Chapter 6

The girls formed the semicircle, with the Guardians in the open space. Wood had been gathered earlier in the day, and now the Wood Gatherers, each taking a stick, laid it where the fire was to be. As the last stick was brought, the Fire Makers moved forward and swiftly and skilfully set the wood ready for lighting. On this occasion, to save time, the rubbing sticks were dispensed with, and Mrs. Royall signed to Laura to light the fire with a match.

The usual order of exercises followed, the songs and chants echoing with a solemn sweetness among the tall pines in whose tops the night wind played a soft accompaniment.

To-night the interest of the girls centred in the awarding of honours. All of the Busy Corner girls had won more or less, and as Laura read each name and announced the honours, the girl came forward and received her beads from the Chief Guardian. Mrs. Royall had a smile and a pleasant word for each one; but when Myra Karr stood before her, she laid her hand very kindly on the girl's shoulder and turned to the listening circle.

"Camp Fire Girls," she said, "here is one who is to receive special honour at our hands to-night, for she has won a great victory. You all know how fearful and timid she was, for you yourselves called her--Bunny. Now she has fought and conquered her great dragon--Fear--and you have dropped that name, and she must never again be called by it."

With a pencil, on a bit of birch back, she wrote the name and dropped the bark into the heart of the glowing fire. "It is gone forever," she said, her hand again on Myra's shoulder. "Now what shall be the new Camp Fire name of our comrade?"

Several names were suggested, and finally Watéwin, the Indian word for one who conquers, was chosen. Myra stood with radiant eyes looking about the circle until Mrs. Royall said, "Myra, we give you to-night your new name. You are Watéwin, for you have conquered fear," and the girl walked back to her place, joy shining in her eyes.

Then Mrs. Royall spoke again, her glance sweeping the circle of intent faces. "There is another who has conquered the dragon--Fear--and who deserves high honour--Elizabeth Page."

Elizabeth, absorbed in watching Myra's radiant face, had absolutely forgotten herself, and did not even notice when her own name was spoken. Olga had to tell her and give her a little push forward before she realised that Mrs. Royall was waiting for her. For a second she drew back; then, catching her breath, she went gravely forward. The voice and eyes of the Chief Guardian were very tender as she looked down into the shy blue eyes lifted to hers.

"You too, Elizabeth," she said, "have fought and conquered, not once, but many times, and to you also we give to-night a new name." She did not repeat the old one, but writing it on a bit of bark as she had written Myra's, she told the girl to drop it into the fire. Elizabeth obeyed--she had never known what the girls had christened her and now she did not care. Breathlessly she listened as Mrs. Royall went on, "Camp Fire Girls, what shall be her new name?"

It was Laura who answered after a little silence, "Adawána, the brave and faithful."

"Adawána, the brave and faithful," Mrs. Royall repeated. "Is that right? Is it the right name for Elizabeth, Camp Fire Girls?"

"Yes, yes, _yes_!" came the response from two score eager voices.

"You are Adawána, the brave and faithful," said Mrs. Royall, looking down again into the blue eyes, full now of wonder and shy joy.

"Now listen to the honours that Adawána has won."

As Laura read the long list a murmur of surprise ran round the circle. The girls had known that Elizabeth would have some honours, for they all knew how Olga had compelled her to do things, but no one had imagined that there would be anything like this long list--least of all had Elizabeth herself imagined it. Perplexity and dismay were in her eyes as she listened, and as Laura finished the reading, Elizabeth whispered quickly,

"O Miss Laura, there's some mistake. I couldn't have all those--not half so many!"

"It's all right, dear," Laura assured her, and in a louder tone she added, "There is no mistake. The record has been carefully kept and verified; but you see Elizabeth was not working for honours, and had no idea how many she had won."

Elizabeth looked fairly dazed as Mrs. Royall threw over her head the necklace with its red and blue and orange beads. Turning, she hurried back to her place next Olga.

"It was all you--you did it. You ought to have the honours instead of me," she whispered, half crying.

"It's all right. Don't be a _baby_!" Olga flung at her savagely, to forestall the tears.

