The in the Mountains Part 8 (1/2)
”Oh!” gasped Dolly, when they were inside the main buildings. ”They call this a camp! Electric lights, and it couldn't be better furnished if it were in the city!”
”The Worcesters like to be comfortable,” said Eleanor, with a smile, ”even when they pretend they're roughing it. It is a beautiful place, though I like our own rough shacks in the Long Lake country better.”
”Come on! I want to explore this place, Bessie!” cried Dolly. ”May we, Miss Eleanor?”
”Go ahead, but be back in half an hour. We've got to help to get dinner, even if we are in the midst of luxury!”
So off went the two girls, and Dolly, always delighted by anything new, was all over the place in a few minutes.
”Look at those summer houses--places for having tea, I bet,” she said. ”h.e.l.lo! Why, there's another camp, just like this!”
Sure enough, through the trees they could see other buildings, all logs outside, but probably all luxury within. And, even while they were looking at them, Dolly suddenly heard her own name.
”Dolly! Dolly Ransom! Is that really you?”
Dolly and Bessie looked up, surprised, for the call came from above and a girl began to climb down from a tree above them, and they saw that she had been hidden on a platform that was covered by leaves and branches.
”Gladys Cooper!” said Dolly. ”Well, whoever would have thought of seeing you here?”
”Oh, there are lots of us here!” said Gladys, rus.h.i.+ng up to Dolly as soon as she reached the ground, and embracing her. ”We're all in a regular camp here, about a dozen of us. We're supposed to do lessons, but I haven't looked at a book since I've been here, and I don't believe any of the other girls have, either!”
”Oh,” said Dolly, suddenly remembering Bessie. ”This is Bessie King, Gladys. And this is my friend Gladys Cooper, Bessie. We used to go to school together before her parents sent her off to boarding-school.”
Suddenly Gladys broke into a roar of laughter.
”Oh, this is rich!” she exclaimed. ”I forgot--why, you must be one of the Camp Fire Girls who are coming here, aren't you, Dolly?”
”I certainly am--and Bessie's another,” said Dolly, a little resentfully. ”Why are you laughing?”
”Oh, it seems so funny for you to belong! None of our crowd do, you know, except you. We were furious when we heard you were coming. We couldn't see why the Worcesters let you people have the camp. But you'll spend all your time with us, won't you, Dolly? And”--she seemed to remember Bessie suddenly---”bring your friend along, sometimes.”
”Indeed, and I'll stay with my own friends!” she said, flus.h.i.+ng hotly.
CHAPTER XII.
ENEMIES WITHOUT CAUSE.
”Horrid little sn.o.b!” commented Dolly, as, with the surprised Bessie following her, she turned on her heel abruptly and left Gladys Cooper standing and looking after her.
”Why, Dolly! What's the matter? And why did she talk that way about the Camp Fire Girls?”
”Because she's just what I called her--a sn.o.b! She thinks that because her father has lots of money, and they can do whatever they like that she and her family are better than almost anyone else. And she and her nasty crowd think the Camp Fire Girls are common because some of us work for a living!”
Dolly's honest anger was very different from the petulance that she had sometimes displayed, as on the occasion when she had been jealous of poor Bessie. And Bessie recognized the difference. It seemed to reveal a new side of Dolly's complex character, the side that was loyal and fine. Dolly was not resenting any injury, real or fancied, to herself now; the insult was to her friends, and Bessie realized that she had never before seen Dolly really angry.
”As if I'd leave you girls and stay with them while we're here!” cried Dolly. ”I can just see myself! They'd want to know if I didn't think Mary Smith's new dress was perfectly horrid, and if I said I did, they'd go and tell her, and try to make trouble. Oh, I know them--they're just a lot of cats!”
”Oh, don't you think you may be hard on her, Dolly?” asked Bessie. Secretly she didn't think so; she thought Gladys Cooper was probably just what Dolly had called her. But it seemed to her that she ought to keep Dolly from quarreling with an old friend if she could. ”Maybe she just wanted to see you, and she knew you, and didn't know the rest of us.”
