Polly sighed as her mother rose without replying and left the room, and Betty did he her best to hide her smiles, for everybody in Woodford believed that Mrs. O'Neill's employer had more than a friendly interest in her, and though Polly constantly railed at their poverty and Mr.

Wharton was the richest man in the village, the very sound of his name used often to irritate her.

The candles had at last burned down to their sockets and softly Betty blew out the last flickering flames. With a nod of understanding Mollie turned down the lighted lamp and after a fashion of many years the three girls drew three little old fashioned rockers in a semicircle up before the kitchen fire.

"My plan is to form our Camp Fire Club of just the right girls and to have just the right guardian and then to spend our whole summer camping in the woods," Betty explained quickly at last. "You see I don't want to go to Europe with mother and father this summer one bit, I am dead tired of hotels and sights. So at dinner to-night I talked over the Camp Fire plan with father and though mother wasn't enthusiastic I could see father didn't think it in the least a bad idea, so I am sure he will give us the camping outfit if I beg very hard and we can all share expenses afterwards. Can't you understand that if Mary lets you spend your summer in camp she can go away and rest and think no more about you and we can have such a wonderful time."

In the half darkness Polly danced a shadow dance and then flung her arms about her friend. "Oh, Princess, I might have known you were as clever as 'Sentimental Tommy' and would surely 'find a wa'. I am sure mother will think it a beautiful plan for us. Just to live among the trees and the stars and hear the birds sing, and tell stories about our own camp fire and to sing."

"Yes, and to do our own cooking and cleaning and wood gathering and a thousand other practical things," laughed Betty, to stop Polly's rhapsodizing. "But the truly important part of our scheme is to find congenial girls for our club and the right guardian."

"There are four of us already," Mollie suggested.

Betty appeared surprised. "Just you and Polly and me; what fourth girl do you mean?"

As Mollie did not answer at once, a low whistle came from between Polly's closed lips. "Do you mean, Princess, that you do not intend to invite the girl who told you about the Camp Fire Club, Esther Clark? I know her by sight at school."

Betty frowned. "Certainly I had not meant to include her; she does not belong to our set. I don't mean to be rude, but she has been raised in an orphan asylum and n.o.body knows who she is. I suppose she comes of some very common family."

"Common families sometimes produce very uncommon characters," Polly returned dryly. "And s-n-o-b spells sn.o.b, but not Betty, I hope. I wish you wouldn't think so much about 'family', Princess; I do believe we ought to judge people by what they are themselves and not by what their ancestors have been."

With a quick movement Betty half overturned her chair. "Good-night,"

she said, "we can talk things over to-morrow. I promised not to be too late to-night. It isn't that I really mind having Esther in our club, only we don't know her very well and it seems most important that we should all be congenial."

But Betty could not move toward the door because her skirts were held fast. "If you go now I shall cry my eyes out all night," Polly protested in a tone that was almost convincing. "It was horrid of me, darling, to tell you the truth and me Irish and believin' in the blarney stone," she apologized in her Pollyesque fashion. "Please never, never tell me the truth about myself and have anybody in your club you like. Only if you expect to have twelve girls who exactly agree you will have to leave both you and me out to start with."

Betty laughed, only half appeased, but Mollie was speaking quietly and because she talked less frequently than the other two girls they usually paused to listen to her.

"I think the more unlike we girls are the more fun we will have and the more we will help one another," she suggested. "But, Betty, do you know who has started this Camp Fire idea in Woodford and who knows just what we ought to do?"

Betty groaned. "Who else could it be, my dear, but my arch-enemy, the person I like least and who likes me even less in all this village. Ah, is anything ever perfect in this life? Martha McMurtry, the science teacher at the high school, who will certainly cause me to remain in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s another year unless I learn something more than what H2O means, is the only woman Esther could suggest."

The sisters laughed, since Betty's battles with this teacher had kept things lively.

"You poor dear, we can't have her for our guardian," Polly insisted sympathetically. "Can you imagine such a prim, scientific old maid ever understanding anything of the beauty and romance of life in the woods?

I would like t.i.tania, Queen of the Fairies, to be our only chaperon."

Before the other girls could dispute the absurdity of Polly's final suggestion, the kitchen door opened and Mrs. O'Neill returned looking unusually cross. "Why didn't you join me, you wicked children?" she said reproachfully. "Mr. Wharton came to ask me, since I was not going away, to look after his little girl this summer. He has to leave on some business trip and as Frank is to camp in the woods, there was nothing for the poor man to do with Sylvia. I hope you won't mind very much, for I have promised to take care of her."

"Sylvia!" The three voices made a dismal chorus.

"That stupid, ill-mannered child! I am sorry, dear, but you are not going to look after anything or anybody this summer but yourself. You see you are sailing for Ireland in a few weeks and we are going to live in the woods and be taken care of by our old mother earth and our father, the sun," Polly replied dramatically.

"You are talking nonsense, Polly; please don't be tiresome any more to-night," Mrs. O'Neill urged, lying down on the sofa again, as though she were too weary to be up another minute. "I can't discuss the matter with you, but Mr. Wharton has been too kind for me to refuse him this request."

Betty found her blue cloak again and softly slipped over to kiss the older woman good-night. "Don't worry, what Polly told you is true, but Sylvia shall be looked after just the same."

