And then a dozen blankets were unrolled, beautifully woven Indian blankets, such as girls love to use for their dens, as couch covers and for hangings on the walls. Dolly exclaimed with delight as she saw hers.
“Heavens! And you act as if they weren’t perfectly lovely!” she cried. “Why, Marcia, how can you talk as if they weren’t the prettiest things! If that’s what you call just doing the best you can, I’m afraid to think of what you’d have got for us if you’d been able to pick out whatever you wanted. It would have been something so fine that we’d have been afraid to take it, I’m sure.”
“Well, we thought perhaps you’d find them useful if you’re going on this tramp of yours,” said Marcia, blushing with pleasure. “And I’m ever so glad you like them, if you really do, because I helped to pick them out. There’s one for each of you, and then we’ve got a big Mackinaw jacket for Miss Mercer, so that she’d have something different.”
“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me!” said Eleanor, swallowing a little hard, for she was evidently deeply touched. “I don’t mean the presents, Marcia, though they’re lovely, but the spirit in which you all bring them.”
“We—we wanted to show you we were sorry, and that we understood how mean we’d been,” said Marcia.
“Oh, my dear, do let’s forget all that!” said Eleanor, heartily. “We don’t want to remember anything unpleasant. Let’s bury all that, and just have the memory that we’re all good friends now, and that we’d never have been anything else if we’d only understood one another in the beginning as well as we do now.
“That’s the reason for most of the quarrels in this world; people don’t understand one another, that’s all. And when they do, it’s just as it is with us—they wonder how they ever could have hated one another!”
“Why, where’s Gladys Cooper?” asked Dolly, suddenly. She had been looking around for the girl who had been chiefly responsible for all the trouble, and who had been, before this meeting, one of Dolly’s friends in the city from which she and Marcia, as well as the Camp Fire Girls, came. And Gladys was missing.
“She—why—she—she isn’t feeling very well,” stammered Marcia unhappily. But a look at Dolly’s face convinced her that she might as well tell the truth. “I’m awfully sorry,” she went on shamefacedly, “but Gladys was awfully silly.”
“You mean she hasn’t forgiven us?” said Eleanor gently.