The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World Part 2

"But perhaps I could be useful. Maybe you haven't so many servants as you once had----"

Anthony stopped, for Betty's expression had changed so completely. Of course she had already repented of her offer.

"We have no servants and you could help a great deal," she answered. And then without any pretense of concealing them, she let two tears slide down her face. "It is only that I had forgotten for the moment that we are not going to be able to stay in our house much longer.

We can't afford to keep it for ourselves and I haven't been a success with having boarders. Still it may be some time before we can rent or sell it, and if you will stay here until then----"

Betty winced, for her visitor had this time clasped her hand until the pressure of its hard surface hurt.

"You know it would be the greatest thing that ever happened for me to be allowed to stay here a week," he added.

And Betty laughed. "Then stay."

As she opened the front door another visitor stood waiting on the outside. He was almost as unexpected as Anthony Graham. For it was Herr Crippen, the German music professor and Esther's father.

"What on earth could he want?" Betty thought irritably. She was beginning to feel anxious to get upstairs to her mother again. For in spite of the fact that she now believed that she had a real affection for Esther, she had never been able to recover from her first prejudice for this shabby, hesitating man. Then his manner toward her was always so apologetic. Why on earth should it be? She was always perfectly polite to him. What a queer combination of Thanksgiving visitors she was having!

"Gnadiges Fraulein," he began. And Betty ushered him into the drawing room.

For perhaps he was bringing her news of Esther.

CHAPTER III

HER PENSION

"Good luck never rains but it pours, as well as bad luck, mother,"

Betty Ashton said one morning nearly a week later. She had just put down a big tray of breakfast on a small table before Mrs. Ashton and now seated herself on the opposite side.

Mrs. Ashton sighed. "If your good luck storm has any reference to us, Betty dear, I am sure I don't get your point of view. For if anything but misfortune has followed our footsteps since your father's death I am sure I should like to hear what it is." And Mrs. Ashton s.h.i.+vered, drawing her light woolen shawl closer about her shoulders.

There are some persons in this world whom troubles brace. After the first shock of a sorrow or calamity has pa.s.sed they stand reinforced with new strength and new courage. These are the world's successful people. For after a while, ill luck, finding that it can never down a really valiant spirit, grows weary and leaves it alone. Then the good things have their turn--health, better and more admiring friends, fame, money, love. Whatever the struggle has been made for, if it has been sufficiently brave and persistent, the reward is sure. But there are other men and women, or girls and boys, for age makes no difference, who go down like wilted flowers in the teeth of the first storm. And on them life is apt to trample, misfortunes to pile up.

Mrs. Ashton was one of these women. She had made things doubly hard for Betty and d.i.c.k. Indeed, except for his sister, Richard Ashton would never have had the strength of purpose to sail for Germany to complete his medical studies. He would simply have surrendered and commenced his practice of medicine in Woodford without being properly equipped for perhaps the greatest of all the professions--the struggle to conquer disease. Yet somehow Betty had had a clearer vision than can be expected of most girls of her age. In a vague way she had understood that it is oftentimes wiser to make a present sacrifice for some greater future gain. So she had persuaded d.i.c.k to use the little money that he had for his work, a.s.suring him that she and her mother could get on perfectly well together at home. And with half a dozen summer boarders at the time of his leaving, it did look to d.i.c.k as though her confidence was not misplaced.

Now in answer to her mother's speech Betty said nothing at first. So that several tears sliding down Mrs. Ashton's cheeks watered her hot b.u.t.tered toast.

"I am sure I never expected to live to see this day, my dear, when you would have to cook your own breakfast and mine before you could leave for school," she murmured. "Why, I never thought that you would have to turn over your hand even to look after yourself. Until you developed that Camp Fire enthusiasm you had not been taught a single useful thing. After all, perhaps it might have been better for you if I had never been your mother, if----"

Betty laughed teasingly. "My dear Mrs. Ashton, you talk as if you could have avoided that affliction! You could not very well have helped being my mother, could you? You did not deliberately choose me out from a lot of girls. Because if you did, I should have very little respect for your good judgment. Think, if you might have selected either Polly or Esther! Why, then you would be sure to be rich again some day. For one of them would act so marvelously that she would be able to cast laurels at your feet, while the other would sing you back to fortune. But as it is, you will just have to put up with poor me until d.i.c.k gets his chance. Now do eat your breakfast while I relate the details of our good luck storm. In the first place, we are not going to have to give up our beloved house. At least not yet, and perhaps never if our German-American Pension plan turns out satisfactorily."

