“Here’s hoping that ’twill taste better than my apple-shortcake, which Captain Andy said was ‘chunky’ when I took a piece over to his tent! But I’ll do better next time. See if I don’t!” laughed Blue Heron, dropping her fuel and flapping her winged sleeves as if for a new flight. “Oh! Pen, I simply can’t go back—yet,” she quavered; “not if they begin supper without us. I don’t believe we’ll ever have another evening—another sunset—quite so lovely as this. I want to climb that tall peak and see the view; I will, too, if I never taste another mouthful!”
They capered up the lower, easy slope of the hill, fringes waving, just in that mood when feet would wither if they didn’t dance and the heart must burst if it couldn’t worship.
“Oh! how near it brings one to—to Things—like the altar rails at Confirmation,” whispered Olive, half to herself, her gasping breath a shrine for panting feeling when, with slower steps, she had mastered the summit of this hundred-feet snow-peak and looked down upon lesser dunes, creamily piled, sown with sunset roses, upon a crystalline hollow like a mimic glacier where fairies skated and away at the sundown glories crowning the snow-drift dunes of the opposite shore beyond the tidal river’s blue.
There all heaven seemed let loose, the heaven that lives in color; the elder girl’s soul was steeped in it; with cords woven of every hue in the spectrum it linked each holy moment of her life and wove it into the present minute: again, across the gulf of a year, she felt the touch of consecrating hands upon her head, heard the prayer: “Defend, oh, Lord, this Thy child with Thy Heavenly grace...!”
It was no far-away Lord of grace and glory now; the sunset made a highway to His Presence.
“That she may daily increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more...!”
What better translation of that than the Camp Fire spirit: the quest of beauty, truth, service, health, happiness, love?
Olive’s lips quivered as, with a loving, expanding desire for human contact, she again put an arm around Penelope. Penelope nestled close to her. They clung together upon the white apex of that peak, the apex of girlish feeling, in such a moment as should ever prevent outward differences from separating them again.
Penelope stirred uneasily. “I’ve got the dune-fever,” she said. “You set me going, Olive! I just can’t go back to camp with our fagots until I climb that other peak, just beyond this one, to see how the sunset looks from there!”
“All right! Let’s!” responded Olive recklessly. “Our Guardian or Captain Andy will be coming out to look for us, though! Well! it won’t take very long. We really will go back then. Oh! wait for me, Pen!” as Penelope, scarlet of cheek, sturdy of foot, panting in breath, ploughed up that still farther peak, like a brown goat, her braids and fringes waving.