Olga, sitting under a big oak, was embroidering her ceremonial dress,
and, as usual, Elizabeth sat near, watching her as she worked. Olga did
it as she did most things, with taste and skill, but she listened
indifferently when Laura Haven, stopping beside her, spoke admiringly of
the work.
"I wouldn't waste time over it if I hadn't promised Miss Grandis to
embroider it. She gave us all the stuff, you know," Olga explained.
"It isn't wasting time to make things beautiful," Laura replied. "That
is part of our law, you know, to seek beauty, and wherever possible,
create it." She looked at Elizabeth and added, "You'll be learning
by-and-by to do such work."
There was no response from the Poor Thing, only the usual shrinking
gesture and eyes down-dropped. Acting on a sudden impulse, Laura spoke
again. "Elizabeth, the cook is short of helpers this morning, and I've
volunteered to shell peas. There's a big lot of them to do. I wonder if
you would be willing to help me."
To her surprise Elizabeth rose at once with a nod. "Olga will be glad to
have her away for a little while," Laura was thinking as they went over
to the kitchen.
It certainly was a big lot of peas. Forty girls, living and sleeping in
the open, develop famous appetites, and the "telephone" peas were
delicious. But as the two worked, the great pile of pods grew steadily
smaller, and finally Laura looked at Elizabeth with a laugh. "I've been
trying my best, but I can't keep up with you," she said. "How do you
shell them so fast, Elizabeth?"
A wee ghost of a smile--the first Laura had ever seen there--fluttered
over the girl's face. "I'm used to this kind of work. You have to do it
fast when you're cookin' for eight," she explained simply.
"And you have cooked for eight?" Laura questioned, and added to herself,
"No wonder you look like a ghost of a girl."
Elizabeth nodded. Laura could not induce her to talk, but still she felt
that somehow she had penetrated a little way into the shell of silence
and reserve. As they went back across the camp, she dropped her arm over
Elizabeth's shoulders, and said,
"You're a splendid helper, Elizabeth. May I call on you the next time I
need any one?"
Another silent nod, and then the girl slipped back into her place beside
Olga.
"Then I will--and thank you," Laura returned as she passed on. Olga
glanced after her with something odd and inscrutable in her dark eyes,
and there was a question in the look with which she searched the face of
Elizabeth. But she did not put the question into words.
Afterwards Laura spoke to her friend of the Poor Thing with a new
hopefulness, telling how willingly she had helped with the peas.
"You know I've tried in vain to get her to do other things, but this
time she was so quick to respond! I'm almost afraid to hope, but maybe
I've had an inspiration. I must try the child again though before I can
feel at all sure."
She made her second trial the next day, when she sent Bessie Carroll to
ask Elizabeth to help her with the dishes. "It's my day to work in the
kitchen," Bessie told her, "and Miss Laura thought you might be willing
to help me. Most of the girls, you know, hate the kitchen work. You
don't, do you?"
"I _like_ to help," replied Elizabeth promptly.
"I like Elizabeth!" Bessie confided to Laura that night. "Before, I've
tried to get her into things because she seemed so lonesome and 'out of
it,' don't you know? But I like her now, she was so willing to help me
to-day. I thought she was awfully slow, but she was quick as anybody
with the dishes."
Then Laura felt sure she had found the key. "Elizabeth loves to help,"
she told Anne Wentworth.
"'Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten,'" she
quoted. "Anne, I believe that that spirit is in the Poor Thing--deep
down in the starved little heart of her--while Olga--with Olga it is the
other. She 'glorifies work' because 'through work she is free.' She
works 'to win, to conquer, to be master.' She works 'for the joy of the
working.' That's the difference."
Anne nodded gravely. "I am sure you are right about Olga. It has always
seemed to me that to her 'Wohelo means work' and only that."
"And to Elizabeth it means--or will mean--service and that means,
underneath--love," said Laura, her voice full of deep feeling. "O Anne,
I so _long_ to help that poor child to get some of the beauty and joy
of life into her little neglected soul!"
