And, sure enough, as soon as they reached the camp, Dolly marched up to Miss Eleanor, who was sitting by herself on the porch, and told her the whole story.
"And was Bessie in this too?" asked Eleanor, trying to look stern, but failing.
"No, she was not. She didn"t know what I was going to do at all. She just followed to see that I didn"t get into any trouble. And I"d have been caught if she hadn"t been there."
"I--I"m sorry you did it, Dolly," said Eleanor, almost hysterically. She was trying to suppress the laughter that she was shaking with, but it was hard work. "Still, I don"t believe I"ll scold you very much. Now you"ve got even with them for all the things they"ve done--more than even, if the screams I heard mean anything. We didn"t know what was up."
"Not exactly what was up," said Margery, who had overheard part of the conversation, "but we knew who was up as soon as we found you were gone, Dolly."
Margery looked at Miss Eleanor, then she choked, and left the porch hurriedly. And the next moment roars of laughter came from the other girls, as Margery told them the story.
"But I"m glad you"ve told me all about it, Dolly," said Eleanor. "I don"t mind saying that I think you had a good deal of excuse--but do try to let things work out by themselves after this. The chances are you"ve only made them hate us more than ever, and they will feel that it"s a point of honor now to get even with us for this. All the girls will have to suffer for what you did."
Even as she spoke, Bessie saw two or three figures approaching from the direction of the other camp, and a shrill voice was raised.
"There she is, Miss Brown. She"s the one who"s supposed to look after them."
Gladys Cooper was the speaker, but as soon as she saw Eleanor look around she dropped back, leaving a woman whose manner was timid and nervous, and whose voice showed that she had little spirit, to advance alone.
"Miss Mercer?" she said, inquiringly, to Eleanor. "I am Miss Brown, and I have been left in charge of Miss Halsted"s Camp this summer while she is away. She is ill. I am one of the teachers in her school--"
"Sit down, Miss Brown," said Eleanor, kindly. One look at poor Miss Brown explained the conduct of the girls in her care. She was one of those timid, nervous women who can never be expected to control anyone, much less a group of healthy, mischievous girls in need of a strong, restraining hand.
"I"m--really very sorry--I don"t like--but I feel it is my duty--to speak to you, Miss Mercer," stammered Miss Brown. "The fact is--the young ladies seem to think it was one of your Camp Fire Girls who let loose a--number of mice in our boathouse this evening."
"I"m afraid it was, Miss Brown," said Eleanor, gravely. "And I need hardly say that I regret it. I naturally do not approve of anything of the sort. But your girls have themselves to blame to a certain extent."
"Why, I don"t see how that can be!" said Miss Brown, looking bewildered.
"Now, Miss Brown, honestly, and just between us, haven"t they made your life a burden for you ever since you"ve been here with them alone? Let me tell you what they"ve done since we"ve been here."
And calmly and without anger, Eleanor told the teacher of the various methods of making themselves unpleasant that the girls in the camp had adopted since the coming of the Camp Fire Girls. She raised her voice purposely when she came to the end.
"Now, mind, I don"t approve of this joke with the mice," she said. "But I do think it would be more plucky if your girls, after starting all the trouble and making themselves as hateful as they possibly could, had kept quiet when the tables were turned. When they worried us, we didn"t go over to make a complaint about them. I must say I am disappointed in those of your girls whom I happen to know, like Gladys Cooper. I thought she was a lady."
There was a furious cry from the darkness beyond the porch, and the next instant Gladys herself was in front of Eleanor, with tears of rage in her eyes.
"You shan"t say I"m not a lady," she cried. "I don"t care if you are Miss Mercer! We don"t want your horrid charity girls up here, and we tried to make them understand it--"
"Stop!" said Eleanor, sternly. "Listen to me, Gladys! I like your mother, and I"m sorry to see you acting in such a way. What do you mean by charity girls?"
"They haven"t got the money to come up here," stammered Gladys.
"It hasn"t been given to them, if you mean that," said Eleanor. "We don"t believe in idle, useless girls in the Camp Fire. And every girl here, even those like Dolly Ransom, who could have got the money at home very easily, have earned all their expenses for this vacation, except two who didn"t have time, and are here as my guests. Don"t talk about charity. They have a better right to be here than you have. Now go away, and if you don"t want to have unpleasant things happen to you, don"t do unpleasant things to other people."
Quite cowed by the sudden anger in Eleanor"s voice, Gladys didn"t hesitate. And Miss Brown, before she left the porch, looked wistfully at Eleanor.
