"Did I scare you, girls?" asked a deep, strong voice, and the apparition looked gravely from one to the other. It was a dark-skinned face, bronzed by wind and weather to a coppery, Indian-like tinge, and the hair which framed it was coa.r.s.e and black. Only the head and shoulders of the apparition were visible beside the arms, the rest being concealed in the depths underneath the tent, but the breadth of those shoulders indicated clearly what might be expected in the way of a body. After a moment of roving back and forth between the two girls, the dark eyes under the heavy eyebrows fastened themselves upon Katherine with a mournful intensity of gaze that held her spellbound, speechless. After a full moment"s scrutiny the dark eyes dropped, and the apparition, using her arms as levers, raised herself to the level of the floor and stood up. She was taller even than they had expected from the breadth of her shoulders; in fact, she seemed taller than the tent itself. Katherine, who up until that moment had considered herself tall, felt like a pigmy beside her, or, as she expressed it, "like Carver Hill suddenly set down beside one of the Alps." Never had she seen such a monumental young woman; such suggestion of strength and vigor contained in a feminine frame.
Oh-Pshaw looked timidly at the human Colossus standing in the middle of the tent, and inquired meekly, "Are you Miss Armstrong? Are you our Councilor?"
"I am," replied the newcomer gravely, replacing the board in the floor with a nonchalance which conveyed the impression that coming up through floors was her usual manner of entering places.
"Why did you come in that way?" burst out Katherine, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.
"Oh, I just happened to be under the tent," replied Miss Armstrong, speaking in a drawling voice with a marked English accent, "looking for the broom, when I spied that loose board and thought I"d come in that way. It was less trouble than coming out and going around to the steps."
"Less trouble," echoed Katherine. "I should think it would have been more trouble raising that heavy board with my suitcase standing on it."
"Was your suitcase on it?" inquired Miss Armstrong casually. "I didn"t notice."
"Didn"t notice!" repeated Katherine in astonishment. "It weighs thirty pounds."
"I weigh two hundred and thirty," returned Miss Armstrong conversationally.
"You do!" exclaimed Katherine in amazement. "You certainly don"t look it." Indeed, it seemed incredible that Miss Armstrong, tall as she was, could possibly weigh so much, for she looked lean and gaunt as a wolf hound.
"You must be awfully strong, to have raised that board," Katherine continued, squinting at the muscular brown arms, which seemed solid as iron.
For answer Miss Armstrong took a step forward, picked Katherine up as if she had been a feather, threw her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, held her there for a moment head downward, and then swung her up and set her lightly on the hanging shelf, while Oh-Pshaw looked on round-eyed and open-mouthed with astonishment.
Just then a shadow appeared in the doorway, and Katherine looked down to see a shrinking little figure with pipestem legs standing on the top step.
"h.e.l.lo!" Katherine called gaily, from her airy perch. "Are you our neighbor from Avernus? Do you want anything?" she added, for the girl was swallowing nervously, and seemed to be on the verge of making a request.
"Will somebody please show me how to make a bed?" faltered the visitor in a thin, piping voice. "It isn"t made, and I don"t know how to do it."
"Daggers and dirks!" exploded Katherine, nearly falling off the shelf under the stress of her emotion.
"What"s the matter with the rest of the folks in Avernus--can"t they make beds either?" asked Miss Armstrong, surveying the wisp of a girl in the doorway with an intent, solemn gaze that sent her into a tremble of embarra.s.sment.
"My "tenty" hasn"t come yet," she faltered in reply.
"Who"s your councilor?"
"I don"t know; she isn"t there." The voice broke on the last words, and the blue eyes overflowed with tears.
Katherine leaped from the shelf to the bed and down to the floor. "I"ll come over and help you make your bed," she said kindly.
"All right," said Miss Armstrong, nodding gravely. "You go over with her and I"ll find out who"s councilor in Avernus and send her around."
To herself she added, when the other two were out of earshot, "Baby"s away from it"s mother for the first time, and it"s homesick."
"Poor thing," said Oh-Pshaw, who had overheard Miss Armstrong"s remark.
"She"ll get over it," replied Miss Armstrong prophetically.
If Miss Armstrong was a novelty to the tenants of Bedlam, the councilor in Ponemah also seemed an odd character to the three girls she was to chaperon--only she was a much less agreeable surprise. She was a stout, fussy woman of about forty with thick eye-gla.s.ses which pinched the corners of her eyes into a strained expression. She greeted the girls briefly when they presented themselves to her, and in the next breath began giving orders about the arrangement of the tent. The beds must stand thus and so; the washstand must be on the other side from where it was; the mirror must stay on this side. And she must have half of the swinging shelf for her own; she could not possibly do with less; the others could get along as best they might with what was left.
