“O, I don’t care,” sobbed Elizabeth under her breath. “I—I want to go home. I’d rather die than stay here!”
“Well, die if you like, but leave the rest of us to sleep in peace,” muttered Olga, and turning her face away from the wretched little creature crouching at her side, she went calmly to sleep.
When she awoke she gave a casual glance at the next cot. It was empty, but on the floor was a small huddled figure, one hand still clutching Olga’s blanket. Olga started to yank the blanket away, but the look of suffering in the white face stayed her impatient hand. She touched the thin shoulder of Elizabeth, and for once her touch was almost gentle. Elizabeth opened her eyes with a start as Olga whispered, “Get back to your bed. There’s an hour before rising time.”
Elizabeth crawled slowly back to her own cot, but she did not sleep again. Neither did Olga, and she was uncomfortably aware that a pair of timid blue eyes were on her face until she turned her back on them.
At ten o’clock that morning the girls all trooped down to the water. Some in full knickerbockers and middy blouses were going to row or paddle, but most wore bathing suits. With some difficulty Laura persuaded Elizabeth to put on a bathing suit that Miss Grandis had left for her, but no urging or coaxing could induce her to go into the water even to wade, though other girls were swimming and splashing and frolicking like mermaids. Elizabeth sat on the sand, her eyes following Olga’s dark head as the girl swept through the water like a fish—swimming, floating, diving—she seemed as much at home in the water as on land.
“You can do all those things too, Elizabeth, if you will,” Laura told her. “Look at Myra, there—she has always been afraid to try to swim, but she’s learning to-day, and see how she is enjoying it.”
Elizabeth drew further into her shell of silence. She cast a fleeting glance at Myra Karr, nervously trying to obey Mary Hastings’ directions and “act like a frog”—then her eyes searched again for Olga, now far out in the bay.
When she could not distinguish the dark head, anxiety at last conquered her timidity, and she turned to Laura:
“O, is she drowned?” she cried under her breath. “Olga—is she?”
Anne Wentworth laughed out at the question. “Why, Elizabeth,” she said, leaning towards her, “Olga’s a perfect fish in the water. She’s the best swimmer in camp. Look—there she comes now.”