The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill | Page 7

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, but perhaps as a part of her inheritance. Now she made a little bow to Betty. "I am sorry I was rude to you, Princess," she said gently, "but tell you the reason for my special tirade against poverty to-night, I will not and Mollie shall not tell either."
Without replying Betty turned to pick up her blue cloak which had dropped from her shoulders as she knelt by the lounge. It had a cap attached with a blue silk lining and this she slipped over her head.
"It isn't worth while for me to talk of my plan to-night, then,"