The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake | Page 4

afraid he wasn't coming at all."
Will Burns, who was a cousin of Walter Stubbs, seemed to be well
known to the young people of the neighborhood, though his home was
near Jericho, some twenty miles away. He was greeted on all sides as
he made his way through the Sunday School room, where the festival
was being held, and it was some minutes before the girls from the farm
saw that he was nearing them.
"Well--well, so you got home all right?" he said, smiling at Bessie. "I
thought you wouldn't have any more trouble, once you got on the train.
I'm glad to see you again."
And then Dolly's vanity got a rude shock. For Will Burns began to
devote himself at once, after he had greeted Dolly and been introduced
to Zara and some of the other girls, to Bessie. Everyone in the room
soon noticed this, and since most of the girls there had tried to make
him pay attention to them, at one time or another, his evident fondness
for Bessie caused a little sensation. Dolly, so surprised to find a boy she
fancied willing to talk to anyone else that she didn't know what to do,
stood it as long as she could, and then went in search of Walter Stubbs,
whom she had snubbed unmercifully all evening.
But Walter had at last plucked up courage enough to resent the way she
treated him, and she found that he had bought two plates of ice-cream
for Margery Burton and himself, and that they were sitting in a corner,
eating their ice-cream, and talking away as merrily as if they had
known one another all their lives!
Eleanor Mercer, who had come over to have an eye on the girls, saw
the little comedy. She was sorry for Dolly, who was sensitive, but she
knew that the lesson would be a wholesome one for the little flirt, who
had been flattered so much by the boys in the city that she had come to
believe that she could make any boy do just what she desired. So she
said nothing, even when Dolly, without a single boy to keep her in
countenance, was reduced to sitting with one or two other girls who
were in the same predicament, since there were more girls there than
boys.

Walter did not even come to get her to ride home with him. Instead, he
found a place with Margery Burton, and Dolly had to climb into her
wagon alone. There she found Bessie.
"You're a mean old thing, Bessie King!" she said, half crying.
CHAPTER II
GOOD-BYE TO THE FARM
Dolly had spoken in a low tone, her sobs seeming to strangle her
speech, and only Bessie, who was amazed by this outburst, heard her.
Grieved and astonished, she put her arm about Dolly, but the other girl
threw it off, roughly.
"Don't you pretend you love me--I know the mean sort of a cat you are
now!" she said bitterly.
"Why, Dolly! Whatever is the matter with, you? What have I done to
make you angry?"
"If you were so mad at me the other day getting you into that
automobile ride with Mr. Holmes you might have said so--instead of
tending that you'd forgiven me, and then turning around and making
everyone laugh at me to-night! You're prettier than I--and clever--but I
think it's pretty mean to make that Burns boy spend the whole evening
with you!"
Gradually, and very faintly, Bessie began to have a glimmering of what
was wrong with her friend. She found it hard work not to smile, or even
to laugh outright, but she resisted the temptation nobly, for she knew
only too well that to Dolly, sensitive and nervous, laughter would be
just the one thing needed to make it harder than ever to patch up this
senseless and silly quarrel, which, so far, was only one sided.
To Bessie, who thought little of boys, and to whom jealousy was alien,
the idea that Dolly was really jealous of her seemed absurd, since she
knew how little cause there was for such a feeling. But, very wisely,

she determined to proceed slowly, and not to do anything that could
possibly give Dolly any fresh cause of offence.
"Dolly," she said, "you mustn't feel that way. Really, dear, I didn't do
that at all. I talked to him when he came to sit down by me, but that
was all. I couldn't very well tell him to go away, or not answer him
when he spoke to me, could I?"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say--that it was all his fault. But if
you hadn't tried to make him come he wouldn't have done it."
"I didn't try to make him