Betty drank a swallow of coffee, hardly appreciating what she was doing, so deep was her absorption in their affairs.

"Honestly, mother, I should never have dreamed of being so interested in this plan of Rose's and Miss McMurtry's for us, if it had not been for d.i.c.k's letters. But if German ladies can keep successful pensions, why not Americans? Remember what a funny lot of people d.i.c.k has described--the fat widow with the two musical daughters. I hope one of them won't set her cap for d.i.c.k, he loves music so dearly. Then you know the young boy student who was nearly starving when d.i.c.k rescued him, and the old Baron who wears a wig, and the half dozen others? But no matter how queer and funny they may be, they can be no more so than our pensioners. There is Miss McMurtry herself and Anthony Graham, and Dr. Barton moving into town to have an office in our old library. I wonder sometimes if he and Rose are still friends. They had a disagreement once out at the cabin and she just speaks to him since."

Then Betty Ashton hesitated and devoted herself to finis.h.i.+ng her breakfast.

"I am sure I don't understand why you fail to mention Herr Crippen, child, who is to have a room here with us and teach his pupils in our big drawing room. I am glad he has been so successful with his music pupils that he is able to give Esther the advantage of studying in New York. I wish you did not have such a ridiculous prejudice against him.

Indeed, my dear, I have a very strong reason for insisting that you be kind to him. He is Esther's father and----"

Mrs. Ashton spoke more firmly than was usual with her.

But Betty shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly. "Oh, of course I am glad enough to have the Professor here and I have never said I did not like him. But I am specially happy that Edith Norton's family has moved away so she is to have a room with us. I am kind of lonely without Polly and Esther, and somehow Edith,"----Betty broke off abruptly. Not even to her mother did she feel like mentioning the fact that Edith did not seem to be turning out quite so well as the other Sunrise Camp Fire girls.

With a hurried movement she next picked up the breakfast tray, exclaiming:

"Thank heavens we are not going to have to give our lodgers anything but their rooms and that Martha is coming back to do our cooking and the cleaning. Good old soul to offer to do it without pay. She said that she could not bear living anywhere except with us and that she had enough of father's money stored away in bank not to need any more. But we could not have had her work without pay." Betty kissed her mother lightly on the forehead. "If any one else turns up today and wishes a room, just refer them to me. I'm afraid I won't leave us a bed to sleep in. I am getting so anxious to surprise d.i.c.k by really earning a lot of money."

"Well, don't rent the back room that Esther used to have, Betty. You may move into it yourself some day if you like, but I would rather not have a stranger occupy it. I----"

"What on earth is queer about that room?" Betty interrupted. "I have not time to listen now, but you _must_ tell me. You talk as though it were a kind of Bluebeard's Chamber of Horrors. Yet I don't suppose you would put me in it if I were likely to have my head cut off in consequence. Good-bye, dear." And Betty fled out into the hall, realizing that it must be almost school time.

The door of Esther's old room happened by accident to be standing open, and still holding on to her tray, Betty paused before it for a few moments. She was not thinking of a possible mystery or secret in connection with the room, only wondering if Esther and Polly were to be at home for the Christmas holidays. They both wanted to come, she thought. But Esther was not sure of being able to afford it and Polly was uncertain of whether she wished to stay in her stepfather's house at a time when her stepbrother, Frank Wharton, whom she disliked so much, should also be at home for his holidays. The girl's face was a little wistful. She so longed to see both her friends. Without them and without d.i.c.k, this first Christmas under such changed conditions at home might be rather trying.

"Oh!" Betty exclaimed a trifle indignantly, with her arm shaking so that the dishes in her hands rattled dangerously. "What in the world are you doing in the house at this hour, Anthony Graham? You frightened me nearly to death, turning up at my elbow in such an unexpected fas.h.i.+on. I thought you had been gone hours!"

