The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake | Page 6

at all, did you. You
wanted to have a good time yourself--and you didn't care what sort of a
time he had! You just thought that if Will Burns did come he was sure
to want to be with you, and so, as soon as you saw him come in you
sent Walter off. Oh, you were silly, Dolly--and it was all your own fault.
Don't you think it's rather mean to blame me? We were together when
Will Burns was coming toward us, and I wanted to go away and let you
stay there--but you said I must stay. Don't you remember that?"
Dolly, as a matter of fact, had quite forgotten it. But she remembered
well enough, now that Bessie had reminded her of it. And, though she
had a hot temper, and was fond of mischief, Dolly was not sly. She
admitted it at once.
"I do remember it now, Bessie."

"Well, don't you see how absurd it is to say that I took Will away from
you? We were both there together--I couldn't tell when we saw him
coming that he was going to talk to me, could I? And listen, Dolly--he
asked me to go home with him in his buggy, and I said I wouldn't."
With some girls that would have made the chance of mending things
very remote. But Dolly, although her jealousy had been so quickly
aroused, was not the sort to get still angrier at this fresh proof that she
had been mistaken in thinking that Will Burns had liked her better than
Bessie.
"Why, Bessie--why did you do that?"
Bessie laughed.
"We're not going to be here very much longer, are we, Dolly?" she said.
"Well--if we're not going to be here, we're not going to see much of
Will Burns. You're not the only girl who--was--who thought that he
ought to be paying more attention to her than to me. There was a pretty
girl from Jericho, and he's known her a long time. Walter told me about
them.
"And I could see that she wanted him to drive her home, so I asked him
why he didn't do it. And he got very much confused, but he went over
to her, finally, and she looked just as happy as she could be when he
handed her up into his buggy, and they all went off along the road
together, Will and she and two or three other fellows who had driven
over together from Jericho."
Dolly's expression had changed two or three times, very swiftly, as she
listened. Now she sighed, and her hand crept out to find Bessie's.
"Oh, Bessie," she said, softly, "won't you forgive me, dear? I've made a
fool of myself again--I'm always doing that, it seems to me. And every
time I promise myself or you or someone not to do it again. But the
trouble is there are so many different ways of being foolish. I seem to
find new ones all the time, and every one is so different from the others
that I never know about it until it's too late."

"It's never too late to find out one's been in the wrong, Dolly, if one
admits it. There aren't many girls like you, who are ready to say they've
been wrong, no matter how well they know it. I haven't anything to
forgive you for--so don't let's talk any more about that. Everyone makes
mistakes. If I thought anyone had treated me as you thought I had
treated you to-night I'd have been angry, too."
Poor Dolly sighed disconsolately.
"You're the best friend I ever had, Bessie," she said. "I make everyone
angry with me, and when I say I'm sorry, they pretend that they've
forgiven me, but they haven't, really, at all. That's why I said that about
your still being angry with me. I thought you must be. I really am going
to try to be more sensible."
And so the little misunderstanding, which might easily, had Bessie
been less patient and tactful, have grown into a quarrel that would have
ended their friendship before it was well begun, was smoothed over,
and Dolly and Bessie, tired but happy, went upstairs to their room
together, and were asleep so quickly that they didn't even take the time
to talk matters over.
Eleanor Mercer, standing in the big hall of the farm house as the girls
went upstairs, smiled after Dolly and Bessie.
"I think you thought I was foolish to put those two in a room together,"
she said to Mrs. Farnham, the motherly housekeeper, whom Eleanor
had known since, as a little girl, she had played about the farm.
"I wouldn't say that, Miss Eleanor," said Mrs. Farnham. "I didn't see
how they were going to get along