"We"re supposed to divide the shelf up equally," announced Bengal Virden, who had begun to look upon Miss Peckham--that was her name--with extreme disapproval from the moment of their introduction. Bengal was a girl whose every feeling was written plainly upon her face; she could not mask her emotions under an inscrutable countenance. Her dislike of Miss Peckham was so evident that Migwan and Gladys had expected an outbreak before this; but Bengal had merely stood scowling while the beds were being moved about. With the episode of the swinging shelf, however, she flared into open defiance.
"We"re all to have an equal share of the shelf," she repeated.
"Nonsense," replied Miss Peckham in an emphatic tone. "I"m a councilor and I need more s.p.a.ce."
Bengal promptly burst into tears. "I want to be in Pom-pom"s tent!" she wailed, and fled from the scene, to throw herself upon Pom-pom in the next tent and pour out her tale of woe.
Migwan and Gladys looked at each other rather soberly as they went out to fill their water pitcher.
"What a strange person to have as councilor," ventured Gladys. "I thought councilors at camps were always as sweet as they could be. Miss Peckham looks as though she could be horrid without half trying."
"Maybe it"s just her way, though," replied Migwan good temperedly. "She may be very nice inside after we get to know her. She"s probably never been a councilor before, and thinks she must show her authority."
"Authority!" cried Gladys. "But we"re not babies; we"re grown up. I"m afraid she"s not going to be a very agreeable proctor."
"Oh, well," replied Migwan gently, "let"s make the best of her and have a good time anyway. We mustn"t let her spoil our fun for us. We"ll probably find something to like in her before long."
"I wish I had your angelic disposition," sighed Gladys, "but I just can"t like people when they rub me the wrong way, and Miss Peckham does that to me."
"There"s going to be trouble with the Elephant"s Child," remarked Migwan soberly. "She has already taken a strong dislike to Miss Peckham, and she is still childish enough to show it."
"Yes, I"m afraid there will be trouble between Bengal and Miss Peckham,"
echoed Gladys, "and we"ll be constantly called upon to make peace. It"s a role I"m not anxious for."
"Let"s not worry about it beforehand," said Migwan, charmed into a blissful att.i.tude of mind toward the whole world by the sheer beauty of the scene that unrolled before her. The river, tinged by the long rays of the late afternoon sun, gleamed like a river of living gold, blinding her eyes and setting her to dreaming of magic seas and far countries.
She stood very still for many minutes, lost in golden fancies, until Gladys took her gently by the arm.
"Come, Migwan, are you going to day-dream here forever? There is the spring we are looking for, just at the end of that little path."
Migwan came slowly out of her reverie and followed Gladys down the hill to the spring.
"It"s all so beautiful," she sighed in ecstasy, turning to look back once more at the shimmering water, "it just makes me _ache_. It makes everything unworthy in me want to crawl away and lose itself, while everything good in me wants to sing. Don"t you feel that way about it, too?"
"Something like that," replied Gladys softly. "When Nature is so lovely, it makes me want to be lovely, too, to match. I don"t see how anyone could ever be angry here, or selfish, or mean. It"s just like being made over, with all the bad left out."
"It does seem that way," replied Migwan.
"Here is the spring!" cried both girls in unison, as they reached the end of the path and came upon a deep, rocky basin, filled with crystal clear water that gushed out from the rock above their heads, trickling down through ferns to be caught and held in the pool below, so still and shining that it reflected the faces of the two girls like a mirror.
"Oh-h!" breathed Migwan in rapture, sinking down among the ferns and lilies that bordered the spring and dabbling her fingers in the limpid water, "I feel just like a wood-nymph, or a naiad, or whatever those folks were that lived by the springs and fountains in the Greek mythology."
Withdrawing her fingers from the water and clasping her hands loosely around her knees, she began to recite idly:
"Dian white-armed has given me this cool shrine, Deep in the bosom of a wood of pine; The silver sparkling showers That hive me in, the flowers That prink my fountain"s brim, are hers and mine; And when the days are mild and fair, And gra.s.s is springing, buds are blowing, Sweet it is, "mid waters flowing, Here to sit and know no care, "Mid the waters flowing, flowing, flowing, Combing my yellow, yellow hair."
"That poem must have been written about this very place," she added, dreamily gazing into the shadowy depths of the pool beside her.