The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows

by Margaret Vandercook

  CHAPTER XXIII Future Plans

  "It was Sylvia who really arranged things for me," Polly explainedconfidentially.

  The girls were in Betty Ashton's own blue room, having said good-bye toSunrise cabin and turned their backs upon it for a time at least. But thecabin had been left ready to receive its owners at any time when theymight be able to come back to it and week-end parties and Council Firemeetings were often to take place there, besides more important eventswhich the girls could not well anticipate now.

  But to-day was Betty Ashton's birthday and although she was in too deepmourning for any kind of gayety, her Camp Fire friends had planned tostop by her house during the afternoon to leave little gifts for her,along with their best wishes. And Mollie and Polly O'Neill had arrivedfirst.

  "I shall miss you terribly, Polly," Betty returned wistfully; her brightcolor had gone in the last few weeks and there were slight shadows underher gray eyes. "Still I feel sure that under the circumstances it is bestfor you to go. You are too restless anyhow to have wanted to stay inWoodford and the new life with the new people and sights will make youmuch happier. You will probably have a good deal of liberty at a New Yorkboarding school and you'll be able to go to the theater now and then anddo many of the things you will like. But Mollie and I hope you will comeback for Christmas and will write us pretty often."

  Polly looked thoughtfully from her friend to her sister. "I know I am anabsolutely selfish person and I would rather neither one of you wouldeven attempt to deny it. I am not leaving my home though simply because Iam restless. The truth is I simply can't get used to mother's beingmarried to Mr. Wharton and to living in their great ugly house instead ofour own beloved cottage. I don't like Frank Wharton and though Mr.Wharton is very kind and wants to do everything for Mollie and me, he isone of those dreadfully literal persons, so I am afraid we never willunderstand one another."

  "But you used to say, Polly, that you were tired of our small house andthat you wanted to live in a big one with lots of money and servants. Andnow you have it you are dying to get away." And Mollie sighed, for thethought of being parted from her sister even as far away as the nextfall, was very hard to bear, and yet she would not leave her mother,since for both of her daughters to go away would look like a reflectionupon her marriage.

  "Heigh, ho!" laughed Polly. "Perhaps I have made some such statement inthe past but I suppose I wanted to get rich in my own little way, like Iwish to do everything else. And _in_consistency, which is not a jewel, iscertainly Polly O'Neill. But don't let's talk about me any more, it'sBetty's birthday. However, I would like to register this statement--Sylvia Wharton is the most extraordinary person I ever met. And whatSylvia starts out to do in this world she'll do. It was Sylvia who saw Iwasn't happy in her home, Sylvia who talked things over first to me, andthen suggested my departure to mother and her father. And though ourparents were both horribly opposed to the idea at first, Sylvia broughtthem around without any arguments or excitement simply by continuing tomake plain statements of the facts."

  "Well, the wheel of fortune we hear so much about has truly turned, dear,and you're rich and I'm poor and now we must wait to see what will happennext," Betty remarked, hearing a faint knock at her bedroom door andmoving forward to open it, but in passing she stopped and kissed Pollylightly on the forehead. "Don't look as though you were the wheel, Pollychild, and had made the changes. I am not going to be half so miserablebeing poor as you girls think I will. Just think of how much moreself-respecting I am going to feel if, when I go to bed some night, I cansay to myself: 'Betty Ashton has earned her salt to-day.'"

  Betty now opened her door and there on the threshold stood Rose Dyer witha bunch of pink roses and Faith with a pot of lemon verbena in her hand.Faith was not yet well enough to go home to the boarding house in Boston,so Miss Dyer had brought her to her own home in Woodford, where she andMammy were still to look after the odd child.

  On the arrival of Polly and Mollie a few moments before, Betty had notbeen in the least surprised. The two girls usually ran in to see herevery afternoon now and had been giving her birthday presents for nearlyas many years as she could remember, but when Rose and Faith alsoappeared she realized that the members of the Sunrise club might all becoming in to see her during the afternoon in just this same quietfashion. And the next instant she was convinced when Sylvia solemnlyappeared with a box of candy, which she thrust awkwardly at her.

  "It's against our Camp Fire rules to eat candy, Betty, and I don'tapprove of it or like it very much myself, but I couldn't think ofanything else to bring when Polly and Mollie went off without me; andthere won't be enough to make so many people sick."

  During the laughter over Sylvia's remark, Nan Graham walked shyly inthrough the now open door, bearing a loaf of cake.

  "I couldn't bring a real present, Betty," she explained with far moregrace and sweetness than one could have dreamed possible of so rough anduntrained a girl the year before, "but this is the kind of cake you usedto like when I made it at the cabin and I thought you wouldn't mindeating a piece on your birthday for old times' sake."

  Feeling a sudden rush of emotion, Betty gave Nan a swift embrace and thenexcusing herself from her friends for a moment slipped out of the roomfor two purposes: she wanted to find her mother and make her join herfriends and she wanted to prepare a great pitcher of lemonade for herguests, for Betty was neither foolish nor selfish in her sorrow, and ifher friends had come to her to bring their good wishes, she desired thatthe afternoon might pass as pleasantly as possible.

