"There!" the Penguins shrieked together. And they all looked at Emma.
"There!" they said.
Pip-Emma looked.
"It's our Camp," Janet explained in her thin high voice. "There's the lake. And that's our dining hall. And there, among the trees, is the Penguin Circle, where we sleep."
Emma said nothing. It was as though, at the wave of a wicked wand, Roxy's and all its ushers had been bewitched into ruins and rags. And it was more than Emma, at that moment, could bear. Her sharp, sallow little face puckered. To the Penguins' consternation, she burst into a storm of tears.
Before supper Clara VanSittart summoned the Penguins to a hasty powwow. They drew Prissy into it, the situation being beyond them.
"P'raps it was the trees upset her," Janet hazarded. "You know, she's never seen any."
The twins shook their heads. "It wasn't the trees. When we showed her our tent, she said her uncle slept in a place like that."
"What's her uncle?" the Penguins demanded indignantly.
"He's a W.P.A. worker," the twins said in unison, "and he's helping build a post office somewhere. She said there weren't any houses, so they had to live in tents."
Clara VanSittart drew a shocked breath. The truth was obvious. To Emma Binns their Camp was just a camp. When she heard that she'd have to make her bed, light fires, and wash dishes, she'd write home. She'd tell her people—probably dreadful people—that that was how the VanSittarts lived.