ENEMIES WITHOUT CAUSE
"Horrid little snob!" commented Dolly, as, with the surprised Bessie
following her, she turned on her heel abruptly and left Gladys Cooper
standing and looking after her.
"Why, Dolly! What's the matter? And why did she talk that way about
the Camp Fire Girls?"
"Because she's just what I called her--a snob! She thinks that because
her father has lots of money, and they can do whatever they like that
she and her family are better than almost anyone else. And she and her
nasty crowd think the Camp Fire Girls are common because some of us
work for a living!"
Dolly's honest anger was very different from the petulance that she had
sometimes displayed, as on the occasion when she had been jealous of
poor Bessie. And Bessie recognized the difference. It seemed to
reveal a new side of Dolly's complex character, the side that was loyal
and fine. Dolly was not resenting any injury, real or fancied, to
herself now; the insult was to her friends, and Bessie realized that
she had never before seen Dolly really angry.
"As if I'd leave you girls and stay with them while we're here!" cried
Dolly. "I can just see myself! They'd want to know if I didn't think
Mary Smith's new dress was perfectly horrid, and if I said I did,
they'd go and tell her, and try to make trouble. Oh, I know
them--they're just a lot of cats!"
"Oh, don't you think you may be hard on her, Dolly?" asked Bessie.
Secretly she didn't think so; she thought Gladys Cooper was probably
just what Dolly had called her. But it seemed to her that she ought to
keep Dolly from quarreling with an old friend if she could. "Maybe she
just wanted to see you, and she knew you, and didn't know the rest of
us."
"Oh, nonsense, Bessie! You're always trying to make people out better
than they are. I don't know these girls who are up here with her, but
she'd say she knew me, and that we lived in the right sort of street at
home, and that her mother and my aunt called on one another, so I'm all
right. I know her little ways!"
And Bessie was wise enough to see that to argue with Dolly while she
was in such an angry mood would only make matters worse. Bessie loved
peace, because, perhaps, she had had so little of it while she lived in
Hedgeville with the Hoovers. But Dolly wasn't in a peaceful mood, and
words weren't to bring her into one, so Bessie decided to change the
subject.
"We'd better hurry back," she said. "I really think it must be almost
time to start getting supper ready."
"Good!" said Dolly. "We haven't really come so far, but it's taken us
a long time, hasn't it? That old train from Moose Junction is about
the pokiest thing in the way of a train I ever saw."
So they made their way back to the big building that, as they had
already learned, was called the "Living Camp." The sleeping rooms were
in other and smaller buildings, that were grouped about the central
one, in which were only three rooms, beside the big kitchen, a huge,
square hall, with a polished floor, covered with skins instead of rugs,
to bear out the idea of a rough woods dwelling, and two smaller rooms
that were used as a dining-room and a library.
And, as soon as they arrived, they found that they were not the only
ones who had had an encounter with their next door neighbors. Margery
Burton was talking excitedly to Eleanor Mercer.
"I didn't know I was on their old land!" she was saying. "And, if I
was, I wasn't doing any harm."
"Tell me just what happened, Margery," said Eleanor, quietly.
"Why, I was just walking about, looking around, the way one always does
in a new place, and the first thing I knew a girl in a bathing suit
came up to me!"
"'I beg your pardon,' she said, 'but do you know that you are
trespassing?'
"I said I didn't, of course, and she sort of sneered.
"'Well, you know it now, don't you?' she said, as if she was trying to
be just as nasty as she could. 'Why don't you go to the land you're
allowed to use? I do think when people are getting charity they ought
to be careful!'"
"That's another of that crowd of Gladys Cooper's," stormed Dolly.
"What did you say, Margery? I hope you gave her just as good as she
sent!"
"I was so astonished and so mad I couldn't say a thing," said Margery.
"I was afraid to speak--I know I'd have said something that I'd have
been sorry for afterward. So I just turned around and walked away from
her."
"What did she do? Did she say anything more, Margery?" asked Eleanor,
who, plainly, was just as angry as Dolly, though she had better control
of her temper.
"No, she just stood there, and as I walked off she laughed, and you
never heard such a nasty laugh in your life! I'd have liked to pick up
a stone and throw it at her!"
