The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill | Page 7

she and her daughters lived
and the income earned by her work as private secretary to Mr. Edward
Wharton of "The Wharton Granite Co." Captain O'Neill had lived only
until his twin daughters were eight years old and since then the girls
and their mother had kept up their small home together.
"You are dead tired and Polly is cross as two sticks and poor Mollie

does not know what to do with you. Would you rather I should go away?
I only came to tell you something wonderful," Betty whispered in Mrs.
O'Neill's ear.
The older woman shook her head. "No, you have come just at the right
time. I am not very tired, only my daughters chose to think so and
wouldn't let me help with dinner and so, as I am an obedient, well
brought-up mother, I am doing as I am told. And Polly is not in a bad
humor, at least I hope--"
The girl, who had been picking up the bits of broken china from the
kitchen floor, now straightened up and for the first time Betty
discovered that she must have been crying a short while before.
"Oh, yes, I am anything you may like to call me," Polly announced
indifferently, "and I am not in the least ashamed to have 'The Princess'
know it. If Betty had to stand all the things I have stood to-day, she
would be in a far worse humor. She and I are not angels like Mary and
Mollie, so I suppose that is the reason why we love one another part of
the time and hate one another the rest. I am sure I never pretend not to
being dreadfully envious of 'The Princess'."
Polly came over and sat down cross-legged on the old rug near her
mother and best friend, and though she smiled a little to remove the
sting from her words, something in her expression kept Betty from
answering at once. In the meantime Mollie joined the group, taking her
place at the foot of the lounge.
The three girls were nearly the same age and the closest friends, and
Betty probably spent nearly as much of her waking time, at the cottage
as she did in her own home, for whenever she was lonely or bored, or,
tired perhaps of having too much done for her, she had been used to run
across the street to play or work with her friends from the time they
were children. Mrs. O'Neill had never seemed very much older than her
daughters and had always been called "Mary" by the three girls.
Now Betty reached over and laid one and lightly on Polly. "Don't say
we hate no another just because we quarrel now and then and both have

bad tempers. I never hate Polly, do I Mary?"
But before Mrs. O'Neill could answer, Polly suddenly faced fiercely
about. "I hate you to-night, Betty," she insisted, and then to make her
words entirely unlike her actions, slipped one arm around her friend.
"Oh, you know that I don't really mean I hate you, I only mean that I
am horribly envious and jealous of your having all the money you want
and being able to do things without worry, not just things for yourself,
but things for other people." And Polly bit her lips and ceased speaking,
both because of the note of warning in her mother's face and because
the brightness had died away from Betty's.
"I wish you would understand, Polly, that just having things does not
necessarily make one happy; I often think it must be nicer to be poor
and to have to help like you and Mollie do. This afternoon I was feeling
quite forlorn myself, as I had a kind of headache and no one came to
see me, and then just like magic from out our haunted chamber there
appeared well, I can hardly call her a good fairy, she was too homely,
but at least a girl who told me of something so delightful that it sounds
almost like a fairy tale. I talked of it to father at dinner and then rushed
over to tell you, as I thought you might be interested, but perhaps I had
better wait--"
From the foot of the lounge Mollie O'Neill now interrupted. Utterly
unlike either her sister or friend in her disposition, her influence often
held them together.
"We do want to hear what you have to tell us, Betty, most dreadfully.
Just because we happen to be specially worried about something
to-night is no reason why Polly should be so mysterious. I vote we tell
you what our trouble is and then you tell us your secret."
Polly got up from the floor. She was always curiously intense, not
deliberately,