Chapter 3

But Mrs. Royall still looked troubled. "She must be found," she said with quick decision. "Get the megaphone, Louise, and call her with that."

Still laughing, Louise obeyed. Her clear voice carried well, and many keen young ears were strained for the response that did not come. In the silence that followed a second call, Mrs. Royall spoke to another girl.

"Edith, get your bugle and sound the recall. If that does not bring her, two of you must hurry over to the farm and harness Billy into the buggy; and I will drive to Kent's Corners at once."

The girls were no longer laughing. "You don't think anything could have happened to Myra, Mrs. Royall?" one of them questioned anxiously. "Almost all of us have walked over there. I went alone and so did Mary."

"I know, but Myra is such a timid little thing. She cannot do what most of you can."

Edith Rue came running back with her bugle, and in a moment the notes of the recall floated out on the still summer air. It was a rigid rule of the camp that the recall should be promptly answered by any girl within hearing, so when, in the silence that followed, no response was heard, Mrs. Royall sent the two girls for the horse and buggy.

"Have them here as quickly as possible," she called after them.

Before the messengers were out of sight, however, there was an outcry behind them.

"Why, there she is! There's Myra now!" and every face turned towards the small figure coming from the clump of evergreens, her eyes still half-dazed with sleep.

With an exclamation of relief, Mrs. Royall hurried to meet her.

"Where were you, child? Didn't you hear us calling you?" she asked.

"I--I--no. I heard the recall, and I came--I guess I was asleep," stammered Myra bewildered by something tense in the atmosphere, and the eyes all centred on her.

"Asleep!" echoed Louise Johnson with a chuckle. "What did I tell you, girls?"

But Mrs. Royall saw that Myra looked pale and tired, and she noticed the change that came over her face as Louise spoke. A quick wave of colour swept the pale cheeks and the small head was lifted with an air that was new and strange--in Myra Karr. Mrs. Royall spoke again, laying her hand gently on the girl's shoulder.

"Myra, how long have you been asleep? How long have you been back in camp?"

And Myra answered quietly, but with that new pride in her voice, "It was quarter of four by the kitchen clock when I came. There was nobody here--not even Katie----"

"I'd just run out a bit to see if anny of ye was comin'," put in the cook from the kitchen door where she stood, as much interested as any one else in what was going on.

"And did you go to Kent's Corners, my dear?" Mrs. Royall questioned gently.

It was Myra's hour of triumph. She forgot Louise Johnson's mocking laugh--forgot everything but her beautiful new freedom.

"O, I did--I did, Mrs. Royall!" she cried out. "I was awfully frightened at first, but coming home I wasn't _one bit afraid_, and, please, you won't let them call me Bunny any more, will you?"

"No, my child, no. You've won a new name and you shall have it at the next Council Fire. I'm so glad, Myra!" Mrs. Royall's face was almost as radiant as the girl's.

It was Louise Johnson who called out, "Three cheers for Myra Karr! She's a _trump_!"

The cheers were given with a will. Tears filled Myra's eyes, but they were happy tears, as the girls crowded around her with questions and exclamations, and Miss Grandis stood with a hand on her shoulder.

"That's what Camp Fire has done for one girl," Mrs. Royall said in a low tone to Laura Haven. "That child was afraid of the dark, afraid of the water, afraid to be alone a minute, when she came. It is a great triumph for her--a great victory."

"Yes," returned Laura thoughtfully, and Anne added,

"You've no idea how lonesome the camp looked when Laura and I came back and found you all gone. It was so still it seemed almost uncanny. Myra never would have dared to stay alone here before."

IV

THE POOR THING

A week later Miss Grandis was called home by illness in her family, and she asked Laura to drive to the station with her.

"I wanted the chance to talk with you," she explained, as they drove along the quiet country road. "You know I should not have been able to stay here much longer anyhow, and now I shall not come back, and I want you to take charge of my girls. Will you?"

"O, I can't yet--I haven't had half enough training," Laura protested.