Then somebody nudged her and whispered, "Olga Priest, don't you hear Mrs. Royall calling you?"

Wondering, Olga obeyed the summons. She had reported no honours won, and had no idea why she was called. Laura, standing beside Mrs. Royall, smiled happily at the girl as she stopped, and stood, her dark brows drawn together in a frown of perplexity.

"Olga," Mrs. Royall said, "it has been a great joy to us to bestow upon Adawána the symbols which represent the honours she has won. We are sure that she will wear them worthily, and that her life will be better and happier because of that for which they stand. We recognise the fact, however, that but for you she could not have won these honours. You have worked harder than she has to secure them for her; therefore to you belongs the greater honour----"

"No! _No!_" cried Olga under her breath, but with a smile Mrs. Royall went on, "We know that to you the symbols of honours won--beads and ornaments--have little value--but we have for you something that we hope you will value because we all have a share in it, every one in the camp; and we ask you to wear this because you have shown us what one Camp Fire Girl can do for another. The work is all Elizabeth's. The rest of us only gave the beads, and your Guardian taught Elizabeth how to use them."

She held out a headband, beautiful in design and colouring. Olga stared at it, at first too utterly amazed for any words. Finally she stammered, "Why, I--I--didn't know--Elizabeth----" and then to her own utter consternation came a rush of tears. _Tears!_ And she had lived dry-eyed through four years of lonely misery. Choked, blinded, and unable to speak even a word of thanks, she took the headband and turned hastily away, and as she went the watching circle chanted very low,

"'Wohelo means love. Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten--that self is forgotten.'"

With shining eyes--yet half afraid--Elizabeth waited as Olga came back to her. She knew Olga's scorn for honours and ornaments. Would she be scornful now--or would she be glad? Elizabeth felt that she never, never could endure it if Olga were scornful or angry now--if this, her great secret, her long, hard labour of love--should be only a great disappointment after all.

But it was not. She knew that it was not as soon as Olga was near enough to see the look in her eyes. She knew then that it was all right; and the poor little hungry heart of her sang for joy when Olga placed the band over her forehead and bent her proud head for Elizabeth to fasten it in place. Elizabeth did it with fingers trembling with happy excitement. The coldness that had so often chilled her was all gone now from the dark eyes. Olga understood. Elizabeth had no more voice than a duckling, but she felt just then as if she could sing like a song sparrow from sheer happiness. It was such a wonderful thing to be happy! Elizabeth had never before known the joy of it.

But Mrs. Royall was speaking again. "Wohelo means work and health and love," she said, "you all know that--the three best things in all this beautiful world. Which of the three is best of all?"

Softly Anne Wentworth sang,

"'Wohelo means love,"

and instantly the girls took up the refrain,

"'Wohelo means love, Wohelo means love. Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten. Wohelo means love.'"

Laura's eyes, watching the young, earnest faces, filled with quick tears as the refrain was repeated softly and lingeringly, again and yet again. Mrs. Royall stood motionless until the last low note died into silence. Then she went on:

"Work is splendid for mind and body. Some of you have worked for honours and that is well. Some have worked for the love of the work--that is better. Some have worked--or fought--for conquest over weakness, and that is better yet. But two of our number have worked and conquered, not for honour, not for love of labour, not even for self-conquest--but for unselfish love of another. That is the highest form of service, dear Camp Fire Girls--the service that is done in forgetfulness of self. That is the thought I leave with you to-night."

She stepped back, and instantly each girl placed her right hand over her heart and all together repeated slowly,

"'This Law of the Fire I will strive to follow With all the strength And endurance of my body, The power of my will, The keenness of my mind, The warmth of my heart, And the sincerity of my spirit.'"

The fire had died down to glowing coals. At a sign from the Chief Guardian two of the Fire Makers extinguished the embers, pouring water over them till not a spark remained. The lanterns were relighted, the procession formed again, and the girls marched back, singing as they went.

"O dear, I can't bear to think that we shall not have another Council Fire like this for months--even if we come here next summer," Mary Hastings said when they were back in camp.