Anthony put down his coal scuttle and took hold of Betty's tray. "I have been away, but I came back for a moment because your mother wished me to do something for her as soon as I had the spare time." His tone was so surly that Betty smiled. Anthony had been brought up with such a different cla.s.s of people that he was unable to understand sarcasm or pretense of any kind. Whatever one said he accepted in exactly the words in which it was spoken. And Betty and her friends had always been accustomed to joking with one another, to saying one thing, often meaning another. Anthony should have had the sense to realize that she was not really cross, that her indignation was partly a.s.sumed.

Therefore she did not intend taking the trouble to set him right in the present instance.

"I'll carry the dishes down myself. I have plenty of time," she protested coldly.

But Anthony only held the more firmly to the tray, with his face crimsoning.

The truth was that he had been appreciating in the past few days a truth of which the girl herself was as yet unconscious. Betty's manner toward him had noticeably changed. In the excitement of their Thanksgiving day meeting and his romantic return of the money which she had completely forgotten, she had shown far more interest and friendliness than she now did. On that occasion Betty had overlooked the young fellow's roughness, his lack of education and family advantages. Really Anthony had never been taught even the common civilities of life and had to trust to a kind of instinct, even in knowing when to take off his hat, when to shake hands, how to enter or leave a room. And he understood keenly enough his own limitations.

Yet the change in Betty's att.i.tude had hurt him, even though he acknowledged to himself his failure to deserve even her original kindness. She was still kind enough of course in the things which she thought counted. She was cordial about his having his room in the house with her mother and herself and most careful of thanking him for any a.s.sistance which he rendered them. Yet the difference was there.

For neither in heart nor mind had Betty yet grown big enough to feel real comrades.h.i.+p with a boy so beneath her in social position and opportunities.

Nevertheless she did not mean to be ungracious and something in the carriage of the young man's head as he moved off down the hall suggested that he was either hurt or angry, although exactly why Betty could not understand.

"Don't go for a second, Anthony," she called after him. "I wanted to tell you that you are living in a house with a haunted chamber. At least I don't know whether this room is exactly haunted, but there is something queer about it that my mother and brother have never confided to me. Perhaps I shall move in and find out for myself what it is. I will if there is a chance of my friends, Esther Crippen and Polly O'Neill, coming home for the holidays. For it is so big that we could stay in it together. And perhaps Mrs. O'Neill will let Polly come here and visit me for a little while. Both the girls are doing wonderful things in New York City. And I am afraid if they don't come home pretty soon they will both have outgrown me. It is so horrid to be a perfectly ordinary person."

As Betty moved off, the expression on her companion's face did not suggest that he thought of her as entirely ordinary.

CHAPTER IV

TEMPTATION

"You are perfectly absurd and I haven't the faintest intention of confiding in any one of you." And Polly O'Neill, with her cheeks flaming, rushed away from a group of girls and into her own bedroom, closing the door and locking it behind her.

This winter at boarding school in New York City had not been in the least what she had antic.i.p.ated. Perhaps the character of the school she and her mother had chosen had been unfortunate. Yet they had selected it with the greatest care and it was expensive beyond Polly's wildest dreams. For, apart from her own small inheritance, her stepfather, Mr. Wharton, had insisted on being allowed to contribute to her support, and not to appear too ungracious both to her mother and to him, his offer had been accepted. Yet Polly did not consider herself any greater success in thus masquerading as a rich girl than she had been as a poor one. Was she never to be satisfied? Her school companions were all wealthy and few of them had any ideas beyond clothes and society. To them Polly had seemed a kind of curiosity.

She was so impetuous, so brilliant, so full of a thousand moods. Betty Ashton had once said that to know Polly O'Neill was a liberal education, and yet in order to know her one ought to have had a liberal education beforehand.

Today during the recreation hour at "Miss Elkins' Finis.h.i.+ng School,"

which was Polly's present abode, there had been a sudden discussion of plans for the future. And Polly, partly because she was in a contradictory mood and partly because she really wished it to be known, had boldly announced herself as poor as a church mouse with no chance of not starving to death in the future unless she could learn to make her own living.

And this had started the onslaught of questions from which she had just torn herself away.