She never could see why people always spoke of her hair. Certainly there were redder heads, and her heavy, waving locks were always perfectly cared for, glossy and brushed with careful attention. She pulled the long braid over her shoulder and looked at it. The braid was thicker than her wrist, and when unbound it reached nearly to her knees. Almost petulantly she swung it behind her and turned her eyes toward the window again. They were queer eyes, a strange sea-green in color, and their black lashes and straight brows gave them a dark and brooding expression. She was pale, but it was not a wholesome pallor. She looked like a girl whose hours were not good, who sat up too late, and ate the wrong kinds of food. Her supple slender hands were bare except for a little finger ring of green jade set in silver. Her wrist-watch showed its tiny face from the center of a silver and jade bracelet. She wore the jewel pushed far up her sleeve.
The door opened, and a tiny figure in the uniform of the Scout Captain entered. The red-haired girl, still staring into the night, did not bother to turn, and with a long glance at the unfamiliar and unfriendly back the little lady who had just entered advanced to the table in the center of the room and arranged the papers lying there. Occasionally she directed a puzzled glance toward the girl at the window, but silence filled the big room and the resolute shoulders showed no sign of curiosity or embarrassment. The little lady at the table smiled. She was well aware that the girl at the window, looking into the dark pane as in a looking-glass, was watching her closely. She frowned suddenly at the girl's rudeness, then smiled and went on with her task.
A little later the door opened and a laughing, chattering group entered. Then and not until then did the red-haired girl rise and advance.
The girls stared, and the stranger's lip curled. Her red hair! It was always so. Walking slowly toward the table, she started to give a perfunctory salute, a salute which changed character and became snappy enough as she felt her gaze held by a pair of deep, compelling eyes. The Scout Captain was tiny and looked not a day over sixteen; but she was the Captain, and the red-haired stranger reluctantly admitted it to herself. She could not complain of the friendliness of her greeting. Wanderer as she was, drifting here and there over the world, a Scout in one place after another, she was aware that here were girls filled with the simplest and most charming courtesy. Each one met her with a sweet warmth of manner that almost pierced her chill and reserve, and when she turned and took her seat as the business meeting commenced, the girls were all along wondering if the stranger was shy, sad, or merely bored. A feeling of puzzled resentment stirred in a few. If the strange girl did not wish to be friendly, why had she brought herself and her jade green eyes and her queer ring into their happy circle?
The meeting progressed quietly. The strange new element cast a spell over the happy group. It was not as though they were depressed; it was rather as though they were waiting for something to happen, as though it was time for the curtain to go up on a new and exciting play.
The girls, all a little restless by nature, smiled, shifted in their seats and occasionally touched each other with friendly, caressing hands. They regarded the little Captain with adoring eyes and cast questioning and friendly glances toward the newcomer.
She, however, ignored them all. It was as though she sat alone, her strange, deep eyes fixed on the Captain's sparkling face, studying it with cool, impersonal interest. She never changed her easy, graceful position, and her delicate hands rested in her lap motionless as though carved from wax.
The meeting closed, and as was their custom when a new girl joined, the Scouts gathered around the stranger with pretty, friendly advances. As they spoke to her, she regarded them with the same curious gaze she had bent on the Scout Captain.
"We are so glad you have joined us," said a sparkling mite, dancing from one tiny foot to the other. "You say your name is Claire Maslin? Mine is Estella LaRue."
"And mine is Jane Smith," said a tall beauty with golden hair and pansy-blue eyes.