Bessie Carroll drew a long breath as she looked about, and said earnestly, “Miss Laura, I never, never saw any place so dear! I didn’t think there could be such a pretty room.”
Laura bent and kissed the earnest little face. “I am glad you like it so much, dear,” she said. “I like it too. You remember the very first words of our Camp Fire law—‘Seek beauty’? I thought of that when I was furnishing this. It is our Camp Fire room, girls, and I hope we shall have many happy times together here.”
“I guess they couldn’t help being happy times in a room like this—and with you,” returned Bessie with her shy smile, which remark was promptly approved by the other girls—except Olga, who said nothing.
“You look as glum as that old barn owl at the camp, Olga,” Louise Johnson told her under cover of the gay clamour of talk that followed. “For heaven’s sake, do cheer up a bit. That face of yours is enough to curdle the milk of human kindness.”
Olga’s only response was a black scowl and a savage glance, at which Louise retreated with a shrug of her shoulders and an exasperating wink and giggle.
Within half an hour all the girls were there except Elizabeth. Olga, glooming in a corner, thought of Elizabeth crawling off alone to her room to cry. Torture would not have wrung tears from Olga’s great black eyes, and she would have seen them unmoved in the eyes of any other girl; but Elizabeth—that was another thing. She glanced scornfully at the others laughing and chattering around Miss Laura, and vowed that she would never come to another of the meetings unless Elizabeth could come too. If Miss Laura, after all her talk, couldn’t do something to help Elizabeth——But Miss Laura was standing before her now with a box of matches in her hand.
“I want you to light our fire to-night, Olga,” she said gently. Ungraciously enough, Olga touched a match to the splinters of resinous pine on the hearth, and as the fire flashed into brightness, Miss Laura, turning out the electric lights, said, “I love the fire, but I love the candles almost as much; so at our meetings here, we will have both.” The girls were standing now in a circle broken only by the fire. Miss Laura set the three candlesticks with the bayberry candles on the floor in the centre of the circle and motioned the girls to sit down. Lightly they dropped to the floor, and Laura, touching a splinter to the fire, handed it to Frances Chapin, a grave studious High School girl who had not been at the camp. Rising on one knee, Frances repeated slowly,
“‘I light the light of Work, for Wohelo means work,’” and lighting the candle, she added,
“‘Wohelo means work.
We glorify work, because through work we are free.