"I know, but you've put so much into the time you have had in camp, and I know that Mrs. Royall will be glad to have you in my place. You can keep on with your training just the same. I want to tell you about the girls." She told something of the environment of each one--enough to help Laura to understand their needs. "And there's Elizabeth Page, who is coming to-morrow," she went on. "I always think of her as the Poor Thing. O, I do so hope the Camp Fire will do a great deal for her--she's had so pitifully little in her life thus far. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she has been just a drudge for her stepmother and the younger children, and she's not strong enough for such hard work. She's never had anything for herself. The camp will seem like paradise to her if she can only get in touch with things--I'm sure it will."

"I'll do my best for her," Laura promised.

"I know you will. And you'll meet her when she comes, to-morrow?"

"Of course," Laura returned.

There was no time to spare when they reached the station, but Miss Grandis' last word was of Elizabeth and her great need.

Laura was at the station early the next day, and would have recognised the Poor Thing even if she had not been the only girl leaving the train at that place. Elizabeth was seventeen, but she might have been taken for fourteen until one looked into her eyes--they seemed to mirror the pain and privation of half a century. Laura's heart went out to her in a wave of pitying tenderness, but the girl drew back as if frightened by the warm friendliness of her greeting.

All the way back to camp she sat silent, answering a direct question with a nod or shake of the head, but never speaking; and when, at the camp, a crowd of girls came to meet the newcomer, she looked wildly around as if for refuge from all these strangers. Seeing this, Laura, with a whispered word, sent the girls away, and introduced Elizabeth only to Mrs. Royall and Anne Wentworth.

"Another scared rabbit?" giggled Louise Johnson.

"Don't call her that, Louise," said Bessie Carroll. "I'm awfully sorry for the poor thing."

Laura, overhearing the low-spoken words, said to herself, "There it is--Poor Thing. That name is bound to cling to her, it fits so exactly."

It did fit exactly, and within two days Elizabeth was the Poor Thing to every girl in the camp. Laura kept the child with her most of the first day; she was quiet and still as a ghost, did as she was told, and watched all that went on, but she spoke to no one and never asked a question. At night she was given a cot next to Olga's. When Laura showed her her place at bedtime, she pointed to the adjoining tent.

"I sleep right there, Elizabeth," she said, "and if you want anything in the night, just speak, and I shall hear you. But I hope you will sleep so soundly that you won't know anything till morning. It's lovely sleeping out of doors like this!"

Elizabeth said nothing, but she shivered as she cast a fearful glance into the shadowy spaces beyond the tents, and Laura hastened to add, "You needn't be a bit afraid. Nothing but birds and squirrels ever come around here."

Elizabeth went early to bed, and was apparently sound asleep when the other girls went to their cots. But after all was still and the camp lights out, she lay trembling, and staring wide-eyed into the darkness. A thousand strange small sounds beat on her strained ears, and when suddenly the hoot of an owl rang out from a nearby treetop, Elizabeth sprang up with a frightened cry and clutched wildly at the girl in the nearest cot.

Olga's cold voice answered her cry. "It's nothing but an owl, you goose! Go back to your bed!"

But Elizabeth was on her knees, clinging desperately to Olga's hand.

"O, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she moaned. "Please _please_ let me stay here with you. I never was in a p-place like this before."

Olga jerked her hand away from the clinging fingers. "Get back to your bed!" she ordered under her breath. "Anybody'd think you were a _baby_."

"I don't care _what_ anybody'd think if you'll only let me stay. I--I must touch s-somebody," wailed the Poor Thing in a choked voice.

"Well, it won't be me you'll touch," retorted Olga. "And if you don't keep still I'll report you in the morning. You'll have every girl in the camp awake presently."

"O, I don't care," sobbed Elizabeth under her breath. "I--I want to go home. I'd rather die than stay here!"

"Well, die if you like, but leave the rest of us to sleep in peace," muttered Olga, and turning her face away from the wretched little creature crouching at her side, she went calmly to sleep.

When she awoke she gave a casual glance at the next cot. It was empty, but on the floor was a small huddled figure, one hand still clutching Olga's blanket. Olga started to yank the blanket away, but the look of suffering in the white face stayed her impatient hand. She touched the thin shoulder of Elizabeth, and for once her touch was almost gentle. Elizabeth opened her eyes with a start as Olga whispered, "Get back to your bed. There's an hour before rising time."

Elizabeth crawled slowly back to her own cot, but she did not sleep again. Neither did Olga, and she was uncomfortably aware that a pair of timid blue eyes were on her face until she turned her back on them.