She slipped away, Polly following to watch her safely across the street as she always did. Outdoors the girls stood silent for a moment looking up at the beauty of the night. The stars were shining and the warmth the day had failed to bring to the earth had been followed by some unseen messenger of the night.

"You are going to include that hateful child in your Camp Fire Club after what I said to you, Betty?" Polly whispered. "Oh, if only her name wasn't Sylvia and she didn't have a snub nose and wear goggles I could forgive her. But think how absurd the combination is! Anyhow you are a dear, and it must be because I am Irish that I am always in the wrong."

CHAPTER IV

"MEG"

Thump, thump, thump came the sound of a heavy object rolling slowly step by step down a long stairway and then after an interval of ten seconds a prolonged, ear-piercing roar.

Immediately a girl darted out of a room on the second floor of a pretty brick house, colliding with a young man several years older, who came forth at the same time from his own room across the hall.

"Great Scott, Meg, what are you doing only half-dressed at this hour of the day?" he demanded with brotherly contempt.

"We will discuss my costume or lack of it later," she returned, holding her short flannel dressing sacque together and laughing over her shoulder where one long blond plait hung neatly braided, the rest of her hair falling loose. "Methinks that was Horace Virgil Everett trying to break up the furniture somewhere! Was there ever such an infant born into this suffering world? I simply never turn my back without his getting into fresh trouble."

While she was talking she was also running downstairs, followed in a more leisurely manner by her brother. Both of them glanced into the empty library and untidy dining-room as they pa.s.sed and finally arrived in a dark pa.s.sageway at the end of the back stairs.

A small object lay on the floor with its arms and legs outspread, showing not the slightest inclination to pick itself up, and on Meg's bending over it the wails broke out afresh.

"Oh, do shut up, 'b.u.mps'," Jack Everett said good-naturedly. "You haven't killed yourself and you're much too big for Meg to carry."

But the small boy clung desperately to his sister, his fat arms about her neck and his legs about her waist until with difficulty she was able to get him upstairs and into her own room.

He was probably about three feet high and almost as broad, between three and four years old, with brown hair that would stand up in a pompadour simply because it was too stiff to lie down, a perfectly insignificant nose, a Cupid's bow of a mouth and two large grave blue eyes, as innocent of mischief as any lamb's.

At the present moment, however, his eyes were simply raining tears, as though they had their source in a cloudburst, and over one of them a b.u.mp appeared as large as an egg. Indeed, Horace Virgil, named for his Professor father's favorite Latin poets, had been rechristened 'b.u.mps'

by his older brother and was more commonly known by that t.i.tle.

Meg kept glancing at the clock as she dampened her small brother's forehead with witch hazel. "I am afraid I can't go," she said in a disappointed tone, "and I am dreadfully sorry because I promised. But if I leave Horace with the servants now he will howl himself ill. I don't suppose you were going to stay in for a few hours. Oh, of course not!" she concluded, seeing that her older brother was wearing his khaki service uniform and held a big, broad-brimmed hat in his hand. "Heigh- ho, don't I wish I were a boy," she sighed whimsically, turning at last toward her mirror, decorated with college flags, and beginning to braid the second half of her hair.

John Everett, frowned and fidgeted. "I am sorry, Meg," he replied after a moment. "I would stay at home, only there is a meeting of my brigade and when a fellow belongs to a thing why he owes it some of his time. I don't see why you have to stay at home so much. Of course it is a good deal for a girl to have to look after, a house and father and the kid and me, but you have two maids and if you only were a better manager.

Why you don't seem even to take time to dress like other girls, you are always kind of flying apart with a b.u.t.ton off your waist or the braid torn on your skirt, and I do love a spick and span girl. Why don't you look like Betty Ashton, she's always up to the limit?"

Margaret Everett coiled her yellow plaits about her head, keeping her back turned to hide the trembling of her lips until she was able to answer cheerfully. "Why yes, I should like to look like 'The Princess'

and wear clothes like she does, but in the first place I am not so good looking as Betty, I haven't a maid to see after my clothes and fifty dollars a month to dress on--and I haven't a mother."

Jack Everett flushed. He was a splendid looking fellow, big and brown, with light hair of almost the same coppery tones as his sister's, and although but eighteen was nearly six feet tall. It was his last year at the Male High School of which his father was President, and already he had pa.s.sed with high honors his entrance examinations for Dartmouth College.

"Oh, I say, Meg, don't pile it on," he protested. "You are handsome enough all right, and it was only on your own account that I was wishing you could run things better."

Meg had evidently given up the idea of her engagement by this time, for she had seated herself in a big chair with her small brother on her lap and was rocking him slowly back and forth, his head resting on her shoulder.

"You are right, Jack, I am not offended," she answered. "I know I am a poor manager, but somehow I don't just take to housekeeping and mothering naturally. Men always think girls know such things by instinct. They don't understand that we have to learn them just as boys learn bookkeeping or office work and I have never had any one to teach me."

"The late Miss Everett," a new voice called unexpectedly, apparently coming from about midway up the front steps. "Meg, may I come on upstairs, the front door was half open and I knew full well that you would never keep your promise to me unless I came and got you."

Meg put down her small burden hastily and John unconsciously stiffened his broad shoulders until his appearance was more than ever military.