"And wasn't this the very dearest one!" cried Bessie Carroll. "With Myra's honours and Elizabeth's, and Olga's headband--_wasn't_ she surprised, though!"

"First time I ever saw Olga Priest dumfounded," laughed Louise. "But, say, girls--that Poor Thing is a duck after all--she is really."

Bessie's plump hand covered Louise's lips. "Hush, hush!" she cried in a tone of real distress, for she loved Elizabeth. "That name is burnt up."

"So it is--beg everybody's pardon," yawned Louise. "But Elizabeth couldn't hear way over there with Olga and Miss Laura. I say, girls," she added with her usual giggle, "I feel as if I'd been wound up to concert pitch and I've got to let down somehow. Get out your fiddle, Rose, and play us a jig. I've got to get some of this seriousness out of my system before I go to bed."

Rose ran for her violin, and two minutes later the girls were dancing gaily in the moonlight.

"I wish they hadn't," Laura whispered to Anne. "I wanted to keep the impression of that lovely soft chanting for the last."

"You can't do it--not with Louise Johnson around," returned Anne. "But never mind, Laura, they won't forget this meeting, even if they do have to 'react' a bit. I'm sure that even Louise will keep the memory of this last Council tucked away in some corner of her harum-scarum mind."

VIII

ELIZABETH AT HOME

In a tiny hall bedroom in one of the small brick houses that cover many blocks in certain sections of Washington, Elizabeth Page was standing a week later, trying to screw up her courage to a deed of daring; and because it was for herself it seemed almost impossible for her to do it. With her white face, her anxious eyes, and trembling hands, she seemed again the Poor Thing who had shrunk from every one those first days at the camp--every one but Olga.

Three times Elizabeth started to go downstairs and three times her courage failed and she drew back. So long as she waited there was a chance--a very faint one, but still a chance--that the thing she so desired might come true. But the minutes were slipping away, and finally, setting her lips desperately, she fairly ran down the stairs.

Her stepmother glanced up with a frown as the girl stood before her.

"Well, what now?" she demanded, in the sharp, fretful tone of one whose nerves are all a-jangle.

"I've done everything--all the supper work, and fixed everything in the kitchen ready for morning," Elizabeth said, her words tumbling over each other in her excitement, "and O, please may I go this evening--to Miss Laura's? It's the Camp Fire meeting, and one of the girls is going to stop here for me, and--and O, I'll do _anything_ if only I may go!"

The frown on the woman's face deepened as Elizabeth stumbled on, and her answer was swift and sharp.

"You are not going one step out of this house to-night--you can make up your mind to that--not one step. I knew when I let you go off to that camp that it would be just this way. Girls like you are never satisfied. You want the earth. Here you've had a month--a whole month--off in the country while I stood in that hot kitchen and did your work for you, and now you are teasing to go stringing off again. You are _not going_."

"But," pleaded Elizabeth desperately, "I've worked so hard to-day--every minute since five o'clock--and I washed and ironed Sadie's white dress before supper. If there was any work I had to do it would be different. And--and even servant girls have an afternoon and evening off every week, and I never do. And I'm only asking now to go out one evening in a month--just _one_!"

"There it is again!" Mrs. Page flung out. "Not this one evening, but an evening every month; and if I agreed to that, next thing you'd be wanting to go every week. I tell you--_no_. Now let that end it."

The tears welled up in Elizabeth's eyes as she turned slowly away; and the sight of those tears awakened a tumult in another quarter. Four-year-old Molly had been rocking her Teddy Bear to sleep when Elizabeth came downstairs, and had listened, wide-eyed and wondering, to all that passed. But tears in Elizabeth's eyes were too much. The Teddy Bear tumbled unheeded to the floor as Molly rushed across to Elizabeth and, clinging to her skirts, turned a small flushed face to her mother.

"Naughty, naughty mamma--make 'Lizbet' _ky_!" she cried out, stamping her small foot angrily. "Molly love 'Lizbet' _hard_!"

Elizabeth caught up the child and turned to go, but a sharp command stopped her. "Put that child down. I won't have you setting her against her own mother!"

