How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl | Page 6

of time. No, Mother, the best thing for you and
me to do is to travel along the lines of the least resistance.
Come,--dinner is ready. I'll help you down."
CHAPTER V
AN INVITATION TO AUNT SUSAN
One afternoon Mrs. Hollister called Ethel into her room. After closing
the door she said, "Ethel, I have written to your father's Aunt Susan,
who lives in Akron, to come here and make us a visit. You know she's
Grandmother's only sister, and I think it will do them both good to see
each other. Grandmother is delighted and I expect 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