Bessie looked at Dolly sharply, but, if she meant to say anything, Eleanor herself anticipated her remark.
“Now come on, Dolly, own up!” she said. “Didn’t you feel pretty bad when you heard Gladys and Marcia were lost in the woods last night? Didn’t you think that it was because you’d got the best of the girls that they turned against Gladys, and so drove her into taking that foolish night walk in the woods?”
“Oh, I did—I did!” cried Dolly. “And I told Bessie so last night, too. I never would have forgiven myself if anything really serious had happened to those two girls.”
“That’s just it, Dolly. You may think that revenge is a joke, perhaps, as you meant yours to be, but you never can tell how far it’s going, nor what the final effect is going to be.”
“I’m beginning to see that, Miss Mercer.”
“I know you are, Dolly. You were lucky—as lucky as Gladys and Marcia. You were particularly lucky, because, after all, it was your pluck in going into that cave, when you didn’t know what sort of danger you might run into, that found them. So you had a salve for your conscience right then. But often and often it wouldn’t have happened that way. You might very well have had to remember always that your revenge, though you thought it was such a trifling thing, had had a whole lot of pretty serious results.”
“Well, I really am beginning to feel a little sorry,” admitted Dolly, “though Gladys acted just as if she was insulted because we found them. She said she and Marcia would have been all right in that cave if they’d stayed there until morning.”
“I think she’ll have reason to change her mind,” said Eleanor. “She’d have found herself pretty uncomfortable this morning with nothing to eat. And she’s in for a bad cold, unless I’m mistaken, and it might very well have been pneumonia if they’d had to stay out all night.”
“She’s a softy!” declared Dolly, scornfully. “I’ll bet Bessie and I could have spent the night there and been all right, too, after it was all over.”
“You and Bessie are both unusually strong and healthy, Dolly. It may not be her fault that she’s a softy, as you call her. The Camp Fire pays a whole lot of attention to health. That’s why Health is one of the words that we use to make up Wo-he-lo. Work, and Health, and Love. Because you can’t work properly, and love properly, unless you are healthy.”