Elizabeth unclasped the little clinging arms and put the child down, but Molly still clutched her dress, sobbing now and hiding her face from her mother. The tinkle of the doorbell cut the tense silence that followed Mrs. Page's last command. Sadie, an older girl, ran to open it, flashing a triumphant glance at Elizabeth as she passed her.

As Sadie flung open the door, Elizabeth saw Olga on the step, and Olga's quick eyes took in the scene--the frowning woman, Elizabeth's wet eyes and drooping mouth, and little Molly clinging to her skirts as she looked over her shoulder to see who had come. Sadie stared pertly at Olga and waited for her to speak.

"I've come for Elizabeth. I'm Olga----"

"Elizabeth can't go. Mother won't let her," interrupted Sadie with ill-concealed satisfaction in her narrow eyes.

Elizabeth started towards the door. "O Olga, please tell Miss Laura----" she was beginning when Sadie unceremoniously slammed the door and marched back with a victorious air to her mother's side.

Olga was left staring at the outside of the door, and if a look could have demolished it and annihilated Miss Sadie, both these things might have happened then and there. But the door stood firm, and there was no reason to think that anything untoward had happened to Sadie; so after a moment Olga turned, flew down the steps, and hurrying over to the car-line, hailed the first car that appeared. Fifteen minutes later she was ringing the bell at the door of Judge Haven's big stone house on Wyoming Avenue. The servants in that house never turned away any girl asking for Miss Laura, so this one was promptly shown into the library. Laura rose to meet her with a cordial greeting, but Olga neither heard nor heeded.

"She can't come. Elizabeth can't come!" she cried out. "They wouldn't even let me speak to her, though she was right there in the hall--nor let her give me a message for you. Her sister slammed the door in my face. Miss Laura, I'd like to _kill_ that girl and her mother!"

"Hush, hush, my dear!" Laura said gently. "Sit down and tell me quietly just what happened."

Olga flung herself into a chair and told her story, but she could not tell it quietly. She told it with eyes flashing under frowning brows and her words were full of bitterness.

"Elizabeth's just a slave to them--worse than a servant!" she stormed. "She never goes anywhere--_never_! They wouldn't have let her go to the camp if she hadn't been sick and the doctor said she'd die if she didn't have a rest and change, and so Miss Grandis got her off. O Miss Laura, can't you do something about it? Elizabeth _wanted_ so to come--she was crying. I know how she was counting on it before we left the camp."

Laura shook her head sorrowfully. "I don't know what I can do. You see she is not yet of age, and her father has a right--a legal right, I mean--to keep her at home."

"But it isn't her father, it's that woman--his wife," Olga declared. "She won't even let Elizabeth call her mother--not that I should think she'd want to--but when I asked Elizabeth why she called her Mrs. Page she said her stepmother told her when she first came there that she didn't want a great girl that didn't belong to her calling her mother."

"Elizabeth is seventeen?" Laura questioned.

Olga nodded. "She won't be eighteen till next April. _I_ wouldn't stay there till I was eighteen. I'd clear out. She could earn her own living and not work half as hard somewhere else, and go out when she liked, too." She was silent for a moment, then half aloud she added, "I'll find a way to fix that woman yet!"

"Olga," Laura looked straight into the sombre angry eyes, "you must not interfere in this matter. Two wrongs will never make a right. If there is anything that can be done for Elizabeth, be sure that I will do it. And if not--it is only seven months to April."

"Seven months!" echoed Olga passionately. "Miss Laura, how would you live through seven months without ever getting out _any_where?"

Laura shook her head. "We will hope that Elizabeth will not have to do that," she said gently. "But I hear some of the girls. Come."

In the wide hall were half a dozen girls who had just arrived, and Laura led the way to a large room on the third floor. At the door of this room, the girls broke into cries and exclamations of pleasure.