At ten o'clock that morning the girls all trooped down to the water. Some in full knickerbockers and middy blouses were going to row or paddle, but most wore bathing suits. With some difficulty Laura persuaded Elizabeth to put on a bathing suit that Miss Grandis had left for her, but no urging or coaxing could induce her to go into the water even to wade, though other girls were swimming and splashing and frolicking like mermaids. Elizabeth sat on the sand, her eyes following Olga's dark head as the girl swept through the water like a fish--swimming, floating, diving--she seemed as much at home in the water as on land.

"You can do all those things too, Elizabeth, if you will," Laura told her. "Look at Myra, there--she has always been afraid to try to swim, but she's learning to-day, and see how she is enjoying it."

Elizabeth drew further into her shell of silence. She cast a fleeting glance at Myra Karr, nervously trying to obey Mary Hastings' directions and "act like a frog"--then her eyes searched again for Olga, now far out in the bay.

When she could not distinguish the dark head, anxiety at last conquered her timidity, and she turned to Laura:

"O, is she drowned?" she cried under her breath. "Olga--is she?"

Anne Wentworth laughed out at the question. "Why, Elizabeth," she said, leaning towards her, "Olga's a perfect fish in the water. She's the best swimmer in camp. Look--there she comes now."

She came swimming on her side, one strong brown arm cutting swiftly and steadily through the water. When presently she walked up on the beach, a pale smile glimmered over Elizabeth's face, but it vanished at Olga's glance as she passed with the scornful fling--"Haven't even wet your feet--_baby_!"

Elizabeth's face flushed and she drew her bare feet under her.

"Never mind, you'll wet them to-morrow, won't you, Elizabeth?" Laura said; but the Poor Thing made no reply; she only gulped down a sob as she looked after the straight young figure in the dripping bathing suit marching down the beach.

"She notices no one but Olga," Laura said as she walked back to camp with her friend. "If Olga would only take an interest in _her_!"

"If only she would!" Anne agreed. "But she seems to have no more feeling than a fish!"

Many of the girls did their best to draw the Poor Thing out of her shell of scared silence, but they all failed. And Olga would do nothing. Yet Elizabeth followed Olga like her shadow day after day. Olga's impatient rebuffs--even her angry commands--only made the Poor Thing hang back a little.

When things had gone on so for a week, Laura asked Olga to go with her to the village. She went, but they were no sooner on the road than she began abruptly, "I know what you want of me, Miss Haven, but it's no use. I can't be bothered with that Poor Thing--she makes me sick--always hanging around and wanting to get her hands on me. I can't stand that sort of thing, and I won't--that's all there is about it. I'll go home first."

When Laura answered nothing, Olga glanced at her grave face and went on sulkily, "Nobody ought to expect me to put up with an everlasting trailer like that girl."

Still Laura was silent until Olga flung out, "You might as well say it. I know what you are thinking of me."

"I wasn't thinking of you, Olga. I was thinking of Elizabeth. If you saw her drowning you'd plunge in and save her without a moment's hesitation."

"Of course I would--but I wouldn't have her hanging on to me like a leech after I'd saved her."

"I suppose you have not realised that in 'hanging on' to you--as you express it--she is simply fighting for her life."

"What do you mean, Miss Haven?"

"I mean that Elizabeth is--starving. Not food starvation, but a worse kind. Olga, this is the first time in her life that she has ever spent a day away from home--she told me that--or ever had any one try to make her happy. Is it any wonder that she doesn't know how to _be_ happy or make friends? It seems strange that, from among so many who would gladly be her friends here, she should have chosen you who are not willing to be a friend to any one--strange, and a great pity, it seems. It throws an immense responsibility upon you."

"I don't want any such responsibility. I don't think any of you ought to put it on me," Olga flung out sulkily.

"We are not putting it on you," returned Laura gently.

Olga twitched her shoulder with an impatient gesture, and the two walked some distance before she spoke again. Then it was to say, "What are you asking me to do, anyhow?"

"_I_ am not asking you to do anything," Laura answered. "It is for you to ask yourself what you are going to do. I believe it is in your power to make over that poor girl mind and body--I might almost say, soul too. She thinks she can do nothing but household drudgery. She is afraid of everything. When I think of what you could do for her in the next month--Olga, I wonder that you can let such a wonderful opportunity pass you by."