  Things had not gone quite so badly with the Ashton fortune as Dick Ashtonhad originally feared, although conditions were surely bad enough. ForMrs. Ashton still had the house and Betty a small income settled on herby Mr. Ashton years before as a dress allowance, which now had to covermany other needs. For the completion of Dick's medical course there wereseveral thousand dollars that an aunt had left him as a legacy when hewas only a small boy and to use the capital in this way now seemed thewisest investment he could make. To keep the big Ashton house and try andmake it yield an income was perhaps not quite so wise, but this had beenBetty's dearest desire, and her mother and brother had agreed to it forher sake. To give up the home of her ancestors, to see the beloved oldportraits stored away in some one's attic or stuck up in a small roomwhere they would seem absurdly out of place, Betty felt that she couldbear everything, do anything if only their old home remained! And so shewas allowed at least to try the experiment of renting rooms or takingboarders, whichever might turn out the simpler plan.

  But when Mrs. Ashton was finally persuaded to join Betty's friends, itwas fairly plain that the greater part of the planning and work for thefuture must fall upon Betty and not her mother, for Mrs. Ashton lookeddazed by misfortune and was already a semi-invalid, querulous andrebellious against more evil fortune than she had character or health towithstand. It was no wonder therefore, that even Betty's best friendsdoubted whether she would be able to meet the responsibilities that hadso unexpectedly come upon her, although rejoicing that a year of CampFire training found her far better prepared than most girls of her ageand position.

  Esther had been sitting in the room with Mrs. Ashton when Betty foundthem, as the older woman seemed to enjoy the society of her daughter'scompanion more than any one's else these days, so the two girls soonbrought the lemonade back to Betty's room. In her absence Betty foundthat her writing table had been cleared and was now decorated with Rose'sflowers, Nan's cake and Sylvia's candy, with sandwiches which Meg hadjust brought in and which "Little Brother" was rapidly devouring, andwith a little pile of gifts at the head. Betty's eyes filled with tears,but instinctively her hands flew toward a small square of canvas thatstood facing her leaning against one of her candlesticks. It was apainting of the Sunrise cabin which Eleanor had made after Betty hadreturned home and quite the best piece of work she had ever done. Thepainting had been made in the dawn and the colors of the sunrise floo
dedthe log cabin, touching the tops of the tall pines standing a little inthe foreground and making a crown of light for the high peak of theSunrise Hill.

  "It is too lovely; I ought not to have it," Betty exclaimed, extendingher picture toward Miss McMurtry, for she and Edith Norton had at thismoment joined the party; but seeing that their first Camp Fire guardianshook her head, Betty then turned to Rose Dyer. "Oughtn't you to have itthen, Rose, and let the Sunrise Camp Fire girls just come in and look atit now and then?"

  But at this Eleanor Meade laughed. "Look here, Princess, we all know yourpassion for giving away your possessions, but do you think you ought tothrust my gift upon some one else while I am standing here watching you?I would like humbly to mention that I painted that picture of the Sunrisecabin for your particular birthday gift and that I would prefer to haveyou keep it."

  "And I would like to add," said Miss McMurtry, with an affectionate, evenan admiring glance toward the Betty for whom she had once felt so keen adisapproval, "that among us there is no one with quite the same claimupon whatever has to do with our Sunrise club as Betty Ashton. For thoughshe may have forgotten, we have not, that it was to Betty's enthusiasmand a great deal to her efforts that we owe the organization of ourclub." The chief guardian now leaned over, lighting three candles onBetty's tea table--"Work, Health, Love."

  "We wish you all the good things that following the law of the Camp Firemay bring you, Betty dear," she whispered.

  "Seek beauty Give service Pursue knowledge Be trustworthy Hold on to health Glorify work Be happy."

  While the older woman was speaking, Esther had slipped quietly over toBetty's own piano, which had been brought home from the cabin to herroom, and now in order to relieve the atmosphere of emotion which wasmaking ordinary conversation impossible at this moment, she commencedsinging her own and Betty's favorite Camp Fire song, the other girlsjoining in an instant later.

  "Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame, O Master of the Hidden Fire, Wash pure my heart and cleanse for me My soul's desire. In flame of sunrise bathe my mind, O Master of the Hidden Fire, That when I wake, clear-eyed may be My soul's desire."

  And before the song had ended, half a dozen of the girls in the room atleast were wondering whether they were any nearer to the all-importantknowledge of what their soul's desire might be.

  * * * * * * * *

  A year the Sunrise Camp Fire girls have tried living and workingtogether, following to the best of their different abilities the CampFire law, but while the third volume in this series will show them stillunder its influence, they will be pursuing their own careers underutterly different circumstances in a story to be called: "The Camp FireGirls in the Outside World."

  BOOKS BY MARGARET VANDERCOOK

  THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES

  The Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge The Ranch Girls' Pot of Gold The Ranch Girls at Boarding School The Ranch Girls in Europe The Ranch Girls at Home Again The Ranch Girls and their Great Adventure

  THE RED CROSS GIRLS SERIES

  The Red Cross Girls in the British Trenches The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Line The Red Cross Girls in Belgium The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army The Red Cross Girls with the Italian Army The Red Cross Girls Under the Stars and Stripes

  STORIES ABOUT CAMP FIRE GIRLS List of Titles in the Order of their Publication

  The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World The Camp Fire Girls Across the Sea The Camp Fire Girls' Careers The Camp Fire Girls in After Years The Camp Fire Girls at the Edge of the Desert The Camp Fire Girls at the End of the Trail The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines The Camp Fire Girls on the Field of Honor

  * * * * * *

  Transcriber's note:

  Obvious typographical errors were corrected without note.

  Promotional material was moved to the end of the text.

  Inconsistently-cited book titles were changed to match the actualbook.