"It's like a bit of the camp," Mary Hastings cried, and Rose Anderson exclaimed,

"It's just the sweetest room I ever saw!" and she sniffed delightedly the spicy fragrance of the pines and balsam firs that stood in great green tubs about the walls. On the floor was a grass rug of green and wood-colour, and against the walls stood several long low settees of brown rattan, backs and seats cushioned in cretonne of soft greens and cream-colour, and a few chairs of like pattern were scattered about. Curtains of cream-coloured cheesecloth, with a stencilled design of pine cones in shaded browns, draped the windows, and in the wide fireplace a fire was laid ready for lighting. The low mantelpiece above it held only three brass candlesticks with bayberry candles, and above it, beautifully lettered in sepia, were the words,

"'Whoso shall stand by this hearthstone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone: Whose house is dark and bare and cold, Whose house is cold, This is his own.'"

And below this

"'Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten.'"

Bessie Carroll drew a long breath as she looked about, and said earnestly, "Miss Laura, I never, never saw any place so dear! I didn't think there could be such a pretty room."

Laura bent and kissed the earnest little face. "I am glad you like it so much, dear," she said. "I like it too. You remember the very first words of our Camp Fire law--'Seek beauty'? I thought of that when I was furnishing this. It is our Camp Fire room, girls, and I hope we shall have many happy times together here."

"I guess they couldn't help being happy times in a room like this--and with you," returned Bessie with her shy smile, which remark was promptly approved by the other girls--except Olga, who said nothing.

"You look as glum as that old barn owl at the camp, Olga," Louise Johnson told her under cover of the gay clamour of talk that followed. "For heaven's sake, do cheer up a bit. That face of yours is enough to curdle the milk of human kindness."

Olga's only response was a black scowl and a savage glance, at which Louise retreated with a shrug of her shoulders and an exasperating wink and giggle.

Within half an hour all the girls were there except Elizabeth. Olga, glooming in a corner, thought of Elizabeth crawling off alone to her room to cry. Torture would not have wrung tears from Olga's great black eyes, and she would have seen them unmoved in the eyes of any other girl; but Elizabeth--that was another thing. She glanced scornfully at the others laughing and chattering around Miss Laura, and vowed that she would never come to another of the meetings unless Elizabeth could come too. If Miss Laura, after all her talk, couldn't do something to help Elizabeth----But Miss Laura was standing before her now with a box of matches in her hand.

"I want you to light our fire to-night, Olga," she said gently. Ungraciously enough, Olga touched a match to the splinters of resinous pine on the hearth, and as the fire flashed into brightness, Miss Laura, turning out the electric lights, said, "I love the fire, but I love the candles almost as much; so at our meetings here, we will have both." The girls were standing now in a circle broken only by the fire. Miss Laura set the three candlesticks with the bayberry candles on the floor in the centre of the circle and motioned the girls to sit down. Lightly they dropped to the floor, and Laura, touching a splinter to the fire, handed it to Frances Chapin, a grave studious High School girl who had not been at the camp. Rising on one knee, Frances repeated slowly,

"'I light the light of Work, for Wohelo means work,'" and lighting the candle, she added,

"'Wohelo means work. We glorify work, because through work we are free. We work to win, to conquer, to be masters. We work for the joy of the working and because we are free. Wohelo means work.'"

As Frances stepped back into the circle, Laura beckoned to Mary Hastings, the strongest, healthiest girl of them all, who, coming forward, chanted slowly in her deep rich voice,

"'I light the light of Health, for Wohelo means health!'"

Lighting the candle, she went on,

"'Wohelo means health. We hold on to health, because through health we serve and are happy. In caring for the health and beauty of our persons we are caring for the very shrine of the Great Spirit. Wohelo means health.'"

As Mary went back to her place Laura laid her hand on the shoulder of Bessie Carroll, who was next her. With a glance of pleased surprise Bessie took the third taper and in her low gentle voice repeated,

"'I light the light of Love, for Wohelo means love.'"

The room was very still as she lighted the third candle, saying,

"'Wohelo means love. We love love, for love is life, and light and joy and sweetness. And love is comradeship and motherhood, and fatherhood and all dear kinship. Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten. Wohelo means love.'"

As she spoke the last words a strain of music, so low that it was barely audible, breathed through the room, then deepened into one clear note, and instantly the wohelo cheer rose in a joyful chorus.