A note was on the chair by her bedside, just the usual affectionate greeting from her father, a pretty little custom of his whenever he was obliged to leave before she was awake. No matter how hurried, he always took time to write a line or two before he left. Any other girl would have been so proud and pleased with his unfailing tenderness and attention, but Claire wrapped herself round with coldness and accepted all he did for her without even the thanks she would have offered to a stranger.
She even hesitated to read the short, loving note. It bored her, she told herself. But she opened it idly and skimmed the words that told her that she must spend an easy day because he had planned a little surprise for Rosanna and Mabel and herself. Claire lifted her eyebrows. She had forgotten to tell her father that Mabel bored her to death. Rosanna was not quite so bad; in fact, she really liked the pretty, dark-eyed girl who seemed so warm-hearted and so sincere. Then with scarcely a thought of curiosity as to the nature of the surprise, she touched the bell that summoned the maid with her breakfast, and idly picking up a copy of the Handbook for Girl Scouts, commenced to read.
"A Girl Scout is loyal," she read, "to the President, to her country, and to her officers; to her father, to her mother—"
Claire stopped there, at least something stopped her. She read the words repeatedly, "Loyal to her father." What was loyalty anyway? She read on: "She remains true to them through thick and thin. In the face of the greatest difficulties and calamities, her loyalty must remain untarnished."
Claire frowned. She was faced with terrific difficulties, while a frightful calamity, like a black cloud, darkened all her future. What did loyalty to her father mean in her case? She read on: "A Girl Scout is cheerful under all circumstances." Claire thought of her wild ravings the night before, and frowned. She skipped down the page to a short paragraph that her eyes seemed unable to avoid.
"Kipling in Kim says that there are two kinds of women,—one kind that builds men up, and the other that pulls men down; and there is no doubt as to where a Girl Scout should stand."
Now Claire in her most selfish moods could not blind herself to the fact that her violent scenes were always followed by days of deep mournfulness on the part of her father. Lines appeared in his handsome face and his hair seemed to grow grayer. Was she pulling her father down? She refused to answer the question, and flirted the pages over to escape that part. She scanned the qualifications for the three grades of Girl Scouts. She was only a Second-Class Scout, and she knew that she was a poor one at that. She had been too indolent to try for the First Class. She read the necessary qualifications over.
She could not set a table for any meal, and she could not sew. She had never tried to walk a mile in twenty minutes, and as for dressing or bathing a child, Claire wondered where she could borrow one to try on. She could not pass the First Aid or the International alphabet exam. She could not train a Tenderfoot; at least it was too much trouble, and while she could name ten trees, ten wild flowers, ten wild animals and ten wild birds, they were all Chinese. She could swim; oh, how she could swim! A thrill of joy shook her as she thought of past hours spent in soft tropic waters. As for fifty cents in bank earned by herself, that was so funny that Claire laughed aloud. She could not imagine earning five cents, let alone fifty.
That brought her thoughts around to Mabel Brewster, and Claire saw her in a new light.
There was a lucky girl even if she was silly and conceited. She believed in herself and had gone off alone to fight the world, with all her banners flying. Yet there was that loyalty law cropping up again. What if Mabel could write as splendidly as she said, wasn't her place really at home with her mother and brother? Claire was sure the Brewsters were not rich, and in that case Mrs. Brewster certainly needed help. Loyalty; always loyalty! A new and disturbing thought flashed over Claire. Perhaps she owed her own mother some loyalty too, even though she was away in a sanitarium. Wasn't it loyalty to her to keep her troubled, lonely and unhappy father "built up" so far as it lay in her power?