The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill | Page 9

across the kitchen she seized the two tall candlesticks from the mantelpiece and setting them down in the center of the floor afterwards added the third, with which Polly had lighted their way through the hall. Above them she made a mystic sign by flattening the fingers of her right hand against those of her left, while slowly she revolved about them chanting: "Wohelo, Wohelo, Wohelo, in you lies the answer to all our difficulties," to the entire amazement of her small audience.
CHAPTER III
"WORK, HEALTH AND LOVE"
"Much learning hath made her mad," sighed Polly mournfully, Betty being a notoriously poor student.
Mollie was staring thoughtfully at their visitor. "That is an Indian folk dance; perhaps Betty is pretending to be Pocahontas," she suggested, with such an evident attempt to explain away her friend's eccentricities that Betty stopped in her dance to laugh, and Polly and Mrs. O'Neill followed suit.
"I am not mad and I am not playing at being Pocahontas, but as usual Mollie is nearer right than her sister Polly because there is a good deal about the Indians in what I want to tell you." Betty sat down before the three shining candles and taking a little stick from the pile of wood near by she pointed it at her third candle. "You are to guess what my strange word, 'Wohelo' means. No, it is not an Indian, word, although it sounds like it. Mary, you begin by taking the last syllable first. What is the greatest thing in the world?"
Mrs. O'Neill, some minutes before, had risen half way up from her lounge and was leaning her head on her arm, while she watched Betty's curious proceedings. "The greatest thing in the world?" she repeated softly. "Far wiser persons than I found the answer to that question many years ago. The greatest thing in the world is love."
Betty nodded. "Now, Polly, you may have the next guess, though you are sure to say the wrong thing. What is the next greatest thing to love?"
Polly shrugged her thin shoulders, her face still moody in spite of her recently awakened interest. "Oh, I told you the answer to that question when you first came into this room, Betty Ashton, though none of you chose to believe me. It is plain as a pipe-stem to me that wealth is the next best thing to love and sometimes it is better when you happen to love the wrong thing--or person."
"It rhymes with wealth but begins with the letter 'h'," the questioner returned hastily, too much in earnest to waste further time in argument. "Now, Mollie, you have the third turn, remember you are to decide what the first syllable stands for, 'Wo'."
For a few seconds the third girl hesitated, her cheeks flushing uncomfortably. Not so quick or clever with her tongue as Polly and Betty she was far more gifted with her fingers. "I am sure I don't know what you mean," she replied. "'Wo' is the beginning of the word 'woman', but you can't mean woman. I know you and Polly think books of plays and novels the greatest things in the world, but I don't and besides I can't find the right word for them. You know what I really like best is just cooking and cleaning up and putting flowers on the table, stupid household things that can't have anything to do with your wonderful word." And Mollie looked so apologetic for her own domestic tastes that her mother took both her hands and held them tight.
"For goodness' sake, Mollie dear, even in these days of the advanced female it is still something to be proud of, to have real womanly tastes. Because some women go out into the world is no reason why they should lose their womanly instincts. What we are all working for, both men and women, is really just the making of a home, a big or a little one. I don't know myself what word Betty is searching for, but I do believe these very things that you like best come very close to my own guess. For if love is the greatest thing in the world, the making of a home to shelter it is most important. I have an idea that love would come to a tragic end if, when it returned home to dinner, Polly should meet it in the character of Ophelia, with wild flowers in her hair, offering it rosemary and rue for dinner instead of meat and vegetables."
Again the audience laughed because of Polly's well-known devotion to the drama and because if she were left alone to look after the cooking, her mother and Mollie often returned to find her poring over her recitations with the dinner burning on the stove.
"If mother is going to preach a sermon with