CHAPTER II "Sunrise Cabin"
"Ach, gnaedige Fraeuleins, it ist not possible."
"No, I know it isn't," Betty returned with her most demure expression,although there were little sparks of light at the back of her gray-blueeyes. She rose stiffly from the ground with Esther's assistance and stoodleaning on her arm, while both girls without trying to hide theirastonishment surveyed a middle aged, shabbily dressed German with hisviolin case under one arm and his violin under the other.
"I haf been visiting the Orphan Asylum in this neighborhood where I haffriends," he explained. "I am in Woodford only a few days now and aftersupper when the storm is over I start back to town. Then I thought Iheard some one singing, calling, perhaps it is you?" He looked only atBetty, since in the semi-darkness with the fire as a background it wasdifficult to distinguish but one object at a time and that only byconcentrated attention. But as she shook her head he turned towardEsther.
"When I hear the singing I play my violin, thinking if some one was lostin these hills I may find them."
But Esther was not thinking of her discoverer, only of what he had said."Do you mean we are really not far from the Country Orphan Asylum?" sheasked incredulously. "And actually I have gotten lost in a neighborhoodwhere I have spent most of my life! It is the snow that has made thingsseem so strange and different!" Turning to Betty she forgot for a momentthe presence of the stranger. "I'll find my way to the asylum right offand bring some one here to mend our sleigh and give poor little Fire Starsomething to eat. I don't believe we are more than two miles from SunriseCamp."
However, Betty was by this time attempting to make their situationclearer to the newcomer. She pointed toward their sleigh at the bottom ofthe gully and their pony under the tree and told him of camp fires andgrocery supplies to be carried to Sunrise cabin, until out of the chaosthese facts at least became clear to his mind--the girls had lost theirway in the storm and because of Betty's injured ankle and the brokenvehicle, had been unable to make their way home.
At about the same hour of this same evening, two other young women werewalking slowly up and down in front of a log house in a clearing near thebase of a hill, with their arms intertwined about each other's shoulder.Outside the closed front door of the house a lighted lantern swung. Fromthe inside other lights shone through the windows, while every now andthen a face appeared and a finger beckoned toward the sentinels outside.Nevertheless, they continued their unbroken marching, only stopping nowand then to stare out across the snow-covered landscape.
"They simply have not tried to attempt it, Polly; it is foolish for youto be so worried," one of the voices said.
But her companion, whose long black hair was hanging loose to her waistand who wore a long red cape and a red woolen cap giving her a curiouslyfantastic appearance, only shook her head decisively.
"You can't know the Princess as well as I do, Rose, or you would neverbelieve she would give up having her own way. She went into town when therest of us thought it unwise and she will come back, frozen, starved,goodness only knows what, still come back she will. Poor Esther is butwax in her hands. I wonder if anything happens to break the Princess'will whatever will become of her?"
The other girl sighed and her friend gazed at her sympathetically but alittle curiously.
"Betty will bear disappointment just as the rest of the world does," sheanswered, "filling her life with what she can have. But I do wish she andEsther would come back to camp now, or at least send us some word. Thestorm has been over for several hours and none of us will be able tosleep to-night on account of the uncertainty."
With one of her characteristic movements Polly O'Neill now moved swiftlyaway from the speaker. "I am going to ring our emergency bell if you arewilling, Rose," she announced. "Oh, I know we Camp Fire girls hate toappeal to outsiders for aid, but it's got to be done for once, for Isimply can't stand this suspense about Betty and Esther any longer." Thenwithout waiting for an answer, she ran toward the back yard of the cabinand an instant later the loud clanging of a bell startled the peace andquiet of the country night, but only for a moment, because before thesecond pull at the bell rope Polly felt her arm being held fast.
"Don't ring again, Polly, or at least not yet," her companion insisted,"for I am almost sure I can see a dark object coming this way along ourroad and there's a chance of its being Betty and Esther."
Ten minutes later the front door of the Sunrise cabin was suddenly burstopen and out into the snow piled half a dozen other girls in as manyvarieties of heavy blanket wrappers. The music of Fire Star's sleighbells had reached their ears several moments before the arrival of thewayfarers.
However, very soon afterwards, following a suggestion of SylviaWharton's, Betty Ashton was borne into the cabin, four of the girlscarrying her on a light canvas cot. This they set down before their bigfire glowing in the center of the living room of the Sunrisecabin--Sunrise cabin which had not existed even in the dreams of theSunrise Camp Fire girls until one afternoon in September not four monthsago. Esther, with Mollie O'Neill's arm about her, walked into the cabinon foot, since she was only stiff with fatigue and cold. However, onthrowing herself back in a big arm chair and allowing her shoes to bechanged by Mollie for slippers, she seemed more affected, by theiradventure than Betty.
