Round Robin

by Abbie Farwell Brown

THE PATCHWORK QUILT

“Oh, rain!” Norma lifted her head from her pillow and groaned. “No swim this morning, and Victor was just teaching me that new stroke!” Norma hated rain. Grey skies of New England always put her into a bad temper. But her little Belgian tent-mate was philosophical.

“We need ze rain for ze garden,” said Gilda, “and for ze spring of wasser. Tante said, if it not rains in July, it be bad for us, the spring running dry.”

“I wonder how the Golden Girl likes living in a damp tent!” thought Norma with a grimace as she put on her wrinkled blouse and brushed her unwrinkled hair. “It’s all very well for you crinkly girls, Gilda. But do look at me!” She stared in the small mirror tragically.

“Pooh!” said Gilda, who was learning a few Americanisms. “Nobody care about crinkles or wrinkles in a camp. Zat is what Tante said. I like zat. Not so? Nobody mind also leetle damps.”

“Leetle damps!” Anne Poole found it more than a little damp as she picked her way from rock to rock and around tiny lakes in the path that led from the Fairy Ring to the bungalow. She wondered what campers could find to do on such a dismal day, and regretted the comforts of Idlewild; the pool room, the piano and victrola, the library with its elaborately bound volumes. Anne had been the only one who read books at Idlewild. Mr. Poole had put them in as a part merely of the library furnishings. So the library at Idlewild had been Anne’s almost undisturbed domain.

Though the Camp had turned out to be quite tolerable during the week of sunny days, with so many pleasant new things to do, Anne wondered what in the world would keep her from being bored by a deluge like this. But to her amazement she found that leetle damps did not make much difference to the Round Robin. To be sure, Dick was the only one who went for the morning swim. He declared it was drier in the salt water than on land. To-day nobody was interested in going to pick the wild strawberries which were growing sweeter and ruddier every day in the meadows back of the Fairy Ring. But the boys went about looking like fishermen in their yellow slickers and hats; for the mail had to be fetched from the village and the milk from Maguire’s farm, rain or shine. Cicely also put on her mackintosh and went forth as usual to “botanize.” You cannot keep an English girl indoors just on account of rain. Presently she returned, rosy-cheeked, to tell about the lovely green rosettes that were unfolding on the old spruce trees, and the wonderful color in the deep woods. The surf on the rocks was splendid too, she said. So everybody had to run out to see; everybody but Patsy, who looked very complacent and fluffy, when they all returned dripping and draggled, but jolly.

But there was also plenty to do indoors that kept the day from being really “dull.” Housework! Anne had never imagined that there could be any fun in the kitchen! But as Tante managed it, there was a regular competition to see who should make the greatest hit, as it came the turn of each girl to make a special dish for breakfast or lunch or supper. And a rainy day was a fine undistracted time for the amateur cooks to get ahead with their experiments in cake and pudding and bread, fudge and cream peppermints.

A rainy day is good for basket-making, too; for the grass of sedge or raffia is easier to work when it is a little damp. Beverly spread herself in a window-seat of the living room and made great progress on her basket, while some of the rest did their weekly mending, and Norma read aloud. Nancy, however, retired to a dry quiet corner of the bungalow loft, to finish the fairy story which had been waiting for a wet day to be “transplanted,” as she called it. Then there were always letters to write, if one had time.

But no one would have had time to spare at Round Robin even during the Flood, Nancy declared; with a pair of lively Twins, a brown dog and a white cat eager to be played with. A girl who loved children and animals had no excuse for being bored. Anne soon had her hands full, when the children found what wonderful things she could make with scissors and paper. As a child left to her own resources most of the time, Anne had learned how to amuse herself in these simple ways. The time went so fast that she was amazed indeed when the tea-squad demanded her help. Anne had already learned how to set a table very nicely.