"If she has love, she has the best thing in life already," Anne
reminded. "The rest will come--in time."
A day or two later Laura found another excuse for asking Elizabeth's
help, and as before, the response was quick, and again Olga's busy
fingers paused as she looked after the two, and quite unconsciously her
dark brows came together in a frown. Elizabeth had gone with scarcely a
glance at her. A week--two weeks earlier, she would have hung back and
refused. Olga shook her head impatiently as she resumed her work, and
wondered why she was dissatisfied with Elizabeth for going so willingly.
Of course she must do what her Guardian asked. Nevertheless----Olga left
it there.
It was an hour before Elizabeth came back, and this time there was in
her face something half shy, half exultant, and she did not say a word
about what Miss Laura had wanted her for. Olga made a mental note of
that, but she was far too proud to make any inquiries.
The next morning after breakfast Elizabeth disappeared again, and this
time too it was fully an hour before she returned, and as before she
came back with a shining something in her eyes--a something that changed
slowly to troubled brooding when Olga did not look at her or speak to
her all the rest of the morning.
When the third day it was the same, Olga faced the situation in stony
silence. She would not ask why Elizabeth went or where, but she silently
resented her going, and Elizabeth, sensitively conscious of her
resentment, after that, slipped away each time with a wistful backward
glance; and when she returned, there was no shining radiance in her
eyes, but only that wistful pleading which Olga coldly ignored. So it
went on day after day. Olga always knew where Elizabeth was except for
that one hour in the morning, which was never mentioned between them.
The other times she was always helping some one--darning stockings for
Louise Johnson--Elizabeth knew how to darn stockings--or helping little
Bessie Carroll hunt for some of her belongings, which she was always
losing, or helping Katie the cook, who declared that nobody in camp
could pare potatoes and apples, or peel tomatoes or pick over berries so
fast as the Poor Thing. There was not a day now that some one did not
call on Elizabeth for something like this, for the girls had found out
that she was always willing. She seemed to take it quite as a matter of
course that she should be at the service of everybody. But Laura noted
the fact that she never asked anybody to help her.
Then came a night when Mrs. Royall detained the girls for a moment after
supper in the dining-room.
"I think we are going to have a heavy storm," she said, "and we must be
prepared for it. Put all your belongings under cover where they will be
secure from wind and rain. I should advise you to sleep in your
gymnasium suits--you will be none too warm in this northeast wind--and
have your rubber blankets and overshoes handy. Guardians will examine
all tent-pins and ropes and see that everything is secure. No tent-sides
up to-night, of course. I shall have a fire here, and lanterns burning
all night; so if anything is needed you can come right here. Now
remember, girls, there is nothing to be afraid of--and Camp Fire Girls,
of course, are never afraid. That is all, but attend to these things at
once, and as it is too chilly to stay out, we will all spend the evening
here."
The girls scattered, and the next half-hour was spent in making
everything ready for stormy weather. Only Louise Johnson, her mouth full
of mint gum, gaily protested that it was all nonsense. It might rain, of
course, but she didn't believe there was going to be any heavy storm--in
August----
"If the rest of you want to bundle up in your gym. suits you can, but
excuse _me_!" she said. "And I can't put all my duds under cover."
"All right, Johnny, you'll have nobody but yourself to blame if you find
your things soaked, or blown into the bay before morning," Mary Hastings
told her. "I'm going to obey orders," and she hurried over to her own
tent.
The evening began merrily in the big dining-room. The canvas sides had
been securely fastened down, and a splendid wood fire blazed in the wide
fireplace. Tables were piled at one side of the room, and the girls
played games, and danced to the music of two violins. At bedtime Mrs.
Royall served hot chocolate and wafers, and then the girls went to their
tents. By that time the sky was covered with a murk of black clouds, and
a penetrating wind was blowing up the bay and whistling through the
grove. Extra blankets had been put over the cots and rubber blankets
over all, and the girls were quite willing to pull their flannel gym.
suits over their night clothes, and found them none too warm. Even
Louise Johnson followed the example of the others. "Gee!" she exclaimed
as she tucked the extra blanket closely around her shoulders, "camping
out isn't all it's cracked up to be--not in this weather. Isn't that
thunder?"