For Betty, in Princess fashion, with Polly, Sylvia and Nan, and the girlwhom Polly had called Rose, all kneeling devotedly at her feet, wastalking cheerfully.
"He was just the most impossible, ridiculous looking person you evercould imagine, with red hair and glasses and dreadfully shabby clothes,the kind of a man in a German band to whom you would throw pennies outthe window, but he declared that he had once lived here in Woodford for ashort time years ago and had come back on some business or other. Oh,Esther, don't look at me so disapprovingly; I am saying nothing againsthim really. I am sure it was I who invited him to come out to our cabinand play for us girls. He looked so poor I thought I might be able to payhim then and I couldn't quite offer him anything for helping Esther mendthe sleigh and then seeing us part of the way home. Home! Oh, isn't ourbeloved Sunrise cabin the most delightful and original home a group ofCamp Fire girls ever possessed!"
And Betty's eyes clouded with tears, partly from pain and weariness butmore from joy at her return, as she looked from the faces gathered abouthers in the neighborhood of the great fireplace and then saw all theirglances follow hers with equal ardor throughout the length of their greatliving room.
For if ever Betty Ashton had proved her right to her friend Polly'sdefinition of her as a "Fairy Princess," it was when through her desireand largely through her money, Sunrise cabin rose on the very groundcovered by the white tents of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls only the summerbefore.
The cabin was built of pine logs from the woods at the foot of SunriseHill and the entire front of forty-five feet formed a single great room.The end nearer the kitchen the girls used as their dining room, while therest of the room was music room, study, reception and every other kind ofa room. And, except for the piano which Betty had brought from her ownblue room at home and a few chairs, every other article of furniture andalmost every ornament had been made by the Sunrise Camp Fire girlsthemselves.
On either side the high mantel there were low book shelves and a musicrack stood by the piano filled with the songs of the Camp Fire. Polly,Nan and Sylvia had manufactured a dining room table which was consideredan extraordinary achievement although the design was really very simple.Four wide pine boards about ten feet in length formed the top and thelegs were of heavy beams crossed under it at the center and at eitherend. The furniture of the living room was stained a Flemish brown tomatch the walls and floor done in the same color. On the floor were ragrugs of almost oriental beauty made by the girls and dyed into sevencraft colors. On the walls hung pieces of homemade tapestry, leatherskins embossed with Camp Fire emblems, and flowers so pressed and mountedas to give the effect of nature. Then on the mantelp
iece were twohammered brass candlesticks and a great brass bowl filled with holly andcedar from the surrounding wood. On odd tables and shelves were Indianbaskets woven by the girls and used for every convenient purpose fromholding stockings waiting to be darned to treasuring the Sunrise CampRecord Book which now had twenty-five written and illustrated pagessetting forth the history of Sunrise Camp since its infancy.
But Eleanor Meade had given the living room its really uniquedistinction. Having once read a description of a famous Indian snow tepi,she had painted on the ceiling toward the northern end of the room sevenstars which were to represent the north from whence the winter blizzardsblew and on the southern side a red disc for the sun. The artist hadpleaded long to be permitted to make the rest of the ceiling a brightblue with outlines of rolling prairie on the walls beneath, but this wasgreater realism in Indian ideals of art than the other girls were able toendure.
Yet notwithstanding so much artistic decoration, Science also had herplace in the Sunrise cabin living room. For Sylvia Wharton hadestablished a cupboard in an inconspicuous corner where she kept acollection of first aid supplies: gauze for bandaging, medicated cotton,peroxide, lime water and sweet oil, arnica, and half a dozen or moresimple remedies useful in emergencies. True to her surprisingannouncement at the close of their summer camp Sylvia, without wastingtime, and in her own quiet and apparently dull fashion, had already setabout preparing herself for her future work as a trained nurse bypersuading her father to let her have first aid lessons from a youngdoctor in Woodford. So now it was stupid little Sylvia (although the CampFire girls were no longer so convinced of her stupidity) who took realcharge of caring for Betty's foot, going back and forth to her cupboardand doing whatever she thought necessary without asking or heeding anyone else's advice.
