"The Reason o' It"
"Rose," Betty Ashton called at about ten o'clock the next morning. Betty
was sitting alone before the living room fire, the other girls having
gone into town to school several hours before. Books and papers and
writing materials were piled on a table before her and evidently she had
been working on some abstruse problem in mathematics, for several sheets
of legal cap paper were covered with figures.
"Rose," she called again, and so plaintively this second time that the
new guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls hurried in from the kitchen.
A gingham apron covered her from head to foot, a large mixing spoon was
in one hand and a becoming splash of flour on one cheek.
"What is it, dear?" she inquired anxiously. "Does your foot hurt worse
than it did? I ought to have come in to you right away, but Mammy and I
have been making enough loaves of bread to feed a regiment and I have
been turning some odds and ends of the dough into Camp Fire emblems to
have for tea--rings and bracelets and crossed logs. I am afraid I am
still dreadfully frivolous!" And Rose flushed, for in spite of Betty's
own problem she was smiling at her. This the Rose who had come to her
first Camp Fire Council only a month before in a Paris frock, probably
never having cooked a meal for any one in her life!
However, Betty answered loyally. "You are quite wonderful, Rose, and only
the other day Donna said you were giving to our Camp Fire life what with
all her knowledge she had somehow failed to give it--the real intimate
family feeling. I suppose I oughtn't to have interrupted you. No, it
isn't my foot, it is only that I have gotten myself into a new difficulty
and I want to ask you what you think I had best do?"
And with a worried frown Betty again studied the closely written figures
which must have represented some still unsolved problem, for she
continued staring at them, turning the sheets over and over. Finally,
before speaking, she drew an open letter from her pocket, carefully
re-reading several lines.
"I suppose it isn't worth while my mentioning, Rose, that none of us do
anything at present but think, dream and plan for our Camp Fire Christmas
entertainment," she said with a half sigh and smile, "and you know
packages have been coming to me until the attic is most full of them. I
have just been charging things as I bought them and until to-day I
haven't paid much attention to what they cost. But yesterday I received
such a strange letter from mother. She writes that father is a little
better and I am not to worry and she hopes we may have a happy Christmas.
However, she can't send me any more money for the holidays beyond my
usual allowance. Father has had some business losses lately, and not
being able to look after things himself, they are not going quite right.
Isn't it odd, for you see I have already explained to her that we were
going to have unusually heavy expenses this Christmas and please to let
me have money instead of a present? Yet she says she can't send me
_anything_. Poor mother, she apologizes humbly instead of telling me that
I am an extravagant wretch, but just the same it is the first time in my
life I haven't had all the money I needed to spend at Christmas and now I
don't see how I am ever going to pay for all the things I have bought. I
don't think I have any right to be a Camp Fire girl if I am in debt, and
I am--miles!"
Instead of answering immediately Rose turned away her face to conceal a
look of concern at Betty's news which she did not wish the young girl to
see. Other persons in Woodford were beginning to speculate upon a
possible change in the Ashton fortune. Certain enterprises in which Mr.
Ashton had been concerned had been known to fail, but then no one
understood to what extent he had been interested.
"Can't you give up some of the things, dear," Rose suggested gently,
knowing that Betty had never been called upon to do any such thing before
in her life, but to her surprise she now saw that her companion's
expression had entirely changed.
"What a goose I am!" Betty laughed cheerfully. "Of course I can write to
old Dick for the money. I don't usually like to ask him, for he is such a
conscientious person, so unlike reckless me, and will probably scold, but
then he will give me the money just the same. I wonder if anything ever
happened to make Dick more serious than other young men? He isn't a bit
like Frank Wharton or other wealthy fellows who do nothing but spend
money and have a good time. He seems just devoted to studying medicine,
and sometimes he has said such strange things to mother as though there
might be some special reason why he wanted so much to help people." And
feeling that her own dilemma was now comfortably settled, Betty fell to
puzzling over the older problem which she had always kept more or less at
the back of her mind.
But, curiously enough, Rose Dyer shook her head discouragingly. "I
wouldn't try that method of getting the money, Betty, if I were you," she
replied thoughtfully. "I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that if your
mother and father are not able to give you extra money, and you know Dick
always makes them put you first, why he is probably not having any extra
money either. And since his whole heart is set on going to Germany next
year to continue his work why he is probably saving all that he can now
so as not to be an additional expense."
Rose was several years older than Dick, but they had known one another
ever since she came as a young girl to New Hampshire from her home in
Georgia, bringing her colored mammy with her. For Rose's parents had died
and she had lived with an old uncle until a few years before when he had
gone, leaving her his heiress. Now Rose's pretty home in Woodford was
closed for the winter and her chaperon living in Florida while she spent
her time trying to learn to be a worthy guardian for the Camp Fire girls.