It was thunder, and some of the more timid girls heard it with quaking
hearts. But it was distant, low growling thunder, and after a little it
died away. The girls, under their wool coverings, were warm and
comfortable, and their laughter and chatter ceased as they dropped off
to sleep.
It seemed as if the storm spirits had maliciously waited that their
onset might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody
in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning
began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the
wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the
strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came
in gusts, swift, spiteful, and icy cold. In the dining-room Mrs. Royall
awoke from a light doze and piled fresh logs on the fire. Anne and
Laura, whom she had kept with her in case their help might be needed,
peered anxiously out of the windows.
"Can't see a thing but black night except when the flashes come," Anne
said, "but this uproar is bound to awaken the girls."
"And some of them are sure to be frightened," added Mrs. Royall.
"It is enough to frighten them--all this tumult," Laura said. "I wish we
could get them all in here."
"I'd have kept them all here and made a big field bed on the floor if I
had thought we were going to have such a storm as this," Mrs. Royall
said anxiously. "If it doesn't lessen soon, I shall take a lantern and
go the round of the tents to see if all is right."
As she spoke there came a loud rattling peal of thunder, followed
immediately by a blinding flash of lightning that zigzagged across the
sky, making the dense darkness yet blacker by contrast.
It was then that Mary Hastings, sitting up in bed, caught a glimpse, in
the glare of the lightning, of Annie Pearson's white terrified face in
the next cot.
"O Mary, I'm sc--scared to d--death!" Annie whimpered, her teeth
chattering with cold and terror.
"We are all right if only our tent doesn't blow over," returned Mary,
and her steady voice quieted Annie for the moment. "If it does, we must
make a dive for the dining-room. Got your raincoats and rubbers handy,
girls?"
"I'm putting mine on," Olga's voice was as cool and undisturbed as
Mary's. She turned towards the next cot and added, "Elizabeth, you've no
raincoat. Wrap yourself in your rubber blanket if the tent goes."
"Ye--es," returned Elizabeth, with a little frightened gasp.
Under the bedclothes Annie Pearson was sobbing and moaning, "O, I wish I
was home! I wish I was home!"
Mary Hastings spoke sternly. "Annie Pearson, if you don't stop that
whimpering I'll shake you!"
Annie subsided into sniffling silence. Outside there was a lull, and
after a moment, Mary added hopefully, "There, I guess the worst is over,
and we're all right."
While the words were yet on her lips, the storm leaped up like a giant
refreshed. Rain came down in a deluge, beating through tent-canvas and
spraying, with fine mist, the faces of the girls. Another vivid glare of
lightning was followed by a long, loud rattling peal ending in a
terrific crash that seemed fairly to rend the heavens, while the wind
shook the tents as if giant hands were trying to wrest them from their
fastenings. Then from all over the camp arose frightened shrieks and
wails and cries, but Annie Pearson now was too terrified to utter a
word. The next moment there was a loud, ripping tearing sound, and as
fresh cries broke out, Mrs. Royall's voice, clear and steady, rose above
the tumult.
"Be quiet, girls," she called. "One tent has gone over, but nobody's
hurt. Mary Hastings, slip on your coat and rubbers, and come and help
us--quick!"
"I'm coming," called Mary instantly, and directly she was out in the
storm. Where the next tent had been, nothing but the wooden flooring,
the iron cots, and four wooden boxes remained, and over these the rain
was pouring in heavy, blinding sheets. Mrs. Royall, as wet as if she had
just come out of the bay, was holding up a lantern, by the light of
which Mary caught a fleeting glimpse of four figures in dripping
raincoats scudding towards the dining-room, while two others followed
them with arms full of wet bedding.
Mrs. Royall told Mary to gather up the bedding from a third cot and
carry that to the dining-room, "And you take the rest of it," she added
to another girl, who had followed Mary. "And stay in the
dining-room--both of you. Don't come out again. Miss Anne will tell you
what to do there."
