An Adventure
"Margaret, if you don't mind, we are going for a walk. Betty has been
talking to some girls in the next village about starting a Camp Fire
club with six dear little German maidens who make us think of Meg and
Mollie when they were tiny. Would you care to come with us?"
Margaret Adams shook her head. She was lying in a hammock under a tree
which made a complete green canopy above her head. At no great distance
away was the brook where Betty had thought herself in hiding several
weeks before, and by dint of keeping very quiet and concentrating all
one's senses into the single one of listening, the music of the running
water might be heard. The woman in the hammock had no desire for other
entertainment. She had been thinking but a few moments before that she
had not felt so well or so young in half a dozen years. The three girls,
Esther, Betty and Polly, had been laughing and talking not far away from
her for the past hour, but she must have been asleep since she had heard
no word of what they were saying until Polly's direct question to her.
"I am awfully lazy, Polly dear," she apologized. "You know I have been
insisting each day that the next I was going to do exactly what you
girls do and try to pretend I am as young as the rest of you. But I have
not the valor, and besides you will have a far more thrilling time
without a chaperon. Kiss me good-by and take care of pretty Betty." And
Margaret Adams waved her hand in farewell to the other two girls.
Since their stay in the German forests she had insisted that the girls
treat her as much as possible like one of themselves, that they forget
her profession and her age, and as a sign they were all to call one
another by their first names.
To Betty Ashton this act of friendliness had not been difficult; it had
actually been harder for Polly, who had known Miss Adams so much more
intimately, and most trying of all to Esther because of her natural
timidity.
In the first place Betty did not often think of their new acquaintance
as a great actress. Once several years before she had been introduced to
Miss Adams in Woodford, but later had considered her merely in her
relation to Polly. She of course felt very strongly the older woman's
magnetism, just as the world did, and was proud and grateful for this
opportunity to know her. Indeed, Polly in the past few days had to have
several serious talks with herself in order to stifle a growing
sensation of jealousy. Of course she perfectly appreciated how pretty
and charming the Princess was and how she had attracted people all her
life. Yet she was not going to pretend that she was noble enough to be
willing to have Miss Adams prefer the Princess to her humble self.
As Polly joined her two friends she found herself surveying Betty with
an air that tried hard to be critical; but there was no use in
attempting it this morning. Betty was too ridiculously pretty and
unconscious of it. For, seeing that Polly seemed slightly annoyed with
her, she slipped her hand into hers, as the three of them started off
for the village. In her other hand she carried her old Camp Fire Manual.
Betty was dressed in an inexpensive white muslin with a broad white
leather belt and a big straw hat encircled with a wreath of blue corn
flowers. Probably her entire outfit had cost less than a single pair of
slippers in the days of their wealth.
"I hope, Esther, that you have not allowed Betty to go about the country
alone before I joined you," Polly began in her old half-mocking and
half-serious tones.
Betty laughed at the idea of Polly O'Neill grown suddenly conventional;
however, Esther took the suggestion gravely.
"I don't know and I am truly glad you have arrived, Polly dear, for a
great many reasons," she replied. "You know I have to be in Berlin two
days every week and Dr. Ashton is away the greater part of the time. And
somehow neither one of us has ever been able to persuade Mrs. Ashton or
Betty to appreciate the difference between Germany and America. Betty
seems to think she can wander about here as freely as if she were in
Woodford."
"Well, I shall see that she does not wander alone any more if I can help
it," Polly added with decision. And then, "Tell me, please, for goodness
sake, Betty Ashton, how you are going to manage to start a Camp Fire
club in Waldheim? In the first place do you know enough of the German
language to teach other people, and otherwise how will you ever be able
to explain all that the Camp Fire means, its ceremonies and ideals?"
For the moment Betty's face clouded, as any lack of faith on Polly's
part had always checked her enthusiasm.
"I can't teach them _all_ of anything, Polly, for in the first place I
have never begun to understand myself one half that our Camp Fire
organization stands for. But I have the feeling that because it has
always given me so much help and happiness I should at least try to
suggest the idea to other people. You see the Camp Fire is not just an
American institution. It is almost equally popular in England, though
there it is called 'The Girl Guides.' And of course in time its
influence is obliged to spread to Germany, so I hope to be a pioneer. I
have been to the school for girls in Waldheim and managed to interest
one of the teachers. She has promised me that when we have read and
studied enough together she will form a Camp Fire club among her pupils
and be their first guardian. So you see I shall not count for much."
"Angel child!" exclaimed Polly enigmatically, but she offered no further
criticism.
And indeed the three girls spent a wonderfully interesting two hours
among Betty's new acquaintances. For Esther and Betty both spoke German
extremely well after their two years' residence in Berlin, and although
Polly had to be unusually quiet, she did remember enough of her school
German to understand the others. And when their call had finally ended
Betty promised to return twice each week to continue their work, and
though Polly made no such promise, her enthusiasm was almost equally
great.
Later on the girls found a tiny restaurant in the village where they
drank hot coffee and ate innumerable delicious German cookies. For they
had left word that they were not to be expected at home for luncheon,
since the best of their excursion was to take place after the trip to
the village.
For a long time Betty had a place in mind she had particularly wished
Esther and Polly to see and now this was their first opportunity since
Polly's arrival for a long walk.
"It is only a specially lovely bit of woods with a little house inside,
which looks as though it might be the place where the old witch lived in
the story of 'Hansel and Gretel,'" she explained. "The house is built of
logs, but there are the same tiny window panes and a front door with a
great bolt across it. It is so gloomy and terrifying that it is
perfectly delicious," she concluded gaily, for they had been walking for
some distance to get into her enchanted forest and so far no sign of it
had appeared. Plainly the other two girls were growing weary.
Half an hour later, however, both Esther and Polly were sufficiently
good sportsmen to confess that their long walk had not been in vain. For
Betty's forest, as they chose to call the place, was entrancingly
lovely, the greenest, darkest, coolest spot in all that country round.
And so curiously secluded! Hundreds of great forest trees and shrubbery
so thick that it must have been left uncut and untrampled upon for many
years. Indeed, except for Betty's previous acquaintance with a path that
led to the house in the woods, there could have been no possibility of
the girls' discovering it. For once having climbed a low stone fence,
they had seen and heard nothing except a solitary deer that had fled at
their approach and an unusual number of wild birds.
Not far away from the little house Polly and Esther found seats within a
few feet of each other on the trunks of two old trees, while Betty
stretched herself along the ground, closing her eyes as though she had
been a veritable Sleeping Princess. The three girls had no thought of
being disturbed, for the little house was locked and barred and entirely
deserted.
Then in the midst of the peace and silence of the scene a bullet
whistled through the air. And following the report of a rifle Esther
tumbled quietly off her resting place.