“Huh!” growled Sadie. “You don’t think about me, only just about Olga, and she isn’t your sister.”
At another time Elizabeth would have smiled at this belated claim of relationship, but now she said only, “Olga has been so good to me, Sadie—I never can forget it—and now when I have a chance to do a little for her, I’m so glad to do it! I couldn’t enjoy the camp if I left her here sick, but it won’t make any difference to you. You can go just the same.”
Sadie’s face cleared at that. “We-ell,” she agreed, “I might just as well go. I couldn’t do anything much for Olga if I stayed; and maybe, anyhow, she’ll get well before the tenth. I’m most sure she will.”
“O, I hope so,” Elizabeth sighed, but she was not thinking of the camp.
Anxious weeks followed, for Olga was very sick. Day after day the fever held her in restless misery, and when at last it yielded to the treatment, it left her weak and worn—the shadow of her former self.
Then one morning Miss Laura came, and carried her and the nurse off to the yacht, and there followed quiet, restful, beautiful days for Olga—such days as she had never dreamed of. Judge Haven and Jim, and Jo Barton were on the yacht, but she saw little of any one except Miss Laura and the nurse, and day by day strength came back to her body as the joy of life flooded her soul.
One night sitting on deck in the moonlight, she said suddenly, “Miss Laura, I’m glad of this sickness.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve learned a big lesson. I’ve learned why Camp Fire Girls must ‘Hold on to health.’ I didn’t know before, else I would not have been so careless—so wicked. I see now that it was all my own fault. I should not have been sick if I had taken care of myself—if I had held on to my health as you tried so hard to make me do.”
“Yes, dear, you had to have a hard lesson because you had always had such splendid health that you didn’t know what it would mean to lose it.”