“O why did you tell me?” she wailed. “Why did you tell me I could be cured, when I never can? Why didn’t you leave me as I was? I was happy then, because I had never hoped to get well. But since you told me I’ve been planning so——” Her voice broke off and she lay back in silent misery.
“Now I can never be a Camp Fire Girl!” she cried a moment later, her grief breaking out afresh. “I can never go camping! I can never help Aunt Aggie!” All the joyful bubbles her fancy had blown in the last two days burst one by one before her eyes, each stabbing her with a fresh pang. “I’ll never be any use in the world; I wish I were dead!” she cried wildly, her rising grief culminating in an outburst of black despair.
“Oh, yes, you can too be a Camp Fire Girl,” said Nyoda soothingly. “You can do lots of things the other girls can do—and some they can’t. There isn’t any part of the Law you can’t fulfill. You can Seek Beauty, and Give Service, and Pursue Knowledge, and Be Trustworthy, and Hold on to Health, and Glorify Work, and Be Happy! Campfire isn’t just a matter of hikes and meetings. It’s a spirit that lives inside of you and makes life one long series of Joyous Ventures. You can kindle the Torch in your invalid’s chair as well as you could out in the big, busy world, and pass it on to others.”
“How can I?” asked Sylvia wonderingly.
“In many ways,” answered Nyoda, “but chiefly by being happy yourself. Even if you never did anything else but be happy, you would be doing a useful piece of work in the world. Just sing as gayly as you used to, and everyone who hears you will be brighter and happier for your song. If you cannot do great deeds yourself, you may inspire others to do them. What does it matter who does things, as long as they are done? If you have encouraged someone else to do something big and fine, all on account of your happy spirit, it is just as well as if you had done the thing yourself. Did you ever hear the line,
‘All service ranks the same with God,’?
“Sylvia, dear, you have the power to make people glad with your song. That is the way you will pass on the Torch. You already have your symbol; you chose it when you began to hero-worship Sylvia Warrington, and loved her because she was like a lark singing in the desert at dawning. That is the symbol you have taken for yourself—the lark that sings in the desert. Little Lark-that-sings-in-the-Desert, you will kindle the Torch with your song! Instead of being a Guide Torchbearer, or a Torchbearer in Craftsmanship, you will become a Torchbearer in Happiness!”
With these words of hope and encouragement Nyoda left her sorrowful little princess to the quiet rest which she needed after the fatiguing examination by the surgeon. Going into Hinpoha’s room she found her lying face downward on the bed in an agony of remorse, her red curls tumbled about her shoulders.
“I told her, I told her,” she cried out to Nyoda with burning self-condemnation. “I couldn’t keep my mouth shut till the proper time; I had to go and tell her two days ahead. If I’d only waited till we were sure she would never have had her heart set on it so. Oh, I’ll never forgive myself.” She beat on the pillow with her clenched fist and writhed under the lash of her self scorn. For once she was not in tears; her misery was far deeper than that. “I didn’t mean to tell her that day, Nyoda, I knew you’d asked us to keep it a secret, but it just slipped out before I thought.”
“Hinpoha, dear,” said Nyoda, sitting down on the bed beside her and speaking seriously, “will it always be like this with you? Will everything slip out ‘before you thought’? Will you never learn to think before you speak? Will you be forever like a sieve? Must we always hesitate to speak a private matter out in front of you, because we know it will be all over the town an hour later? Are you going to be the only one of the Winnebagos who can’t keep a secret?”