CHAPTER X

A Good Samaritan

Ellen Deal came out into the September sunshine with a breakfast tray in her hand. The tray chanced to be a flat pine board, but it was covered with a neat little paper napkin. And, although the china on it was rough and failed to match, the aroma of the coffee, the fragrance of the freshly broiled bacon, made one indifferent to details.

The tall young man, who had been lying back in a steamer chair mournfully reading a torn newspaper several days old, suddenly straightened up and smiled.

The instant after he had taken the tray from Ellen’s hands his face clouded.

“Isn’t your breakfast all right?” she asked, a little furrow appearing in her forehead. Ellen’s expression was nearly always serious, but it was even more so now. Although it was so early in the morning and she had been cooking, she looked exquisitely neat in a fresh white blouse, a dark khaki skirt and one of her big hospital aprons. Her sandy-colored hair, a little redder from the past week’s outdoors, was drawn English fashion into a kind of bun at the back of her head. But, although Ellen tried to be prim, and although she could control her face, she had rebellious hair. One knows the kind—it would break out into little ripples on her forehead and at the back of her neck. And her skin, where it was not exposed, had the peculiar whiteness and beauty that belongs to her type of coloring.

The young man in the chair laughed at her question.

“My breakfast is perhaps the most perfect thing that ever happened, or at least that has happened to me in many a day,” he answered. “You see I have been living under my Sister Marta’s ministrations for a year, and Marta thinks herself above cooking. She prefers to follow the fine arts. Truth of the matter is the child has never been taught anything and has never had the right kind of feminine influence. You see, my mother and father died when Marta was a little girl and she and I have spent our lives in boarding houses. I don’t mean to criticise her; the child has made a terrible struggle to take care of me, and it has been awfully hard on her, staying out here in the wilds with a hopeless stick of a brother. You can’t imagine what it means—her discovery of the Camp Fire girls and your kindness. As for you, Miss Deal; well, I haven’t words to express my gratitude. It positively takes away my appetite for breakfast because I feel under such obligation to you.”

Ellen flushed uncomfortably. Her companion was a Southerner and talked easily and charmingly. He might say he did not know how to express his gratitude, but this was not true, for few hours passed in the day without his showing it in one way or another.

However, Ellen had not the gift of self-expression, and cordiality from another seemed to freeze her up. It was this trait of her character which had made Mrs. Burton not care for her much at first, and which kept her from greater intimacy with the girls, except Alice Ashton, who was not unlike her.

Now, instead of appearing gracious, she looked annoyed.

“I have asked you several times not to mention gratitude,” she returned, staring ahead and turning undeniably red. “If I must tell you the truth, I like it better here than at our own camp. That is, I like being useful—not your camp itself—there is no comparison.”

This time her companion showed embarrassment.

“Naturally there is no comparison. My sister’s and my arrangements are of the simplest and I have no doubt Mrs. Burton’s camp leaves nothing to be desired. That is one of the causes of my gratitude. I am afraid we have not been able to make you comfortable, though there is little doubt of what you have done for us.”

Robert Clark glanced around his own quarters. Even outdoors there was a pleasanter sense of order and comfort. An outdoor camp can be made the most disorderly place in the world.

This morning the fire was burning in the right place so that the smoke blew away from the two tents—not toward them. There was no litter of paper and of cans; no broken sticks cluttering the ground. The wood was neatly piled; the very earth itself appeared to have been swept.

“I wish you would eat your breakfast,” Ellen replied curtly.

Then she watched her companion so carefully there was no mistaking her interest, even if her manners were somewhat abrupt.

However, her companion was not in the slightest degree offended. In some way he seemed to understand Ellen’s curtness and her domineering attitude. Perhaps, if she had cared more for herself she would have tried to make herself more agreeable.

“Of course I’ll go back as soon as Marta is strong enough to take proper care of you,” she announced a few moments later as she arose to take away the empty breakfast dishes. “I know my being here makes the place more crowded, but I really would like to stay a few days longer and let Marta have a good time. She is better now and can get about after a fashion, and the Camp Fire girls want her to go on a few of their excursions. Mrs. Burton has taken a fancy to her, I think.”

“Then Marta will be in a seventh heaven. Only, I hope Mrs. Burton will get the nonsense out of her head that she wishes to be an actress. I am afraid, however, just the sight of her may have the opposite effect. You see, Marta and I used to plan to set the world on fire. Most youthful persons do, I was to be a great author and she a great actress. You see what our plans have come to.”

The young man’s tone was utterly despondent.