Perhaps she really had heard more of Dick Ashton's early life than his
sister Betty and had a special reason for her interest in him, however
she said nothing of it.
"I wonder if I couldn't lend you the money. I am not rich as you are, but
perhaps I have----"
And here Betty shook her head decisively. "I couldn't borrow the money of
anybody, one way of owing it would be as bad as another. I simply have
got to find a way." She stopped suddenly because the sound of some one
driving up to the cabin surprised her, and then, to her greater surprise,
her guardian, after a hurried glance out of the window, dropped her
mixing-spoon with a clatter and positively ran out of the room.
Betty stared. She could only see rather a shabby, old-fashioned buggy
standing near the Totem pole in front of their cabin, and a young man
hitching his horse to it.
Almost forgetting her bandaged ankle, the girl hobbled over to the door,
but when she had opened it gave an involuntary cry of pain and the next
instant found herself being lifted and carried back to her chair.
"You must not try to walk until you are sure things are all right with
you," a strange voice said severely. Then, in answer to Betty's look of
amazement, he took off his hat and bowed gravely. She found herself
staring at a tall, slender man of about thirty, in carefully brushed
clothes, which nevertheless had an old-fashioned, country appearance, and
with a face at once so handsome and so stern that he looked as if he
might have stepped out of an old frame which had held the portrait of one
of the early Puritan fathers.
"I am the doctor Sylvia Wharton is studying with, Miss Ashton," he
explained. "You don't know me but I know very well who you are. I have
only been living in this part of the country for the past two years,
trying to build up a practice among the farming people, so that when
Sylvia stopped by and asked me to come and see you I telephoned at once
to your physician in town, but finding him out I thought it might be
best----"
The young man hesitated and flushed. He was morbidly sensitive and
conscientious, and knowing Mr. Ashton's prominence would not for the
world have made an effort to gain Betty as a patient. However, Betty was
by this time suffering so much that she gave a little cry of relief.
"Sylvia has much more sense than any of us," she returned gratefully. "I
assured everybody I wasn't suffering in the least this morning and
now--well, I suppose I shouldn't have walked over to the door."
The young doctor had knelt on the floor and was gently removing the
bandage from the swollen ankle. "Sylvia has done very well," he declared.
"The first aid idea is one of the best things I know about you Camp Fire
girls, and Sylvia is trying to make me a convert, but surely you are not
here alone. Miss Dyer is your chaperon or guardian, I am not entirely
sure what you call her."
"Why, yes, Rose is here. I can't understand why she does not come in,"
Betty returned, feeling rather aggrieved and surprised at Rose's neglect
of her. But at this instant, hearing the bedroom door open, both the girl
and the young man turned and Betty just managed to control a quick
exclamation.
For, to her amazement, for the first time since coming to the cabin, Rose
had discarded her Camp Fire costume and was again fashionably dressed in
a soft brown silk entirely inappropriate to her work and to the cabin.
If Betty had thought young Dr. Barton's face stern on first seeing him it
was as nothing to his expression now. He bowed formally, but as his
manner showed he had known Rose before, Betty closed her eyes. The pain
in her foot was increasing each instant now that Sylvia's dressing had
been removed. When she opened them again she found Rose kneeling on the
floor by Dr. Barton, entirely forgetful of her gown and listening quietly
to his curt orders. Then during the next fifteen minutes Rose Dyer had
her first experience as a trained nurse, wondering all the time she was
at work how she could possibly be so stupid and so awkward. For she
splashed hot water on her gown and hand, tripped over her long skirt, and
was so nervous when Betty showed any signs of pain that the tears blinded
her brown eyes and her hands trembled. She might have broken down except
that Dr. Barton so plainly expected her to do what she was told, and
because of a wrathful figure that stood immovable in the doorway. It was
"Mammy," dressed in a stiff purple calico gown with a white handkerchief
tied about her head. Mammy was past seventy and no longer able to do much
work, but she had never left her "little Rose" in the twenty-seven year
of her life and never would so long as she lived. Not able to help a
great deal, she was still able to give the Sunrise Camp Fire club a great
deal of advice, and then she was also a kind of additional guardian since
Rose could not have been left alone at the cabin all morning with the
girls in town at school.
"I ain't never had much use for Yankee gentlemen," she mumbled to
herself, plainly expecting the little audience to hear. "Whar I cum from
the gentlemen was always waitin' on the ladies, not askin' them to tote
and fetch, same as if they was poo' white trash."