"You did enjoy it, didn't you?" Anne said as the two walked back through
the woods-path to camp.
"I loved every bit of it," was the enthusiastic response. "It's so
different from anything else--so fresh and picturesque and full of
interest! I should think girls would be wild to belong."
"They are. Camp Fires are being organised all over the country. The
trouble is that there are not yet enough older girls trained for
Guardians."
"Where can they get the training?"
"In New York there is a regular training class, and there will soon be
others in other cities," Anne returned, and then, with a laugh, "I
believe you've caught the fever already, Laura."
"I have--hard. You know, Anne, all the time we were abroad I was trying
to decide what kind of work I could take up, among girls, and this
appeals to me as nothing else has done. It seems to me there are great
possibilities in it. I'd like to be a Guardian. Do you think I'm fit?"
"Of course you're fit, dear. O Laura, I'm so glad. We can work together
when we go home."
"But, Anne, I want to stay right here in this camp now. Do you suppose
Mrs. Royall will be willing? Of course I'll pay anything she says----"
"She'll be delighted. She needs more helpers, and I can teach you all I
learned before I took charge of my girls. But will your father be
willing?"
"I'm sure he will. He knows you, and everybody in Washington knows and
honours Mrs. Royall. Father is going to Alaska on a business trip and
I've been trying to decide where I would stay while he is gone. This
will solve my problem beautifully."
"Come then--we'll see Mrs. Royall right now and arrange it," Anne
returned, turning back.
Mrs. Royall was more than willing to accede to Laura's proposal. "Stay
at the camp as long as you like," she said, "and if you really want to
be a Guardian, I will send your name to the Board which has the
appointing power."
"She is lovely, isn't she?" Laura said as they left the Chief Guardian.
"I don't wonder you call her the Camp Mother."
Something in the tone reminded Anne that her friend had long been
motherless, and she slipped her arm affectionately around Laura's waist
as she answered, "She is the most motherly woman I ever met. She seems
to have room in her big, warm heart for every girl that wants mothering,
no matter who or what she is." They were back at the camp now, and she
added, "But we must get to bed quickly--there's the curfew," as a bugle
sounded a few clear notes.
"O dear, I've a hundred and one questions to ask you," sighed Laura.
"They'll keep till morning," replied the other. "It's so hard for the
girls to stop chattering after the curfew sounds! We Guardians have to
set them a good example."
The cots in the sleeping tents were placed on wooden platforms raised
three or four inches from the ground, and on clear nights the sides of
the tents were rolled up. Laura, too interested and excited to sleep at
once, lay in her cot looking out across the open space now flooded with
light from the late-risen moon, and thought of the girls sleeping around
her. Herself an only child, she had a great desire--almost a
passion--for girls; girls who were lonely like herself--girls who had to
struggle with ill-health, poverty, and hard work as she did not.
Suddenly she started up in bed, her eyes wide with half-startled
surprise. Reaching over to the adjoining cot, she touched her friend,
whispering, "Anne, Anne, look!" and as Anne opened drowsy eyes, Laura
pointed to the moonlit space.
Anne stared for a moment, then she laughed softly and whispered back,
"It's a ghost dance, Laura. Some of those irrepressible girls couldn't
resist this moonlight. They're doing an Indian folk dance."
"Isn't it weird--in the moonlight and in utter silence!" Laura said
under her breath. "I should think somebody would giggle and spoil the
effect."
"That would be a signal for Mrs. Royall to 'discover' them and send them
back to bed," Anne returned. "So long as they do it in utter silence so
as to disturb no one else, the Guardians wink at it. It is pretty, isn't
it?"
"Lovely!"
Anne turned over and went to sleep again, but Laura watched the slender
graceful figures in their loose white garments till suddenly they melted
into the shadows and were gone. Then she too slept till a shaft of
sunlight, touching her eyelids, awakened her to a new day. She looked
across at her friend, who smiled back at her. "I feel so well and so
happy!" she exclaimed.
"It is sleeping in the open air," Anne replied. "Almost everybody wakes
happy here--except the Problem."
"The Problem?" Laura echoed.
"I mean Olga Priest, the girl you asked about last night. We Guardians
call her the Problem because no one has yet been able to do anything for
her."
"Tell me about her," Laura begged, as, dropping the sides of the tent,
Anne began to dress.
"Wait till we are outside--there are too many sharp young ears about us
here," Anne cautioned. "There'll be time for a walk or a row before
breakfast and we can talk then."
