"Yes, and if you had only thought second and asked for your mail at the
post office that day after finding Betty's money, Polly, you would have
had your own fifty dollar prize for the best essay on 'A Summer Camp
Fire in the Woods'," Mollie added in her usual practical fashion, and
then she gave a little sigh of relief that the money had been paid back
to Betty without troubling the mother still so far away.
"I wonder if Polly is going to be our genius as well as Eleanor," Esther
next suggested quietly, "every Camp Fire club is sure to turn out at
least one extraordinary person and of course ours will have two or
three." Then she blushed hotly in her old embarrassed, fashion,
clasping her big hands closely together as Betty, half laughing at her
own suggestion, whispered something in her ear.
Juliet Field wished the Sunrise Camp long life, and Meg that they might
keep up their work together in town during the coming winter, Eleanor
that they might spend the next summer together, and then Betty,
happening quite by chance to observe a wistful expression on Nan's face,
passed the fifth pine stick to her.
"Tell us what you are thinking of, Nan," she said, speaking with special
friendliness to the one girl who had not had entirely fair treatment at
their hands. "I have an idea you have something special on your mind."
Nan shook her head, although she did what was asked of her. "Oh no,"
she explained, "or at least I am afraid you will think my wish very
silly. I was just wishing that we were not going back to the village
but were going to spend our winter together amid the snows."
Nan's suggestion was so surprising that everybody stared at her for one,
almost two minutes before Betty spoke.
"Very well, Nan, let's stay," she returned, as though making a perfectly
ordinary remark. "I can't bear for Esther and me to have to go back
alone to our great, empty house with mother and father away and no
knowing when they may come back." (There was a catch in Betty's voice
that her friends understood, for Mr. Ashton was again seriously ill and
there was no hope of his returning to America at present.) "We can't
live in our tents of course, but I don't know why we can't build a log
cabin and somehow manage to get back and forth to school. When the snow
comes we can use our big sled."
"You are quite mad, Betty Ashton; Esther, please tie a handkerchief
around her lips before she makes us all equally so," Polly requested,
"for there is no hope of our doing anything so impossible, as she
suggests." And then because she caught an expression almost of
agreement on her sister Mollie's face, Polly paused, almost overcome
with surprise. Mollie, the sensible; Mollie, the practical--it was
incredible.
"I don't see that Betty's idea is so foolish, for at least some of us
might be able to live in camp this winter," Mollie thinking aloud as she
talked. "For you see, the doctor has said that Polly must be out of
doors as much as possible for the next year, and mother writes she would
rather not come home at present if we can possibly get on without her,
for there is something or other going on in Ireland that she has not
explained to us, but she says if she can stay a few months longer it may
make a difference in all our futures. I believe she would be glad to
let us remain in Sunrise Camp for the winter if your mother and father
are willing and we can make things comfortable, Betty," she concluded.
The mental conception of a group of girls living together in a winter's
camp in the woods was evidently too surprising to be grasped all at
once, for no one else at the moment had anything to say, and then
Esther, glancing off across the fields where a soft September haze
suggested the approach of the twilight, exclaimed. "See, there are Miss
McMurtry and Edith returning from town. Let us give them our Camp Fire
call to welcome them home."
"Wohelo for work, Wohelo for health, Wohelo for love!"
The ten voices carried the refrain far across the country and somehow
the echo returning to them from Sunrise Hill brought with it the
suggestion of even happier days to come.
The second volume in the Camp Fire Girls' Series will be called "The
Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows." In this book the history of the girls
will be revealed under very different conditions. More than ever will
their life be built around the fire which has always been the center of
the home. Various important changes will take place in the circumstances
of the leading characters and mysteries merely suggested in the first
story will be developed in the second.
The End