They went the rest of the way mostly in silence. When they returned to the camp, Elizabeth was watching for them, but the glance Olga gave her was so repellent that she shrank away, and went off alone to the Lookout. Later Laura tried to interest Elizabeth in the making of a headband of beadwork, but though she evidently liked to handle the bright-coloured beads, she would not try to do the work herself.

"I can't. I can't do things like that," she said with gentle indifference, her eyes wandering off in search of Olga.

The next day, however, Laura came to Anne Wentworth, her eyes shining. "O Anne, what _do_ you think?" she cried. "Olga had Elizabeth in wading this morning. Isn't that fine?"

"Fine indeed--for a beginning. It shows what Olga might do with her if she would."

"Yes, for she was so cross with her! I wondered that Elizabeth did not go away and leave her. No other girl in camp would let Olga speak to her as she speaks to that Poor Thing."

"No, the others are not Poor Things, you see--that makes all the difference. But that Olga should take the trouble to make Elizabeth do anything is a big step in advance--for Olga."

"There is splendid material in Olga, Anne--I am sure of it," Laura returned.

There was splendid persistence in her, anyhow. She had undertaken to overcome Elizabeth's fear of the water, but it was a harder task than she had imagined. She did make the Poor Thing wade--clinging tightly to Olga's fingers all the time--but further than that she could not lead her. Day after day Elizabeth would stand shivering and trembling in water up to her knees, her cheeks so white and her lips so blue that Olga dared not compel her to go further. Yet day after day Olga made her wade in that far at least; not once would she allow her to omit it.

One day she sat for a long time looking gravely at the Poor Thing, who flushed and paled nervously under that steady silent scrutiny. At last Olga said abruptly, "What do you like best, Elizabeth?"

"Like--best----" Elizabeth faltered uncertainly.

Olga frowned and repeated her question.

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "I--I like Molly. And the other children--a little."

"You mean your brothers and sisters?"

Elizabeth nodded.

"Which is Molly?"

"The littlest one. She's four, and she's real pretty," Elizabeth declared proudly. "She's prettier than Annie Pearson."

"Yes, but what do you yourself like?" Olga persisted. "What would you like to have--pretty dresses, ribbons--what?"

"I--I never thought," was the vague reply.

Again Olga's brows met in a frown that made the Poor Thing shrink and tremble. She brought out her necklace and tossed it into the other girl's lap.

"Think that's pretty?" she asked.

"O _yes_!" Elizabeth breathed softly. She did not touch the necklace, but gazed admiringly at the bright-coloured beads as they lay in her lap.

"You can have one like it if you want," Olga told her.

"O no! Who'd give me one?"

"Nobody. But you can get it for yourself. See here--I got all those blue beads by learning about the wild flowers that grow right around here, the weeds and stones and animals and birds. You can get as many in a few days. I got that green one for making a little bit of a basket, that--for making my washstand there out of a soap box--that, for trimming my hat. Every bead on that necklace is there because of some little thing I did or made--all things that you can do too."

The Poor Thing shook her head. "O _no_," she stammered in her weak gentle voice, "I can't do anything. I--I ain't like other girls."

"You can be if you want to," Olga flung out at her impatiently. "Say--what _can_ you do? You can do something."

"No--nothing." The Poor Thing's blue eyes filled slowly with big tears, and she looked through them beseechingly at the other. Olga drew a long exasperated breath. She wanted to take hold of the girl's thin shoulders and shake the limpness out of her once for all.

"What did you do at home?" she demanded with harsh abruptness.

"N--nothing," Elizabeth answered with a miserable gulp.

"You did too! Of course you did something," Olga flamed. "You didn't sit and stare at Molly and the others all day the way you stare at me, did you? _What_ did you do, I say?"

Elizabeth gave her a swift scared glance as she stammered, "I didn't do anything but cook and sweep and wash and iron and take care of the children--truly I didn't."

