Sally’s under-lip suddenly quivered; one of her lightning changes of mood breezed up in her, almost wafting her back toward the gate; she felt the same twinge of penitence that occasionally nipped her for having once lightly denounced Olive and her sister Sybil as “all fluff and stuff,” chiefly because, hitherto, they had taken little notice of her, when, now, she was forced to admit that Olive’s inner fabric was anything but unduly “fluffy.”
“Perhaps it’s not Penelope’s fault that she’s like that,” she put forward slowly. “The Tingles haven’t been long in the city and they come to our church, so my mother went to call on Mrs. Tingle—she’s not the tingling sort at all; she’s a very nice, refined woman—but isn’t it strange she has the very same affliction, in a way, as that deaf-and-dumb child whom we’re going to see now?” glancing at a white parcel under Jessica’s arm. “She’s absolutely deaf, too, having lost her hearing after an illness, and is losing her speech, also, so that she has to write things down for callers. Mother said that she lacked the very sense that would enable her to correct Penelope’s manners. But the funny part of it is,” ran on Sally volubly, “that she said Pen—Penny, as she calls her—was her right hand about the house, working so hard—since her father lost money lately—and managing her young brothers so well.”
“Imagine it! There must be two Pennies, then, one of brass, the other of gold,” laughed Jessica.
“Yes, when Mother told all that to the Guardian of our Camp Fire, Miss Dewey, she said it was too bad that Penelope shouldn’t have her hard duties touched up and made interesting by winning honor-beads for them and that she was going to invite her to join our Morning-Glory Camp Fire—there’s no Camp Fire circle at the church that Pen and I attend. Miss Dewey thinks that it would tone her down a lot to wear a ceremonial dress and sing stately songs, with mystic motions.”
“Goodness! you might as well try to make a parrot pray,” interjected Betty.
“I don’t know—now!” This from the Rainbow, Arline. “Don’t you remember, Sally, how you and I felt about a year ago when we were just fifteen”—with a great air of maturity—“we felt awkward and as if nobody loved us,” plaintively; “we didn’t know whether to put our hair up or not; we felt too old to run and play with the boys as we used to do——”
“You won’t feel that way when you’re eighteen; I’ll soon be young enough for it again,” put in Morning-Glory sagely.
“And yet we weren’t old enough to do as our older sisters and friends did, receive formal calls from boys and have them invite us very prettily to go to places!” Thus the Rainbow again took up the chant of a fifteen-year-old girl’s problems, ending with this Jubilate: “’Twas then that ‘Camp Fire’ came in so well, wasn’t it? Since it took hold of us, six months ago, we’ve been just so busy doing new things, dressing up and winning honors, that we haven’t had time to think of ourselves at all. Maybe Penelope is at the awkward age, too, without any home help such as we had.”
“Maybe so! Let’s drop the tingling penny now, anyway!” suggested Betty with a chuckle. “Arline says she feels too old to race with boys as she used to do, but whether we run with them or not, we’ll run into them, I expect, when we go camping this summer, for Captain Andy says that there’s a Boy Scout Camp on some other sand-dunes, just across the river from the Sugarloaf, with harbor seals and breakers an’ quicksands and all sorts of queer obstacles between them and us!”
“Too bad! Boys come in handy, sometimes, when you fish off the rocks with a pole and don’t want to handle the bait,” suggested Sally reflectively.