The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows

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.”

CHAPTER V

Mollie’s Suggestion

The trouble with Betty Ashton’s foot was only a sprained ankle but it kept her confined for several days and gave her plenty of time for reflection. She must of course pay her debts, for she could not make up her mind to send back the things she had ordered (self-denial and Betty had very slight acquaintance with one another), and besides the disappointment would not be hers alone but all of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls.

For the truth is that Betty and Polly together had written a Camp Fire play setting forth some of the ideals of their organization and they wished to give the entertainment during Christmas week in the most beautiful possible fashion. Of course in the beginning they had assured Miss McMurtry, who was still a kind of advisory guardian, and Miss Dyer, that everything would be very simple and inexpensive, but naturally their ambitions grew with each passing day, and with scenery and costumes to be bought, besides the gifts and decorations for the Camp Fire tree, Betty found herself very much involved. As usual she was bearing the greater share of the expenses and then, though no one outside the Camp Fire club except Dick Ashton knew of it, Betty had been giving a part of her allowance each week so that Esther Clark might have singing lessons with the best possible teacher in Woodford. Not that the relation between Betty and Esther had seriously changed. The older girl still felt toward Betty the same adoring and self-sacrificing devotion, still considered her the most beautiful and charming person in the world and that her careless generosity lifted her above every one else, while, though to do Betty Ashton credit, she was entirely unconscious of it, her attitude toward Esther was just the least little bit condescending. Esther was so plain and awkward and particularly she lacked the birth and breeding Betty considered so essential, but then she was fond of her and did want Esther to have her chance – this chance she felt must lie in the cultivation of her beautiful voice.

So that when Betty, unable to make up her mind what had best be done, determined to consult with the girls, it was to her old friends, Mollie and Polly O’Neill, that she turned rather than to Esther. She had been unusually quiet one evening, although insisting that her ankle was entirely well. Suddenly, however, she plead fatigue and with a little gesture, which both girls understood as a signal, asked that Mollie and Polly come and help her get ready for bed.

When Betty was finally undressed, she sat bolt upright in her cot with her cheeks flushed and her gray eyes shining. So unusually pretty did she appear that Polly, who never ceased to admire her, even when she happened to be angry, set a silver paper crown upon her head. The crown was a part of their Christmas stage property and not intended for Betty, but now Polly stood a few feet away and clasped her hands together from sheer admiration, while Mollie, who was usually undemonstrative, leaned over and kissed her friend’s cheek before settling herself at the foot of the bed.

“You certainly are lovely, Princess, and so is Mollie for that matter,” Polly exclaimed, generously seating herself opposite her sister. Betty happened to be wearing a heavy blue silk dressing jacket over her gown and her auburn hair hung in two heavy braids, one over each shoulder. Her forehead was low and she had delicate level brows. But just now Betty flushed scarlet and frowned, for whatever her other faults she was not vain.

“Please don’t call me Princess, Polly, dear,” she urged, taking off her paper crown and surveying it rather ruefully, “because I am in truth only a paper princess to-night. You have told me a hundred times, Polly, child, that you thought I ought to know the sensation of being poor like other people, that I needed it for my education. Well, I do at last, for I have bought a lot of things for Christmas that I can’t pay for, as mother writes she can’t let me have any extra money.”

Betty’s expression, however, was not half so serious as that of her two friends as she made this confession. For the girls had also heard the rumor which had troubled Rose Dyer in regard to Mr. Ashton’s possible change of fortune, and knew that Betty did not in the least understand the gravity of her mother’s refusal.

Polly positively shivered. Betty poor! It was impossible to imagine! Yet what, after all, did the supposed loss of a few thousand dollars mean to a man of Mr. Ashton’s wealth.

Polly patted Betty’s hand sympathetically. “Debt is the most horrible thing in the world, isn’t it? I haven’t forgotten how I felt when I was in your debt last summer, Betty, and took such a horrid way to get out of it.”

“Maybe you had better send back what you have bought,” suggested the more practical Mollie, making the same suggestion as their guardian.

But at this Betty and Polly glanced at one another despairingly. “Give up making their Camp Fire play a success?” For this is what it would mean should Betty have to send back her purchases!

“How much do you owe, dear?” Polly next inquired in a crushed voice.

And at this Betty drew the same sheets of complex figures out from under her pillow. “It is a hundred and fifty dollars, I can’t make it any less,” she confessed. “That sounds pretty dreadful doesn’t it, when you have not a single cent to pay with, though I never thought one hundred and fifty dollars so very much before. Of course I could save something out of my allowance every month, but not very much, and father would not like me to ask people to wait.”

“Can’t you give up something besides the Christmas present from your mother which you were not going to have?” Mollie inquired so seriously and with such a horrified expression over the amount of her friend’s indebtedness, and such an entire disregard for the Irishness of her speech, that both the other girls laughed in spite of their worry. Mollie’s pretty face showed no answering smiles in return, nor did she take the least interest in the reason for their laughter. For it was not her way to be interrupted by their perfectly idle merriment.

“But haven’t you, Betty?” she repeated.

And Betty leaned her chin on her hands. “I have my piano,” she replied slowly, “but I can’t sell that because then Esther would have no chance to practice, and we could never half enjoy our Camp Fire songs without.”

Both the other girls shook their heads. Giving up the piano was out of the question.

For a moment longer there was silence and then Betty’s cheeks flushed again. “I have got some things I suppose I can part with, though I rather hate to,” she confessed. “I don’t know whether mother and father would like it, but then they would not like my being in debt. In a safety box in the bank in town I have some jewelry I never wear because mother thinks it too handsome for a girl of my age. Father and Dick have given it to me at different times. I suppose somebody would tell me how to dispose of at least a part of it.”

And although both Polly and Mollie at first strenuously objected to Betty’s suggestion, it was finally decided that Betty and Polly should drive into Woodford on the following Saturday morning without saying anything to any one else and bring the safety box back with them. Then they could talk the matter over and find out what Betty could dispose of with the least regret. Her ankle was now well enough for her to make the trip in their sleigh without difficulty.

CHAPTER VI

A Black Sheep

The one month in the winter camp had made more change in Nan Graham than the entire preceding summer, and the influence exerted by Rose Dyer in so short a time greater than all Miss McMurtry’s conscientious efforts, so does one character often affect another, so by a strange law of nature do extremes meet. Unconsciously Nan had always cherished just such an ideal as Rose represented. This uncouth young girl, untrained in even the simple things of life, with her curious mixed parentage of an Italian peasant mother and a ne’er-do-well father, who nevertheless was of good old New England stock, wished to be like the lovely southern girl who had nearly every grace and charm and had had every possible social advantage. Yet in spite of the contrast Nan did wish to be like her and though even to herself there seemed little chance of her succeeding, did try to mold herself after Rose’s pattern. The other girls quickly noted her attempts to soften her coarse voice, to give up the use of the ugly expressions that had so annoyed them and even to wear her clothes and to fix her thick black hair in a soft coil at the back of her neck as their guardian did. But fortunately they were kind enough not to laugh nor even to let Nan know that they were watching her. The girl had a certain beauty of her own with her dark coloring and sometimes sullen, sometimes eager, face. Her figure, however, was short and square, indeed she showed no trace of her New England blood and bore no resemblance to graceful Rose.

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