”Oh, nonsense, Bessie! You're always trying to make people out better than they are. I don't know these girls who are up here with her, but she'd say she knew me, and that we lived in the right sort of street at home, and that her mother and my aunt called on one another, so I'm all right. I know her little ways!”
And Bessie was wise enough to see that to argue with Dolly while she was in such an angry mood would only make matters worse. Bessie loved peace, because, perhaps, she had had so little of it while she lived in Hedgeville with the Hoovers. But Dolly wasn't in a peaceful mood, and words weren't to bring her into one, so Bessie decided to change the subject.
”We'd better hurry back,” she said. ”I really think it must be almost time to start getting supper ready.”
”Good!” said Dolly. ”We haven't really come so far, but it's taken us a long time, hasn't it? That old train from Moose Junction is about the pokiest thing in the way of a train I ever saw.”
So they made their way back to the big building that, as they had already learned, was called the ”Living Camp.” The sleeping rooms were in other and smaller buildings, that were grouped about the central one, in which were only three rooms, beside the big kitchen, a huge, square hall, with a polished floor, covered with skins instead of rugs, to bear out the idea of a rough woods dwelling, and two smaller rooms that were used as a dining-room and a library.
And, as soon as they arrived, they found that they were not the only ones who had had an encounter with their next door neighbors. Margery Burton was talking excitedly to Eleanor Mercer.
”I didn't know I was on their old land!” she was saying. ”And, if I was, I wasn't doing any harm.”
”Tell me just what happened, Margery,” said Eleanor, quietly.
”Why, I was just walking about, looking around, the way one always does in a new place, and the first thing I knew a girl in a bathing suit came up to me!”
”'I beg your pardon,' she said, 'but do you know that you are trespa.s.sing?'
”I said I didn't, of course, and she sort of sneered.
”'Well, you know it now, don't you?' she said, as if she was trying to be just as nasty as she could. 'Why don't you go to the land you're allowed to use? I do think when people are getting charity they ought to be careful!'”
”That's another of that crowd of Gladys Cooper's,” stormed Dolly. ”What did you say, Margery? I hope you gave her just as good as she sent!”
”I was so astonished and so mad I couldn't say a thing,” said Margery. ”I was afraid to speak--I know I'd have said something that I'd have been sorry for afterward. So I just turned around and walked away from her.”
”What did she do? Did she say anything more, Margery?” asked Eleanor, who, plainly, was just as angry as Dolly, though she had better control of her temper.
”No, she just stood there, and as I walked off she laughed, and you never heard such a nasty laugh in your life! I'd have liked to pick up a stone and throw it at her!”
”Good for you! I wish you had!” said Dolly. ”It would have served her right--the cat! Bessie and I met one of them, too, but I happened to know her, so she asked me to come and spend all my time with them while we were here! I'm glad I sailed into her. Bessie seemed to think I was wrong, but I'm just glad I did.”
Eleanor Mercer looked troubled. She understood better than the girls themselves the reason for what had happened, and it distressed and hurt her. The other girls who had heard Margery's account of her experience were murmuring indignantly among themselves, and Eleanor could see plainly that there was trouble ahead unless she could manage the situation--the hardest that she had yet had to face as a Camp Fire Guardian.
”You say it was Gladys Cooper you saw, Dolly?” she said. ”The Gladys Cooper who lives in Pine Street at home?”
”Yes, that's the one, Miss Eleanor.”
”I'm surprised and sorry to hear it,” said Eleanor. ”How does she happen to be there, Dolly? Do you know? The Coopers haven't any camp here, I know.”
”Oh, it's a girls' summer camp, Miss Eleanor. You know the sort. They're run for a lot of rich girls, whose parents want to get rid of them for the summer. They're supposed to do some studying, but all they, ever really do is to have a good time. I'd have gone to one this year if I hadn't joined the Camp Fire Girls instead. Gladys laughed at me in the city when she heard I was going to join.”
”Mrs. Cooper wouldn't like it, I know that,” said Eleanor, thoughtfully. ”She's a charming woman. She and my mother are great friends, and I know her very well, too. There's nothing sn.o.bbish about her, though they have so much money. I remember now; they went to Europe this summer, and they didn't take Gladys with them.”