“Doesn’t she make just the dearest little Camp Fire Sister, with--with the grace of her, the green leaf in her head-band and embroidered upon the front of her ceremonial dress!” murmured one and another of the Group who had adopted her, working for patriotic honors along lines of Americanization--building up the new American womanhood, to the broader ideals and understanding won by the Great War.
Flamina was a full-fledged Wood Gatherer now. The brightest silver spark in the night of her eye, beneath those curly lashes, was a reflection of the fagot-ring upon her finger.
The ceremony of her initiation, interrupted by the witch-stenciled war-plane, by the knights of the sky, with their clipped anecdotes of airdom adventures--their wingèd slang--had been gone through later upon the white beach, while:
“Drowsy wavelets come and go,
To weave a dream-spell ’round Wohelo!”
She was getting into her heart of hearts the Wohelo magic now; the triple ideals of Work, Health, Love--the cord that bound her to her Camp Fire Sisters, those daughters of the Sun, who, as she increasingly understood, wedded old and new, the poetry of the past--of races that went before them upon American soil--with the reaching-out progress of the present.
And “there is that giveth and yet increaseth,” so the Bible says: every hour spent in truly naturalizing the little foreign-born sister, cultivating the freshly grafted shoot, with its transplanted green leaf, had been one of richness for the instructors, too; from Olive, who had improved her English, to Sara and Betty, who had helped to fashion her ceremonial dress, and Sybil who had wrought a leaf upon its bosom.
The music of her caressing song, whether it dwelt in childish passion, wild and tender, upon the country and sea she loved, recalling her own blue bay of Naples, or matched the mischief of her dancing footsteps, gay as the most elusive little leaf, in a
“Cip i tè ciop!
(Chippety chop!)”