Nevertheless, her work must have been successful, because in less than anhour after their return Betty, Esther and all the other girls were indreamland in the two bedrooms which, besides the kitchen, completedSunrise cabin. So soundly were they sleeping that it was only PollyO'Neill who was suddenly aroused by an unexpected knocking at their frontdoor. It was nearly midnight and Polly shivered, not so much with fear aswith apprehension. What could have happened to bring a human being totheir cabin at such an hour? Instantly she thought of her mother still inIreland, of Mr. and Mrs. Ashton traveling in Europe for Mr. Ashton'shealth. Slipping on her dressing gown Polly touched the figure in the bednear hers.
"Rose," she whispered, so quietly as not to disturb any one else. "Thereis some one knocking. I am going to the door, so be awake if anythinghappens." Then without delaying she slipped into the next room.
Crossing the floor in her slippers Polly made no noise and picking up thelantern which was always kept burning at night in the cabin, without anywarning of her approach she suddenly pulled open the door. The figurewaiting outside started.
"I--you," he began breathlessly and then stopped because Polly O'Neill'scheeks had turned as crimson as her dressing gown and her Irish blue eyeswere sending forth electric sparks of anger.
"Billy Webster," she gasped, "I didn't dream that anything in the worldcould have made you do so ungentlemanly a thing as to disturb us in thisfashion at such an hour of the night. Of course I have never liked youvery much or thought you had really good manners, but I didn'tbelieve----"
"Stop, will you, and let me explain," the young man returned, now fullyas angry as Polly and in a voice to justify her final accusation. Then heturned courteously toward the young woman who had entered the room soonafter Polly. "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Dyer," he continued, "I must havemade some stupid mistake, but some little time ago I thought I heard thesound of your alarm bell. It rang only once, so I waited for a littlewhile expecting to hear it again and then I was rather a long time ingetting to you through the woods on account of the heavy snow. It isawfully rough on you to have been awakened at such an hour because of mystupidity."
But Rose Dyer, who was a good deal older than Polly, put out both handsand drew the young man, rather against his will, inside the living room.
"Please come in and get warm and dry, you know our Camp Fire is neverallowed to go out, and please do not apologize for your kindness incoming to our aid." She lighted the candles, giving Polly a chance tomake her own confession. Though looking only a girl herself she was inreality the new guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire girls.
Polly, however, did not seem to be enthusiastic over her opportunity toannounce that she had been responsible for the alarm bell which hadbrought their visitor forth on such an arduous tramp. Billy Webster wasof course their nearest neighbor, as his father owned most of the land intheir vicinity, still the farm house itself was a considerable distanceaway. And to make matters worse the young man was too deeply offended byPolly's reception of him to give even a glance in her direction.
Polly coughed several times and then opened her mouth to speak, but Billywas staring into the fire poking at the logs with his wet boot. Rose haddisappeared toward the kitchen to get their visitor something to eat as asmall expression of their gratitude.
Unexpectedly the young man felt some one pulling at the back of his coatand turning found himself again facing Polly, whose cheeks were quite asred as they had been at the time of his arrival, but whose eyes wereshining until their color seemed to change as frequently as a wind sweptsky.
"Mr. William Daniel Webster," she began in a small crushed voice, "thereare certain persons in this world who seem preordained to put me alwaysin the wrong. You are one of them! I rang that bell because I thought mybeloved Betty and Esther were lost in the storm, but they weren't, andthen I forgot all about having rung it. So now I am overcome withembarrassment and shame and regret and any other humiliating emotion youwould like to have me feel. But really, Billy," and here Polly extendedher thin hand, which always had a curious warmth and intensity in keepingwith her temperament, "can't you see how hard it is to like a person whois always making one eat humble pie?"
Billy took the proffered hand and shook it with a forgiving strength thatmade the girl wince though nothing in her manner betrayed it.
"Oh, cut that out, Miss Polly O'Neill," he commanded in the confusedmanner that Polly's teasing usually induced in him. "It's a whole lotrottener to be apologized to than it is to have to apologize, and it isutterly unnecessary this evening because, though, of course, I didn'tknow you had rung the alarm bell, I did know if there was trouble atSunrise cabin you were sure to be in it."
And, as Polly accepted this assertion with entire amiability, ten minutesafterward she and their chaperon were both offering their visitor hotchocolate and biscuits to fortify him for the journey home. In order tomake him feel entirely comfortable Polly also devoured an equal amount ofthe refreshments, not because she was given to self-sacrifice but becauseuneasiness about her friends had made her forget to eat her supper.