“I see nothing at all except that you are ill and have come out to Arizona to get well. You have been here a year and I presume you are already better.” There was not the least trace of sympathy in Ellen’s tone.

“As for being a great author, you seem to write all day as it is; so I don’t see how your illness interferes. I don’t suppose you were becoming famous as a newspaper reporter.”

Rob Clark sat upright, his whole face changing, both in color and expression.

“Miss Ellen Deal, you are the best tonic as well as the best nurse I have ever run across. I believe I would have a fighting chance in more ways than one if you were going to stay in my neighborhood until I do get well.”

He had spoken spontaneously and without thinking beforehand. Of course there had been no serious meaning in his words.

But Ellen continued to stand holding the tray and looking at him.

“I am seriously considering staying with you, if you will allow me,” she answered so unexpectedly, that her companion could only stare at her incredulously. “In the last few days I have decided that there is no reason why you should not recover if the right care is taken of you. But I doubt Marta’s ability. She is too untrained and too undisciplined. I am glad she is to come into our Camp Fire circle, where she ought to learn a great deal that will be valuable for her. But it will take some time.”

Robert Clark reached up and took the tray away from Ellen.

“Please sit down again for a moment,” he asked, pointing to the camp chair she had just occupied.

“What you have just said does me more good than you imagine. My sister and I haven’t many friends; we have always been poor, and an ancestry that has not made good in the last generation does not count for much nowaday—not even in the South. Then, you are very kind to try to brace me up; but a fellow is a quitter who breaks down in his early twenties and has to live on the money a few friends and relations furnish him and his sister. So you see, even if I would give my right hand to have you remain with us until you get really tired, why we just can’t afford it. A nurse like you. Miss Deal, is a luxury no man is rich enough to deserve.”

Although Ellen had sat down as her companion requested, she did not seem to be paying much attention to his words. But, at the last sentence, she frowned.

“Don’t be absurd. Of course, I know you can’t afford the expense of a trained nurse or you would have had one. You haven’t even a cook, and a cook may be more important than a nurse in your present condition. But I know how to cook as well as nurse. I have known ever since I was a little girl. New England girls are brought up sensibly. And I am not a trained nurse. At least I am not a graduate. I have simply been staying out here in the West as a guest of Mrs. Burton until I got over a slight breakdown. There was nothing the matter with me but being tired, and I feel splendid now.”

Ellen stopped a moment and seemed to be thinking deeply.

“I don’t see why you can’t let me stay here for a while with you and your sister without paying me. I have accepted Mrs. Burton’s hospitality when I didn’t even know her. I thought I might be useful in case any of the Camp Fire girls were ill, but they keep perfectly well. I think I am tired being idle, and I have money enough to pay my share of expenses with you. They cannot be much.”

Ellen was tactless.

Robert Clark was a Southerner and shrank from a discussion of money matters at all times. Ellen’s speech had touched him where his nerves were raw.

“Thank you, very much, but your suggestion is entirely out of the question,” he answered coldly. He had a sensitive, well-bred face, made more so by illness. Now his manner showed a hauteur of which he was wholly unconscious.

Ellen felt strangely ill at ease. She had a sensation of shrinking, of shriveling up, inside her. Then, to her intense anger, her eyes filled with tears. She hated herself for having hurt her companion and she hated him for having hurt her. But, most of all, she was horribly ashamed of her own tactlessness—her fashion of making people dislike her when she had intended being kind.

“I am sorry,” she said a little huskily in spite of her efforts to speak calmly, “I did not mean to force myself upon you and your sister. Of course you will be happier alone, and I am sure you will soon be stronger.”

What the young man would have answered could not be known, for just then Marta came out of her tent. She still limped a little but was not using a crutch.

Her eccentric, somewhat irregular face was radiant, and she was wearing her same best grey-green dress.

“When do you think the Camp Fire party will come for me, Miss Deal? You are an angel to stay here and let me go on this expedition with them. I am so happy I would like to dance with one leg, even if the other is slightly out of commission. But what is the matter, Rob; why are you looking so grouchy?”

Marta had come up close to the older girl and her brother and now surveyed him severely.

“Don’t mind Rob, if he is having a tantrum, Miss Deal. He does now and then, though I must say he has a better disposition than I have. If I were you I would just go away and leave him for a little while. When he gets lonely he is sure to behave better. Come with me, won’t you, and let us see if the Camp Fire party is nearly here.”

Ellen and Marta moved a few steps away. They had not gone far before they heard the old Camp Fire call.

“Wo-he-lo for work, wo-he-lo for health, wo-he-lo for love.”