The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill | Page 5

part in your education."
Esther had turned and was about to leave the room, but now at Betty's words, she looked at her strangely.
Her face had reddened again and because of the intensity of her feelings her big hands were once more pressed nervously together.
"Why, no, I never learned anything at the asylum but work," she answered slowly, "just dull, hateful, routine work; doing the same things over again every day in the same way, cooking and washing dishes and scrubbing. I suppose I was being useful, but there isn't much fun in being useful when nobody cares or seems to be helped by what you do. I know I am ugly and not clever, but I love beautiful people and, beautiful things."
Unconsciously her glance traveled from her listener's face to the small piano in the corner of the room. "And it never seemed to me that things, were divided quite fairly in this world, but now that I know about the Camp Fire, Girls I am ever so much happier."
"Camp Fire Girls?" Betty queried. "Do sit down, child, I don't wish you to leave me, and please don't say horrid things about yourself, for it isn't polite and you never can tell how things are going to turn out. But who are the Camp Fire Girls; what are the Camp Fire Girls; are they Indians or Esquimaux or the fire-maidens in 'The Nibelungen'? Perhaps, after all, something new has been invented for girls, and a little while ago I felt as discouraged as King Solomon and believed there was nothing new and nothing worth while under the sun."
Betty's eyes were dancing with fun and anticipation, her bored look had entirely disappeared, but the other girl evidently took her question seriously. She had seated herself in a small desk chair and kept her eyes fixed on the fire. "It seems very queer to me that you don't know about the 'Camp Fire Girls'," she answered slowly, "and it may take me a long time to tell you even the little bit I know, but I think it the most splendid thing that has ever happened."
CHAPTER II
"METHINKS YOU ARE MY GLASS"
Just across the street from the old Ashton place was another house equally old and yet wholly unlike it, for instead of being a stately, well-kept-up mansion with great rooms and broad halls and half an acre of garden about it, this was a cottage of the earliest New England type. It was low and rambling, covering a good deal of ground and yet without any porch and very little yard, because as the village closed about it and Elm Street became a fashionable quarter the land had been gradually sold until now its white picket fence was only a dozen feet from the front door and passers-by could easily have looked inside its parlor windows save for the tall bushes that served as a shield. By immemorial custom the cottage had always been painted white and green, but for a good many years it had not been troubled by any paint at all, "but had lived," as Polly said, "on its past, and like a good many persons in Woodford had gotten considerably run down by the process."
Now there were no lights at any of the front windows, although it was eight o'clock in the evening, but as the warm steady glow of a lamp shone from the rear of the house, it was plainly occupied.
There was no doubt of this in the mind of the girl who stood knocking noisily at the closed door, saying in an imploring voice:
"Oh, do please hurry, Polly dear, you know it is only me and that I can't bear to be kept waiting."
At this moment a candle was evidently being borne down the hall, for the door opened so quickly afterwards that two girls, one on either side the door, fell into, one another's arms.
"Dear me, it's 'The Princess' and she is no more ill than I am, though we were told she couldn't possibly be at school to-day on account of her ill health," the girl on the inside spoke first, recovering her breath. "I suppose royal persons may lie abed and nurse their dispositions, while poor ones have to keep on washing dishes. But come on into the kitchen, Betty, we are 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