“I just can’t believe it. I—I must be dreaming. Don’t let me wake up till I enjoy it a little first,” she pleaded. After a moment she added, “And this all came through the Camp Fire, and my place at Miss Bayly’s too. Olga Priest, I’m a Camp Fire Girl heart and soul and body from now on. I’ve been only the shell of one before, but now—now, I’ve got to pass this on somehow. I must do things for other girls that have no one and nothing—as they’ve done this for me.”
And through Olga’s mind floated like a glad refrain, “‘Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten.’”
Olga was glad—glad with all her heart—for Lizette, and yet that first evening she sat in her own room dreading to hear the tap on her door which she expected every moment. At nine o’clock, however, it had not come, and then she went across and did the knocking herself.
“Come in, come in,” Lizette cried, as she opened her door.
“I’ve been expecting you over all the evening,” Olga said, “and when you didn’t come I was afraid you were sick—or something.”
Lizette looked at her with a queer little smile. “I know. You sat there thinking that you’d never have any peace now with me so near; but you needn’t worry. I’m not going to haunt you. I’ve got a home corner here all my own, and I know that you are there just across the hall, and that’s enough. It’s going to be enough.”
“But I don’t want you to feel that way,” Olga protested. “I want you to come.”
“You want to want me, you mean. O, I’m sharp enough, Olga, if I’m not smart. I know—and I don’t mean that you shall ever be sorry that you brought me here. If I get way down in the doleful dumps some night I’ll knock at your door—perhaps. Anyhow, you’re there, and that means a lot to me.”
Almost every evening after that Olga heard light footsteps and voices in the hall, and taps on Lizette’s door. Elsie and Alice were determined she should no longer feel that “nobody cared,” so they were her first callers, but others followed. Lizette welcomed them all with shining eyes, and once she cried earnestly, “I just love every one of you girls now! And I wish I could do something for you as lovely as what you have done for me.”
“And that’s Lizette Stone!” Lena said to Eva after they left. “Who would ever have thought she’d say a thing like that?”