"I wish I had your courage, my dear," she whispered. "That served Gladys right, but if I spoke so to her, I should lose my position."
"Well, I suppose it wasn"t a nice thing to do," said Dolly, as she and Bessie prepared for bed that night. "But I really do think we won"t have any more trouble. I think Gladys and the rest of them have learned a lesson."
"I hope so, Dolly," said Bessie. "I wouldn"t have done it myself, but I really am beginning to think that maybe it was the best thing that could have happened. Thunderstorms clear the air sometimes; perhaps this will have the same effect."
It was well after midnight when the girls were awakened by loud knocking below.
"Oh, that"s some trick of theirs," said Dolly, sleepily, and turned over again.
But a few minutes later Eleanor"s voice, calling them, took them downstairs in a hurry. They found her talking to Miss Brown, who was in tears.
"Girls," said Eleanor, "Gladys Cooper and another girl are lost, and they must be out on the mountain. It"s turned very cold. Shall we help find them? We haven"t been friends, but remember what Wo-he-lo means!"
CHAPTER XV.
COALS OF FIRE.
There wasn"t a single dissenting voice. Once they knew what was required, the girls rushed at once to their rooms to dress, and within ten minutes they were all a.s.sembled on the porch. Mingled with them were most of the girls from Miss Halsted"s camp, thoroughly frightened and much distressed, and evidently entirely forgetful of the trouble that had existed as late as that evening between the two camps.
"Now, I"ll tell you very quickly what the situation is," said Eleanor. "Don"t mind asking questions, but make them short. It seems that some of the other girls over there were angry at Gladys when they got back there after Miss Brown came here to see me. And they told her she had been wrong in setting them against us."
"I knew she was the one who had done it!" Dolly whispered to Bessie.
"She and one other girl, Marcia Bates, were great chums, and they got angry. They said they wouldn"t stay to be abused--isn"t that right, Miss Brown?--and they decided to go for a walk in the woods back of the lake here."
"They"ve often done it before," said Miss Brown. "I thought it was all right and they would have gone, anyhow, even if I"d told them not to do it."
"When they started," Eleanor went on, "the moon was up, and there were plenty of stars, so that they should have been able to find their way back easily, guided by the moon or by the Big Bear--the Dipper. But it"s clouded up since then and it"s begun to rain. The wind has changed, too, and they might easily have lost themselves."
"Wouldn"t they be on a regular trail?" asked Margery Burton.
"There aren"t any regular trails back here," spoke up one of the girls from the Halsted camp. "There are just a lot of little paths that criss-cross back and forth, and keep on getting mixed up. It"s hard enough to find your way in daylight."
"They have sent for guides from the big hotel at the head of the lake," said Eleanor. "They will get here as soon as they can, and a few men are out searching already. But I think the best thing for us to do is to organize a regular patrol. We"ll beat up the mountain quickly, and pretty well together, in a long line, so that there won"t be more than a hundred feet between any two of us. Then when we get to the ridge about half way up we"ll start back, and cover the ground more carefully, if we haven"t found them."
"Why won"t we go beyond the ridge?" asked Dolly.
"We"ll leave that part to the men. I think myself that it"s most unlikely they would go beyond that. I"ve had our guides here make up a whole lot of resinous torches. They"ll burn very brightly, and for a long time, and each of us will take as many as she can carry, about fifteen or twenty.
"And I"ve made up a lot of little first-aid packages, in case one of the girls is hurt, or has twisted her ankle. That may be the reason they"re out so late. When we start to come back we"ll break up in twos, and each pair will go back and forth, instead of coming straight down, so that we"ll cover the whole side of the mountain."
"How shall we know if we find them?" asked Bessie. "I mean how will the others know?"
"I"ve got one horn for every two of us," said Eleanor. "One toot won"t mean anything, just that we"re keeping in touch. But whoever finds them is to blow five or six times, very close together. It"s very still in the woods, and a signal like that can be heard even when you"re a long way from it."
"Can"t some of us go and help, Miss Mercer?" asked one of the Halsted girls, the one, incidentally, who had been the ruling spirit in the trick to spoil the pleasures of swimming for the Camp Fire Girls.
"I think you better stay at home, and get a lot of good hot coffee or broth or something ready for them when they get back," said Eleanor. "They"ll need something of the sort, I can promise you. And really, I"m afraid you"d be rather useless in the woods. Our girls, you see, have to be able to find their way pretty well. You"ll be more useful at home."
