But the best part of a rainy day at camp—like the best part of many a speaker’s address—is the end of it. By evening everybody in camp is tired of being busy and of moving about. Everybody wants to keep still and be amused.
After supper the boys heaped up a great fire in the fire-place, and everyone drifted into her favorite seat or onto his favorite rug or cushion. Anne Poole retired into a dim corner, where she could watch the faces in the firelight without being watched herself. She was still studying all these strangers critically, trying to see how they could possibly be so different from the persons she had hitherto known. And yet, as she had to confess to herself, they were not so terrible after all; not nearly so uncomfortable to live with as she had feared they would be.
“Let’s pop some corn!” said Eddie Batchelder, “mayn’t we, Mumsie?”
“Let’s tell stories,” suggested Norma. “Everybody tell a story but me! You have got one all ready, Nancy. I saw you writing it this morning!”
“It’s only just transplanted. It isn’t blossomed yet,” protested Nancy.
“You tell a story, Tante,” suggested Beverly. “You haven’t told one this year.”
“If everybody were here,” said Tante.
“We’re all here,” said Anne, counting around the circle, completed by Doughboy and Patsy, curled up on the rugs.
“No. Nelly Sackett isn’t here,” several voices cried. “But it is raining so hard I suppose she won’t come.”
But just then there was a tap on the door, and in pattered a little figure in rubber boots and yellow slicker, with the Captain’s tarpaulin hat drawn down over her curls which were kinky with rain-drops. The Twins rushed upon her and seized her umbrella, and lantern, while Dick undertook to relieve her of her rubber boots. Tante asked her if she had not found it hard to keep the road on this dark night, but Nelly said Oh, no; her feet seemed to know the way. Whereupon Dick began to chant his favorite poem, accenting it as he pulled at the reluctant boots: