The Camp Fire Girls on the edge of the desert

The last flames of the camp fire were slowly dying. But, as the sun was sinking, the little space in the woods surrounding the fire was lit with the color of flame.

A girl sat there alone in her ceremonial camp fire dress. A band of bright gold braid bound her head. One could learn from the insignia on her costume that she was already a torch bearer. Above the orange and red of the flame was the touch of white in her emblem, portraying the ascending smoke. She was like a guardian spirit of the fire.

Perhaps she may have been dreaming or merely repeating something aloud to herself. For, seated on the ground, the girl was leaning forward with her chin resting in her hand, and, although her eyes were closed, a book lay open in her lap. Between the leaves of the book was a sheet of paper upon which some lines were written in lead pencil. Here and there a word was marked out and another inserted in its place.

Finally the camp fire girl, unclosing her eyes, picked up this paper and, after first glancing around to be sure that the trees and grass about her had no ears, read aloud in a low voice:

In the moon of the peach blossoms, Towards the land of the setting sun, Ghosts of old camp fires keep calling; Camp fires whose race has been run.

I can see the sands of the desert; I can hear strange desert cries; And ever my thoughts go homing To a tent under desert skies.

“Bettina,” a voice called.

And, like a flash, the girl in the camp fire dress, leaning over, dropped the paper with her poem upon it into the fire.

“Polly, I am here under our pine trees,” she called back.

Then, getting up, she stood with her back to the sun. She had yellow-brown hair which looked gold in this light, a slender figure and delicate features, and must have been about sixteen.

The girl who joined her was a complete contrast. Since they were in the woods together, one might have been thought a gypsy and the other, except for her dress, some Norse maiden who had stepped forth from Scandinavian mythology.

The younger girl was small and had dark hair falling to her shoulders. Her eyes were black and her color brilliant. She was wearing a short skirt, a red sweater and a black velvet tam o’shanter, while over her arm she carried a long gray cloak.

“How could you come out here alone, Bettina?” she demanded reproachfully, marching forward as soon as she appeared upon the scene and throwing the coat about the other girl’s shoulders.

“As soon as our Camp Fire girls had disappeared mother asked me what had become of you, and I have been looking for you ever since. It must have been an hour ago? What makes you such a goose?”

She spoke straightforwardly but without ill nature, so the older girl only laughed and shook her head.

“I am accustomed to being called a dreamer, Polly, cousin of mine, and a good many other things by my family, but not a goose. Still, I expect you are right.”

She put her arm across her cousin’s shoulder.

“When the girls were getting ready to go I slipped out here to the woods by myself. I was tired and wanted to be alone for a little while, but I should have told some one. Has Aunt Mollie worried about me? I built a fire, so I was not cold.”

Polly glanced back at the dying flames, as the two girls started for home.

“Your fire does not appear very warming,” she answered bluntly. “And mother was worrying. As you came to us, Bettina, because you were not well, naturally we feel responsible. But I suppose you were reading or writing, or else in the clouds. Funny why people in the clouds always wish to inhabit them alone. There ought to be room in the clouds for companions as well as in other places.”

The two girls were walking now arm in arm through a small pine woods in New Hampshire, just as another Polly and Betty had walked a good many years before. But these two girls—although their names were alike, and although they too were members of a Sunrise Hill Camp Fire Club—were utterly unlike the former ones in temperament and experience.

Bettina was the daughter of Betty Ashton and Anthony Graham. After her father had served his state as Governor for two terms, he had been sent as United States senator to Washington, where the family had since been living, coming back home to New Hampshire only for occasional summer vacations.

Yet now it was April and Bettina was on her way to the old Webster farmhouse which stood, as it always had, not far from the first Sunrise Hill Camp.

In reality she and Polly Webster were not cousins, since Polly was Mollie O’Neill’s oldest child and named for her famous aunt; but the friendship between the mothers and the families was so great that it had passed into an intimacy closer in this world many times than the intimacies of relationship. For since Polly O’Neill, who was now Mrs. Richard Burton, traveled a great part of the year, because of her own and her husband’s profession, and because of her fondness for Europe, Mollie and Betty, now Mrs. Webster and Mrs. Graham, had grown to depend more on each other than in their girlhood days. So, when the spring came, and Bettina was not well in Washington, she had been sent at once to Mollie Webster’s home and Mollie’s care.

The girls walked quickly, as it was nearly dusk; Polly with the ease and swiftness of a girl who had been brought up in the country, and Bettina nearly as easily, yet with a different kind of grace. For there are persons who seem to be able to move with almost no effort, and their shy fleetness is characteristic of certain temperaments. In almost all cases you will find it among persons who have deep emotions but strange reserves.

Bettina Graham talked very little and perhaps this alone made her unusual among girls.

After a few further moments of silence on her part, Polly glanced up at her.

“It is curious, Bettina, that no one of your names suits you. You were called Bettina and ‘Little Princess’ when you were a tiny girl and now you are taller than your mother or any of us. ‘Tall Princess’ would be a better title at present. Even your Camp Fire name is too difficult to say—‘Anacaona,’ Flower of Gold—though I suppose the meaning is charming. But I am too matter-of-fact a person to like anything so fanciful.”

An elusive sense of humor may sometimes hide behind reserve, which served Bettina now and then not to take Polly too seriously.

“I am afraid nothing altogether suits about me,” she returned, smiling, however, and not speaking as if she were sorry for herself. “At least, I fear that is what my mother sometimes thinks, although she is good enough to try to conceal the fact. I am a disappointment to her. Here I am nearly sixteen and supposed to come out in society in another two or three years—and with a mother who is almost the most popular woman in Washington. Yet I hate even to appear at one of our own small tea parties. I never can think of a single thing to say to strangers. The truth is, Polly, one of the reasons I was not well this spring was because mother wished me to help her entertain more and I dreaded it. It is such peace to be here in these quiet woods.”

Then both girls paused for a moment.

The woods were no longer still.

Some one was walking toward them—a young fellow who kept striking at the trees and shrubs with a small stick he held in his hand. He was singing in a charming tenor voice, but stopped, took off his hat and bowed almost too gracefully to the two girls.

“Hello!” Polly said, indifferent but friendly enough.

Bettina scarcely moved her head. She flushed a little though as the young man passed, but did not speak until he was out of sight.

“I wish I might have had my visit without any other guest. I don’t like Ralph Marshall.” And then, “but please do tell me at once, Polly. I have been realizing ever since you joined me that you had more news. All day I have been feeling it in the atmosphere. You have had another letter.”

Nodding, Polly slipped her hand into her pocket.

“You do know about things, Bettina, before they happen. It is what everybody says about you, but please don’t guess about my future, I prefer not knowing till the time comes.”

She took out the letter and her eyes were brilliant.

“Yes, Tante has written again; the letter is addressed to me, but is for both of us. She says we are to talk over her plan to our families at once and that of course they will disapprove as they always have disapproved of everything she has ever suggested or done. But, just the same, we are to make them agree finally. She says _we must_—even if she has to come home and then go from here to Washington to argue the question.”