"I don"t expect to find them on the way up," said Eleanor, as they started. "We might, of course, but we"ll look better coming back, and it"s then that I think we"ll have the best chance. Come on, now! Shout every little while."
The night was pitch black now. A fine mist of rain was falling and threatening to become a steady downpour. It was a bad night for anyone, even those who were hardened, to be out in the woods without shelter or special covering, and it was about as bad as it could be for girls who were not at all used to even the slightest exposure.
Eleanor"s face was very grave, and she looked exceedingly worried as she crossed back and forth in front of the line of Camp Fire Girls, lifting her own voice in shouts to the lost ones, and giving hints here and there for the more important homeward journey.
The trip up the mountain produced no results. The rain was falling more heavily, and, moreover, the wind was rising. It blew hard through the trees and the silence of the woods that Eleanor had spoken of was a thing of the past. The wind sighed and groaned, and Eleanor grew more and more worried.
"We"ve got to search just as carefully as we can," she said. "We mustn"t leave any part of this ground uncovered. With all the noise the wind is making, we might easily pa.s.s within a few feet of them and shout at the top of our lungs without them hearing us. It is going to be even harder to find them than I feared, but we have just got to do the best we can."
At the top of the ridge of which she had spoken, Eleanor marshalled her forces. She told them off two by two, and Bessie and Dolly were a.s.signed to work together.
"I"m going to cover the whole ground, and keep in touch with all of you," she said. "Keep blowing your horns, there"s more chance that they will be heard. You all have your pocket compa.s.ses and plenty of matches, haven"t you? I don"t want any of my own girls to be lost."
"All right," she said, when they had all answered. "Now I want each of you to take a strip about six yards wide as we go down, and just walk back and forth across it. If you come to any gullies or holes where they might have fallen down be particularly careful. Light your torches, and look into them. Don"t pay attention to the paths or trails, just cover the ground."
"Oh, I do hope we can find them!" said Bessie, as they started. "I"d hate to think of their being out here all night on a night like this."
"Yes, and in a way it"s really my fault," said Dolly, remorsefully.
"Why, Dolly, how can you think that?"
"It was because Gladys quarrelled with the rest of them that she went out. And if I hadn"t thrown those mice in at them there wouldn"t have been any quarrel. Don"t you see?"
"I think it"s silly to blame yourself, though, Dolly. She might have gone out just the same, anyhow."
"Well, I"ll never forgive myself if anything happens to them, Bessie. I might have kept my temper, the way you and Margery did. They didn"t do any more to me than they did to the rest of you. Oh, I am sorry, and I am going to try to control myself better after this."
Then they went on in silence for a time. Bessie felt sorry for Dolly, and she really did think that Dolly"s conscience, now that it was beginning to awaken, was doing more than its share. It was unlike the care-free Dolly to worry about anything she had done, but it was like her, too, to accuse herself unsparingly once she began to realize that she might possibly be in the wrong. It was Dolly"s old misfortune that was grieving her now; her inability to forecast consequences before they came along to confound her.
For a long time they had no results, and the blowing of horns and the occasional flash of a torch between the trees showed them that the others were meeting with no better success. Sometimes, too, Eleanor joined them for a moment. She could tell them nothing, and they continued to search with unabated vigor.
"Look, Bessie!" said Dolly, suddenly. She had lighted a torch to explore a gully a few moments before, and it was still burning brightly. Now it showed them the opening of what looked like a cave, black and dismal looking.
"Why, do you think they might be in there?" asked Bessie. "I"ll blow my horn in the mouth. They"d hear that, and come out."
But blow as hard as she would, there was no answer. She turned away in disappointment.
"I"m afraid they"re not there," she said.
"I"m going in to find out," said Dolly, suddenly. "They might not have heard us. You can"t tell what that horn would sound like in there; it might not make any noise at all."
"Oh, I don"t believe they"re in there," said Bessie. "And I think it might be dangerous. There might be snakes there, or a hole you would fall into, Dolly."
"I don"t care! This is all my fault, and I"m going!"
And without another word, she plunged into the dark entrance. Bessie tried to call her back, but Dolly paid no heed. And in a moment, first leaving behind signs of their having gone in, Bessie followed her, lighting another torch. She had not gone far when she heard a happy cry from Dolly.
"Here they are! I"ve found them!" Dolly shouted. "They"re sound asleep, and I don"t believe there"s a thing the matter with them!"
