“It will go well with our painted ‘buffalo robe’ bearing the figure of a Camp Fire Girl; we’ll hang it on the wall, then it will make our room like an Indian lodge, with hunting weapons,” romanced Morning-Glory, gazing round the pretty, firelit meeting-room in the Guardian’s house, dedicated to the use of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire which bore none but the slenderest resemblance to a red man’s lodge, with its pretty window-curtains made, embroidered and hung by the girls’ own hands, its leather table-cover, sofa pillows and Record Book bound in sheepskin.
Into almost every article in that room, with the bare exception of the furniture, had been woven the personality of some member of the Morning-Glory Tribe who met there, who had helped to make or decorate it—that girlish tribe being likewise responsible for keeping the room swept, garnished and in order.
“There—there is another letter which I want to read to you, as it’s connected with our camping days—and with the worst adventure I ever had in my life!” went on Jessica breathlessly, after a minute or two. “Or, rather, I think I’ll let Gheezies, our Guardian, read it!” The girl’s face was “swept,” now, by a variety of expressions ranging from a sunny gust of amusement to the dark semblance of a shudder wafted by memory across its buoyant brightness.
Gheezies, holding a candle near to the page, smudged, blurred and strangely covered with a scrawl of handwriting, read slowly and with difficulty, mentally supplying punctuation and other conventional marks:
“Chère Mad’selle, dear Frien’:
“It gif me grate plaisir to rote you dese line. Yes’day w’en I go on top o’ post-office w’at you t’ink I see, heem littel box. Ciel! I am so glad I feel lak’ cry. Ach! la jolie montre—de silvare—I haf not de word—I am so fool....”
Here the queer scrawl broke off indefinitely.
Underneath the letter was continued, as follows, in a fine bold hand over several pages:
“Toiney sent me this ‘specimen scribble’ in which he has tried to thank you for the silver watch you sent him in memory of the day when he pulled you out of a patch of horrible quicksands while I revolved on one leg, unable to get to you.
“I’m so glad you remembered him with it, at Christmas—the watch came out of the legacy, I suppose—and you may bet he was tickled when he went ‘on top of post-office,’ meaning into it, and was presented with the registered box! I don’t know how he got so far with his letter, some one must have helped him, for I didn’t think he knew enough English to say Boo! straight....”