How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl | Page 6

that Aunt Susan will accept," and Mrs. Hollister calmly drew on her gloves.
Now, as her mother was not in the habit of considering her grandmother's comfort, and as the two women were seldom of one accord, Ethel looked at her furtively and with a puzzled expression of countenance, but that lady acted not the least embarrassed. It seemed strange to Ethel that all at once she should wish to cheer up her mother-in-law by inviting her country sister to visit them, but the girl simply said:
"That's lovely, Mamma," and went up to her room to study.
Although she disliked to credit her mother with such artifices, she finally hit upon a solution of the object of the invitation. It must be that it was Aunt Susan's money she was after, and why? Suddenly, it all came to the girl--it was to get Aunt Susan to like her (Ethel, her grand-niece) and make her her heiress, if not to all at least to a part of her fortune.
Ethel sat and gazed at the pretty room in which Mrs. Hollister had spent so much time decorating and making attractive. In her heart there was a desire to denounce her mother. Then, when she realized that it was all being done to benefit herself, she could feel nothing but pity for the woman whose one thought in life was for her daughter. She thought: "She will even tell people that I am Aunt Susan's heiress, and I must sit by and know that it is untrue. Everything is untrue in this house. Oh, how I wish I could get away from it all!" But to her grandmother she told her suspicions.
"Never mind, my lamb," said the old lady. "I know Susan well enough to say that she will love you for yourself, and probably she does intend to leave you and Kate half of her fortune at least. If it serves to help your mother socially, why Susan wouldn't care--she'd only laugh. Susan's very keen and sharp, my child. No one can make her do what she doesn't care to. Now don't you worry over anything. When she comes just be kind and polite to her and help make her visit pleasant."
"But, Grandmamma, I should die of mortification if she even conceived the idea that mother had that in her mind when she asked her here for a visit. Oh, I couldn't endure it. Please never let her know what I suspect. Will you promise, or I cannot look into her face."
"Your Aunt Susan shall never suspect such a thing from me. I promise," replied Grandmamma Hollister. "I am only too glad to see her once more. I could almost forgive your mother for any duplicity in it so long as she can come, for Susan and I are growing old and it will not be many years before one of us goes. But, Ethel, don't expect to see any style. Aunt Susan is a plain country woman. It may be a trial for you to have to go out with her."
"Oh, never, if she's like you, Grandmother," said the girl, kissing her, "and she is your own sister. She must be like you. But there's Nannie Bigelow and Grace McAllister. I wonder what they want."
"Hello! Ethel," called two young voices, "we're coming up. Your mother said we might."
"All right, girls; I'm in Grandmamma's room," replied Ethel, "come in here."
After greeting the old lady affectionately they began: "What do you know about it?" said Grace--"here Dorothy Kip has joined a new Society called the 'Camp Fire Girls,' and from the first day of vacation--May fifteenth--until October she's going to live in the woods and camp out."
"Yes," broke in Nannie Bigelow, "I'm just crazy to belong but Mamma won't let me because she heard that two of the girls who are to be in the Company live in the Bronx in a small flat and go to public school. But Connie Westcott's aunt is to be the head or 'Guardian,' and these girls are in her Sunday School class. She likes them and insists upon their becoming members. Isn't it ridiculous, Mrs. Hollister, that just because these girls are poor they're not considered fit to associate with us by some mothers, and I mean mine. As if I was half as good as they. Why, my great-grandfather was a shoemaker. Papa told me all about it, and he was a dandy good shoemaker, too; but Mother gets furious when I refer to it," and Nannie threw herself in a chair before the open fire that Grandmother Hollister always kept lighted save in warm weather.
"I know my mother wouldn't let me join," said Ethel. "Why, Kate Hollister is the Guardian of a Company in Columbus, Ohio, and Mother wouldn't allow her to speak of it even.