Nor was there. Both the lost girls slept soundly, and when Gladys finally woke up, blinking at the light of the torches, she looked indignantly at Dolly.
"You"re a sneak, Dolly Ransom!" she said. "I should think you would want to stay with your own sort of people--"
But Dolly was too happy at finding the pair of strays to care what Gladys said to her.
"Oh, come off, Gladys!" she said. "I suppose you don"t know that you"re lost, and that half the people around the lake are out looking for you? Come on! You"ll catch a frightful cold lying here with those thin dresses on. Hurry, now!"
And finally she managed to arouse them enough to make them understand the situation. Even then, however, Gladys was sullen.
"That"s that silly old Miss Brown," she said. "It"s just like her to go running off to your crowd for help, Dolly. I suppose we ought to be grateful, but we"d have been all right there until morning."
Dolly didn"t care to argue the matter. Her one thought now was to get outside of the cave and send out by means of the horns the glad news that the lost ones were found. In a few moments she and Bessie, blowing with all their might, announced the good tidings.
"Now you two will just walk as fast as you can, so that you can get into bed and have something warm inside of you. I"ll be pretty mad if you get pneumonia and die after all the trouble we"ve taken to save you!" she said, laughing.
Gladys wasn"t in any mood, it seemed, to appreciate a joke. As a matter of fact, both she and Marcia Bates had awakened stiff from the cold, and though she wouldn"t admit it she was very glad of the prospect of a warm and comfortable bed.
And when the searchers and the rescued ones reached the Halsted Camp, Gladys wasn"t left long in doubt as to the fate of the vendetta she had declared against the Camp Fire Girls. For, even while she was being put to bed, she could hear the cheers that were being given by her own chums for the girls she had tried to make them despise.
"Oh, Miss Mercer, I think you and the Camp Fire Girls are splendid!" said Emily Turner, the big girl who had been the ringleader of the tricks with the motor boat. "You"re going to stay here quite a while, aren"t you?"
"No," said Eleanor, regretfully. "It was only the fire that made us stay here as long as we have. Now this wind and rain have ended that, and we"ll go on as soon as the storm is over; day after to-morrow, if it clears up to-morrow, so that it will be dry when we start."
"Well, I hope we"ll see you again--all of you," said Emily. "Come on, girls, let"s give the school cheer for the Manasquan Camp Fire!"
They gave it with a will and then Dolly sprang to her feet.
"Now, then, the Wo-he-lo cheer!" she called.
They sang it happily, and then, as they moved toward their own camp, their voices rose in the good-night song of the Camp Fire: Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame.
"I believe Miss Eleanor was right, after all," said Bessie. "Those girls really like us now."
"All but Gladys Cooper," said Dolly. "But then she doesn"t know any better. And she"ll learn."
SUMMER SNOW AND OTHER FAIRY PLAYS By GRACE RICHARDSON Finding there is a wide demand for plays which commend themselves to amateurs and to casts comprised largely of children, Miss Richardson, already well and widely known, has here given four plays which are unusually clever and fill this need. They call for but little stage setting, and that of the simplest kind, are suited to presentation the year around, and can be effectively produced by amateurs without difficulty.
PUCK IN PETTICOATS By GRACE RICHARDSON Five plays about children, for children to play--Hansel and Gretel, The Wishing Well, The King of Salt, The Moon Dream, and Puck in Petticoats. Each is accompanied by stage directions, property plots and other helpful suggestions for acting. Some of the plays take but twenty minutes, others as long as an hour to produce, and every one of the five are clever.
HANDY BOOK OF PLAYS FOR GIRLS By DOROTHY CLEATHER Not one of the six sparkling plays between these covers calls for a male character, being designed for the use of casts of girls only. They are easily, effectively staged--just the sort that girls like to play and that enthusiastic audiences heartily enjoy.
FICTION FOR GIRLS BETTY, The SCRIBE By LILIAN TURNER Drawings by KATHARINE HAYWARD GREENLAND Betty is a brilliant, talented, impulsive seventeen-year-old girl, who is suddenly required to fill her mother"s place at the head of a household, with a literary, impractical father to manage.
Betty writes, too, and every time she mounts her Pegasus disaster follows for home duties are neglected. Learning of one of these lapses, her elder sister comes home. Betty storms and refuses to share the honors until she remembers that this means long hours free to devote to her beloved pen. She finally moves to the city to begin her career in earnest, and then--well, then comes the story.