She held the lantern high until the girls reached the dining-room, then
she hurried to another tent, from which came a hubbub of frightened
cries. Pushing aside the canvas curtain she stepped inside the tent, and
holding up her lantern, looked about her. The cries and excited
exclamations ceased at the sight of her, though one girl could not
control her nervous sobbing.
"What is the matter here? Your tent hasn't blown over. What are you
crying about, Rose?" Mrs. Royall demanded.
Rose Anderson, an excitable little creature of fifteen, lifted a face
white as chalk. "O," she sobbed, "something came in--right up on my bed.
It was big and--and furry--and _wet_! O Mrs. Royall, I never was so
scared in my life!" She ended with a burst of hysterical sobbing.
Mrs. Royall cast a swift searching glance around the tent, then--wet and
cold and worried as she was, her face crinkled into sudden laughter.
"Look, Rose--over there on that box. That must be the wet, furry _big_
intruder that scared you so!"
Four pairs of round frightened eyes followed her pointing finger; and on
the box they saw a half-grown rabbit, with eyes bulging like marbles as
the little creature crouched there in deadly terror. One glance, and
three of the girls broke into shrieks of nervous laughter in which,
after a moment, Rose joined. And having begun to laugh the girls kept
on, until those in the other tents began to wonder if somebody had gone
crazy. Mrs. Royall finally had to speak sternly to put an end to the
hysterical chorus.
"There, there, girls, that will do--now be quiet! Listen, the thunder is
fainter now, and the lightning less sharp. I think the wind is going
down too. Are any of you wet?"
"Only--only Rose, where the _big_ furry thing----" began one, and at
that a fresh peal of laughter rang out. But Mrs. Royall's grave face
silenced it quickly.
"Listen, girls," she repeated, "you are keeping me here when I am needed
to look after others. I cannot go until you are quiet. I'll take this
half-drowned rabbit"--she reached over and picked up the trembling
little creature--"with me; and now I think you can go to sleep. I am
sure the worst of the storm is over."
"We will be quiet, Mrs. Royall," Edith Rue promised, her lips twitching
again as she looked at the shivering rabbit.
"And I hope now _you_ can get some rest," another added, and then Mrs.
Royall dropped the curtain and went out again into the rain, which was
still falling heavily. All the other tents had withstood the gale, and
when Mrs. Royall had looked into each one, answered the eager questions
of the girls, and assured them that no one was hurt and the worst of the
storm was over, she hurried back to the dining-room. There she found
that Anne and Laura had warmed and dried the girls, who had been turned
out of their tent, given them hot milk, and made up dry beds for them on
the floor.
"They are warm as toast," Anne assured her.
"And now you and I will get back to bed, Elizabeth," Mary Hastings said,
again slipping on her raincoat, while Laura quietly threw her own over
the other girl's shoulders.
"Wait a minute," Mrs. Royall ordered, and brought them two sandbags hot
from the kitchen oven. "You must not go to sleep with cold feet. And
thank you both for your help," she added. "I'll hold the lantern here at
the door so you can see your way." But Laura quietly took the lantern
from her, and held it till Mary called, "All right!"
"Is that you, Mary?" Olga's quiet voice questioned, as the girls entered
the tent.
"Yes--Elizabeth and I. The excitement is all over and the storm will be
soon. Let's all get to sleep as fast as we can."
"Elizabeth!" Olga repeated to herself. She had not known that Elizabeth
had left her cot. "Why did you go?" she asked in a low tone, as
Elizabeth crept under the blankets.
"Why--to help," the Poor Thing answered, squeezing the hand that touched
hers in the darkness.
The storm surely was lessening now. The lightning came at longer
intervals and the thunder lagged farther and farther behind it. The rain
still fell, but not so heavily, and the roar of the wind had died down
to a sullen growl. In ten minutes the other three girls were sound
asleep, but Olga lay long awake, her eyes searching the darkness, as her
thoughts searched her own soul, finding there some things that greatly
astonished her.