The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill | Page 6

in there to-night and I haven't yet finished my
chores."
She led the way with the candle down the shabby hall until both girls
entered the lighted room. There, with a little cry of surprise, Betty ran
over and dropped down on her knees by the side of a lounge.
The woman on the lounge was not so large as the girl, although her
brown hair showed a good deal of gray and her face looked tired and

worn. She had been holding a magazine in her hands, but evidently had
not been reading, for her eyes had turned from the girl, who stood only
a few feet away from her drying some cups and saucers, to the two
others who had just come in, without an instant's delay.
"I am quite all right, dear," she answered the newcomer, "only the
kitchen seemed so warm and cozy after the wet day and I was tired."
Betty was too familiar with the lovely, old-fashioned kitchen of her
dearest friends even to think about it, but to-night she did look about
her for a moment.
The room was the largest in the cottage; the walls were of oak so dark a
brown from age that they were almost black; there were heavy rafters
across the ceiling and swinging from them bunches of dried, sweet-
smelling herbs. The windows had broad sills filled with pots of red
geraniums and ground ivy, and as they were wide open the odor of the
wet, spring earth outside mingled with the aromatic fragrance of the
flowers.
An old stove was set deep into the farthest wall with a Dutch oven at
one side and above it a high, severely plain mantel holding a number of
venerable pots and pans of pewter and copper and two tall, copper
candlesticks. The candles were lighted, as the room was too large for
the single light of the lamp on the table near the lounge.
Polly O'Neill had gone straight to her sister and putting both hands on
her shoulders had pushed her steadily back inch by inch until she
forced her into a large armchair.
"Mollie Mavourneen, you know I hate washing dishes like an owl does
the day light, but I am not going to let you do my work and to-night
you know the agreeable task of cleaning up belongs to me. I asked you
to leave things alone when I went to the door and I don't think you play
fair." Polly seized a cup with such vehemence that it slipped from her
hand and crashed onto the floor, but neither her mother nor Mollie
showed the least sign of surprise and only Betty's eyes widened with
understanding.

Strangers always insisted that there were never twin sisters in the world
so exactly alike as Mollie and Polly O'Neill (not that their names had
ever been intended to rhyme in this absurd fashion, for they had started
quite sensibly, as Mary and Pauline), but to the friends who knew them
both well this idea was absurd. It was true they were of the same height
and their hair and eyes of the same color, their noses and mouths of
somewhat the same shape, but with these superficial likenesses the
resemblance ended. Anybody should have been able to see that in each
detail Polly was the more intense; her hair was blacker and longer, her
eyes bluer, her cheek bones a little higher with brighter color and her
chin and delicate nose a trifle longer and more pointed. Of the two girls,
however, Mollie was the prettier because her features were more
regular and her expression more serene; but once under the spell of her
sister, one never thought much of her appearance.
Polly had a temperament and she was having an attack of it to-night;
the room was fairly electric with it. From some far off Irish ancestor
she must have inherited it, for though her father had been an Irishman
and had spent forty out of the fifty years of his life in Ireland, he had
quite a different disposition and had been as amazed by Polly in her
babyhood as the rest of her family.
Captain O'Neill had resigned from the English army eighteen years
before and crossed the ocean to spend a few years in the neighborhood
of the White Mountains on account of his health; he had no more
money than most Irish gentlemen, but had charming manners, was
extremely handsome and had soon fallen in love and married a girl
twenty years younger than himself. Mary Poindexter had been the girl
most loved in Woodford, one of its belles and heiresses, but her money
had not amounted to much and soon disappeared after her marriage,
until now she had only the cottage in which