"Good--let's have a walk," Laura said, and made quick work of her
dressing.
"Now tell me about the Problem," she urged, when they were seated on a
rocky point overlooking the blue waters of the bay.
"Poor Olga," Anne said. "I wonder sometimes if she has ever had a really
happy day in the eighteen years of her life. Her mother was a Russian of
good family and well educated. She married an American who made life
bitter for her until he drank himself to death. There were three
children older than Olga--two sons who went to the bad, following their
father's example. The older girl married a worthless fellow and
disappeared, and there was no one left but Olga to support the sick
mother and herself, and Olga was only thirteen then! She supported them,
somehow, but of course she had to leave her mother alone all day, and
one night when she went home she found her gone. She had died all
alone."
"_O!_" cried Laura.
"Yes, it was pitiful. I suppose the child was as nearly heartbroken as
any one could be, for her mother was everything to her. Of course there
were many who would have been glad to help had they known, but Olga's
pride is something terrible, and it seems as if she hates everybody
because her father and her brothers and sister neglected her mother, and
she was left to die alone. I don't believe there is a single person in
the world whom she likes even a little."
"O, the poor thing!" sighed Laura. "Not even Mrs. Royall?"
"No, not even Mrs. Royall, who has been heavenly kind to her."
"Is she in your Camp Fire?"
"No, Ellen Grandis is her Guardian, but Ellen is to be married next
month and will live in New York, so that Camp Fire will have to have a
new Guardian."
"What about the other girls in it?"
"All but three are working girls--salesgirls in stores, I think, most of
them."
"How did Olga happen to join the Camp Fire?"
"I don't know. I've wondered about that myself. She doesn't make friends
with any of the girls, nor join in any of the games; but work--she has a
perfect passion for work, and it seems as if she can do anything. She
has won twice as many honours as any other girl since she came, but she
cares nothing for them--except to win them."
"She must be a strange character, but she interests me," Laura said
thoughtfully. "Anne, maybe I can take Miss Grandis' place when she
leaves."
Anne gave her friend a searching look. "Are you sure you would like it?
Wouldn't you rather have a different class of girls?" she asked.
Laura answered gravely, "I want the girls I can help most--those that
need me most--and from what you say, I should think Olga needed--some
one--as much as any girl could."
"As much perhaps, but hardly more than some of the others. There's that
little Annie Pearson who thinks of nothing but her pretty face and 'good
times,' and Myra Karr who is afraid of her own shadow and always
clinging to the person she happens to be with. The Camp Fire is a
splendid organisation, Laura, and it will do a deal for the girls, but
still almost every one of them is some sort of 'problem' that we have to
study and watch and labour over with heart and head and hands if we hope
really to accomplish any permanent good. But come, we must go back or we
shall be late for breakfast."
"Then let's hurry, for this air has given me a famous appetite," Laura
replied. But she did not find it easy to keep up with her friend's
steady stride.
"You'll have to get in training for tramps if you are going to be a Camp
Fire Girl," Anne taunted gaily.
Laura's eyes brightened as she entered the big dining-room with its
canvas sides rolled high.
"Just in time," Anne said, as she pulled out a chair for Laura and
slipped into the next one herself.
The meal was cheerful, almost hilarious. "Mrs. Royall believes in
laughter. She never checks the girls unless it's really necessary,"
Anne explained under cover of the merry chatter. "She----"
But Laura interrupted her. "O Anne, that must be Olga--the dark still
girl, at the end of the next table, isn't it?"
"Yes, and Myra Karr is next to her. All at that table belong to the Busy
Corner Camp Fire."
After breakfast Laura again paddled off to the yacht with Anne. It did
not require much coaxing to secure her father's permission for her to
spend a month at the camp with Anne Wentworth and Mrs. Royall. He kept
the girls on the yacht for luncheon, and after that they went back to
camp, a couple of sailors following in another boat with Laura's
luggage.
"How still it is--I don't hear a sound," Laura said wonderingly, as she
and her friend approached the camp through the pines.
Anne listened, looking a little perplexed, as they came out into the
camp and found it quite deserted--not a girl anywhere in sight.
"I'll go and find out where everybody is," she said. "I see some one
moving in the kitchen. The cook must be there."
She came back laughing. "They've all gone berrying. That's one of the
charms of this camp--the spontaneous fashion in which things are done.
Probably some one said, 'There are blueberries over yonder--loads of
them,' and somebody else exclaimed, 'Let's go get some,' and
behold"--she waved her hand--"a deserted camp."