Olga's face brightened. "Good heavens--if you aren't the limit!" she shrugged. Then she sprang up and got pencil and paper. "What can you cook?" she demanded, and proceeded to put Elizabeth through a rapid-fire examination on marketing, plain cooking, washing, ironing, sweeping, bed-making, and care of babies. At last she had found some things that even the Poor Thing could do. With flying fingers she scribbled down the girl's answers. Finally she cried excitingly, "_There!_ See what a goose you were to say you couldn't do anything! Why, there are lots of girls here who couldn't do half these things. Elizabeth Page, listen. You've got twelve orange beads like those," she pointed to the necklace--"already, for a beginning. That's more than I have of that colour. I don't know anything about taking care of babies, nor half what you do about cooking and marketing."

Elizabeth stared, her mouth half open, her eyes widened in incredulous wonder. "But--but," she faltered, "I guess there's some mistake. Just housework and things like that ain't anything to get beads for--are they?"

"They are _that_! I tell you Mrs. Royall will give you twelve honours and twelve yellow beads at the next Council Fire, and if you half try you can win some blue and brown and red ones too before that, and you've just _got to do it_. Do you understand?"

The other nodded, her eyes full of dumb misery. Then she began to whimper, "I--I--can't ever do things like you and the rest do," she moaned.

"Why not? You can walk, can't you?"

"W--walk?"

"Yes--_walk_! Didn't hurt you to walk to the village yesterday, did it?"

"No--but I couldn't go--alone."

"Who said anything about going alone? You'll walk to Slabtown and back with me to-morrow."

"O, I'd like that--with you," said the Poor Thing, brightening.

Olga gave an impatient sniff. Sometimes she almost hated Elizabeth--almost but not quite.

"You'll go with me to-morrow," she declared, "but next day you'll go with some other girl."

Elizabeth shrank into herself, shaking her head.

Olga eyed her sternly. "Very well--if you won't go with some other girl, you can't go with me to-morrow," she declared.

But the next day after breakfast the two set off for Slabtown. Halfway there, Elizabeth suddenly crumpled up and dropped in a limp heap by the roadside.

"What's the matter?" Olga demanded, standing over her.

Elizabeth lifted tired eyes. "I don't know. You walked so--fast," she panted.

"Fast!" echoed Olga scornfully; but she sat on a stone wall and waited until a little colour had crept back into the other girl's thin cheeks, and went at a slower pace afterwards.

"There! Do that every day for a week and you'll have one of your red beads," was her comment when they were back at camp. "And now go lie in that hammock."

When from the kitchen she brought a glass of milk and some crackers, she found Elizabeth sitting on the ground.

"Why didn't you get into the hammock as I told you?" she demanded, and the Poor Thing answered vaguely that she "thought maybe they wouldn't want" her to.

Olga poked the milk at her. "Drink it!" she ordered, "and eat those crackers," and when Elizabeth had obeyed, added, "Now get into that hammock and lie there till dinner-time," and meekly Elizabeth did so.

When, later in the day, some of the younger girls started a game of blindman's buff, Olga seized Elizabeth's hand. "Come," she said, "we're going to play too."

"O, I can't! I--I never did," cried the Poor Thing, hanging back.

"I never did either, but I'm going to now and so are you. Come!" and Elizabeth yielded to the imperative command.

The other girls stared in amazement as the two joined them. It was little Bess Carroll who smiled a welcome as Louise Johnson cried out,

"Wonders will never cease-_-Olga Priest playing a game!_"

She spoke to Mary Hastings, who answered hastily, "Bless her heart--she's doing it just to get that Poor Thing to play. Let's take them right in, girls."

The girls were quick to respond. Olga was the next one caught, and when she was blinded she couldn't help catching Elizabeth, who stood still, never thinking of getting out of the way. Elizabeth didn't want the handkerchief tied over her eyes, but she submitted meekly, at a look from Olga. Half a dozen girls flung themselves in her way, and the one on whom her limp grasp fell ignored the fact that Elizabeth could not name her, and gaily held up the handkerchief to be tied over her own eyes in turn. Nobody caught Olga again. She was as quick as a flash and as slippery as an eel. Elizabeth's eyes followed her constantly, and a little glimmer of a smile touched her lips as Olga slipped safely out of reach of one catcher after another.

When she pulled Elizabeth out of the noisy merry circle, Olga glanced at the clock in the dining-room and made a swift calculation. "Three-quarters of an hour--blindman's buff."