she explained, "or at least I am afraid you will think my wish very silly. I was just wishing that we were not going back to the village but were going to spend our winter together amid the snows."
Nan"s suggestion was so surprising that everybody stared at her for one, almost two minutes before Betty spoke.
"Very well, Nan, let"s stay," she returned, as though making a perfectly ordinary remark. "I can"t bear for Esther and me to have to go back alone to our great, empty house with mother and father away and no knowing when they may come back." (There was a catch in Betty"s voice that her friends understood, for Mr. Ashton was again seriously ill and there was no hope of his returning to America at present.) "We can"t live in our tents of course, but I don"t know why we can"t build a log cabin and somehow manage to get back and forth to school. When the snow comes we can use our big sled."
"You are quite mad, Betty Ashton; Esther, please tie a handkerchief around her lips before she makes us all equally so," Polly requested, "for there is no hope of our doing anything so impossible, as she suggests." And then because she caught an expression almost of agreement on her sister Mollie"s face, Polly paused, almost overcome with surprise. Mollie, the sensible; Mollie, the practical--it was incredible.
"I don"t see that Betty"s idea is so foolish, for at least some of us might be able to live in camp this winter," Mollie thinking aloud as she talked. "For you see, the doctor has said that Polly must be out of doors as much as possible for the next year, and mother writes she would rather not come home at present if we can possibly get on without her, for there is something or other going on in Ireland that she has not explained to us, but she says if she can stay a few months longer it may make a difference in all our futures. I believe she would be glad to let us remain in Sunrise Camp for the winter if your mother and father are willing and we can make things comfortable, Betty," she concluded.
The mental conception of a group of girls living together in a winter"s camp in the woods was evidently too surprising to be grasped all at once, for no one else at the moment had anything to say, and then Esther, glancing off across the fields where a soft September haze suggested the approach of the twilight, exclaimed. "See, there are Miss McMurtry and Edith returning from town. Let us give them our Camp Fire call to welcome them home."
"Wohelo for work, Wohelo for health, Wohelo for love!"
The ten voices carried the refrain far across the country and somehow the echo returning to them from Sunrise Hill brought with it the suggestion of even happier days to come.
The second volume in the Camp Fire Girls" Series will be called "The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows." In this book the history of the girls will be revealed under very different conditions. More than ever will their life be built around the fire which has always been the center of the home. Various important changes will take place in the circ.u.mstances of the leading characters and mysteries merely suggested in the first story will be developed in the second.
The End