"Good for you! I wish you had!" said Dolly. "It would have served her
right--the cat! Bessie and I met one of them, too, but I happened to
know her, so she asked me to come and spend all my time with them while
we were here! I'm glad I sailed into her. Bessie seemed to think I
was wrong, but I'm just glad I did."
Eleanor Mercer looked troubled. She understood better than the girls
themselves the reason for what had happened, and it distressed and hurt
her. The other girls who had heard Margery's account of her experience
were murmuring indignantly among themselves, and Eleanor could see
plainly that there was trouble ahead unless she could manage the
situation--the hardest that she had yet had to face as a Camp Fire
Guardian.
"You say it was Gladys Cooper you saw, Dolly?" she said. "The Gladys
Cooper who lives in Pine Street at home?"
"Yes, that's the one, Miss Eleanor."
"I'm surprised and sorry to hear it," said Eleanor. "How does she
happen to be there, Dolly? Do you know? The Coopers haven't any camp
here, I know."
"Oh, it's a girls' summer camp, Miss Eleanor. You know the sort.
They're run for a lot of rich girls, whose parents want to get rid of
them for the summer. They're supposed to do some studying, but all
they, ever really do is to have a good time. I'd have gone to one this
year if I hadn't joined the Camp Fire Girls instead. Gladys laughed at
me in the city when she heard I was going to join."
"Mrs. Cooper wouldn't like it, I know that," said Eleanor,
thoughtfully. "She's a charming woman. She and my mother are great
friends, and I know her very well, too. There's nothing snobbish about
her, though they have so much money. I remember now; they went to
Europe this summer, and they didn't take Gladys with them."
"I wish they had!" said Dolly, viciously. "I wish she was anywhere but
here."
"Well," said Eleanor, "I'll find out in the morning just where the line
comes between the two camps, and we'll have to be careful not to cross
it."
"I'm sure none of us want to go into their camp," said Margery. "But
there's no fence, and there aren't any signs, so how is one to know?"
"We'll find some way to tell," said Eleanor, decisively. "And we won't
give them any chance to make any more trouble. They've got a right to
warn us off their property, of course, though they're just trying to be
nasty when they do it. But as long as they are within their rights, we
can't complain just because they're doing it to be ugly. We mustn't
put ourselves in the wrong because nothing would suit them better."
"Oh, I hope we'll be able to get away to-morrow!" said Margery,
angrily. "I don't want ever to see any of them again."
Eleanor's eyes flashed.
"I've made up my mind to one thing," she said. "We're going to stay
here just as long as we like! I don't intend to be driven away in that
fashion. And I shouldn't wonder if we could start our missionary work
better with them than with anyone else!"
"That's right--about staying here, I mean!" said Dolly,
enthusiastically. "Why, Margery, if we ran away now, they'd think they
had scared us off. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
"No, I guess not!" said Margery. "I hadn't thought of that. But it's
true. It would be giving them an awful lot of satisfaction, wouldn't
it?"
"Understand, Dolly, and the rest of you," said Eleanor, firmly, "I
don't mean to have any petty fighting and quarrelling going on. But I
won't let them think they can make us run away, either. Pay no
attention to them and keep out of their way, if you can. But we've got
just as much right to be here as they have to be in their camp, because
we're here as the guests of the Worcesters."
"I know Miss Worcester," said Margery, hotly. "I'll bet she'd be
furious if she knew how they were acting."
"She doesn't need to know, though, Margery," said Eleanor. "This is
our quarrel, not hers, and I think we can manage to settle it for
ourselves. Don't begin thinking about it. Remember that we're in the
right. It will help you to keep your tempers. And don't do anything
at all to make it seem that we're in the wrong."
"My, but Miss Eleanor was angry!" said Dolly, when she was alone with
Bessie' after supper, which, despite the unpleasantness caused by the
girls next door, had been as jolly as all meals that the Camp Fire
Girls ate together. "I'm glad to see that she can get angry; it makes
her seem more lake a human being."
Bessie laughed.
"She can get angry, all right, Dolly," she said. "I've heard it said
that it isn't the person who never gets angry that ought to be praised;
it's the person with a bad temper who controls it and never loses it.
Miss Eleanor was angry because she is fond of us and thought those
other girls were being nasty to us. It wasn't to her that they'd been
nasty."
"No, and just you watch Gladys Cooper if she gets a chance to see Miss
Eleanor! The Mercers have got just as much money as the Coopers, and
they are in just as good society. But you don't see Miss Eleanor
putting on airs about it! Gladys would be nice enough to her, you can
bet!"
"Dolly, why don't you go over and see Gladys, if you know her so well?
You might be able to talk to her and make her see that they are in the
wrong."
"No, thank you, Bessie! I'm no good at that sort of thing. I'd just
get angry again, and make the trouble worse than ever. If she's got
any sense at all, she must know I'm angry, and why, and if she wants to
be decent she can come over and see me."
Nothing more happened that night. The girls, tired from their journey,
were glad to tumble into bed early. They all slept in one house, which
contained only sleeping rooms, and, because of the smoke, which was
still being blown across the lake when they went to bed, windows had to
be closed. The house was ventilated by leaving a big door open in the
rear and on the side away from the wind and the smoke, and of course
all the doors of the sleeping rooms were also left open.
"I'm awfully sorry that smoke is blowing this way," said Dolly. "Look
here, Bessie, there's a regular porch running all the way around the
house. And do you see these screens that you can let down? I bet they
sleep out here."
"They do," said Eleanor. "This sleeping porch arrangement is one of
the very best things about this camp, I think. But I don't see how we
can use it to-night, for the smoke is much too thick."
So they regretfully closed their windows. And in the morning they
found that visitors had been at the house during the night. Every
window was firmly closed from the outside, wedges having been driven in
in such a fashion that it was impossible to open the windows from
within. The doors, too, were barred in some manner.
"That's a joke those girls from the next camp played on us!" cried
Dolly, furiously. "Look there! They must have done it. No one else
could have managed it."
The house resembled nothing so much as a hive of angry bees. The girls
buzzed with indignation, and loud were the threats of vengeance.
"How are we going to get out?" cried Margery, indignantly. "What a
wicked thing to do! Suppose the place had caught fire? We might all
have been burned up just because of their joke!"
But Bessie had busied herself in seeking a means of escape instead of
planning revenge, and now she called out her discovery.
"Here's a little bit of a window, but I think I can get through it,"
she said, emerging from a closet that no one had noticed. "If you'll
boost me up I'm pretty sure I can get out."
"But you'll only be on the porch when you do get out, Bessie," said
Dolly.
"I think maybe I can get those wedges out of the windows if I get out
there. If I can't, I'm quite sure I can manage to get to the ground
and get help. You see, everything downstairs is barred the same way.
I don't see how they could have done all that without our hearing them."
"We were sleeping pretty soundly, Bessie," said Eleanor, her cheeks red
with indignation at the trick that had been played upon her girls. "If
the windows had been open, they couldn't have done it."
Bessie had hard work getting through the tiny closet window, which had
been overlooked by the raiders, but she managed it somehow, and in a
moment she was outside. She first ran to the edge of the porch to look
around, and, to her anger and surprise, she saw a group of girls, all
in bathing suits, watching her and the house. At her appearance a
shout of laughter went up, and she recognized Dolly's friend, Gladys
Cooper, who was evidently a ringleader in the mischief.
Bessie was sorely tempted to reply, but she realized that she would
only be playing into their hand if she seemed to notice them at all,
and, going to the other side of the house so that they could not see
her, she examined the windows. But she decided very quickly that she
could do nothing without tools of some sort, and she had none to work
with.
Without any further hesitation, she slipped over the rail of the porch,
being still out of sight of the raiders, and went down the pillar,
which, being nothing more than a tree with its bark still clinging to
it, gave her an easy descent. Once on the ground, her task was easy.
She worked very quietly, and in a minute or two she had one of the
ground floor windows open. Eleanor Mercer, who had heard her at work,
was waiting for her.
"Oh, Miss Eleanor," said Bessie, tensely, "those girls are all around
at the other side of the house, watching. They laughed at me like
anything when they saw me, and I'm sure they think we'll have to get
the guide to let us out."
"Good," said Eleanor, snappily. "Do you think we can get behind them,
Bessie?"
"I'm sure we can, if we go out this way and go around through the
trees."
So bidding the other girls to stay behind for the moment, Eleanor
climbed out, and followed Bessie off the porch and around to the back
of the house. They swung around in a wide arc, moving quietly and
making as little noise as possible, until they heard laughter in front
of them. And a moment later they came around, and faced the astonished
raiders.