CHAPTER IX
Christmas Eve at the Cabin
“I am so sorry, I never dreamed things would turn out like this,” said Sylvia Wharton awkwardly, trying to control a suggestion of tears. She was standing in the center of the Sunrise cabin living room with one hand clasping Rose Dyer’s skirt and the other holding on to Polly. However, if she had had half a dozen hands she would like to have grasped as many girls, for her hour of reckoning had come. Instead, her eyes mutely implored Mollie and Betty who happened to be hurrying by at the same moment and had been arrested by the apologetic and frightened note so unusual in Sylvia’s voice. And this note had to be very much emphasized at the present time to have any one pay the least attention to it, since there were enough Christmas preparations now going on in the Camp Fire living room to have sufficed a small village.
On a raised platform, which occupied about a third of their entire floor space, Miss Martha McMurtry was rehearsing the two Field girls, Juliet and Beatrice, who had only arrived the night before, in the parts they were to play in the Christmas entertainment the following night. While Meg, holding “Little Brother” tight by the belt, was trying to persuade him to await more patiently his time for instruction. Toward the front of this stage, John, Billy Webster and Dick Ashton were struggling to adjust a curtain made of heavy khaki. It had a central design, the crossed logs and a splendid aspiring fire, the well-known Camp Fire emblem, painted by Eleanor Meade, who was at this moment making suggestions to the curtain raisers from the top of a step-ladder. Nan Graham and Edith Norton ran about the room meanwhile, carrying holly wreaths, bunches of mistletoe and garlands of cedar, that several of their Boy Scout friends were helping festoon along the walls. Indeed, every girl in the Sunrise Camp Fire was represented except Esther. She had gone over to the old orphan asylum where she had lived as a child, for a final rehearsal of her song with the German Herr Professor, who was staying with the superintendent of the asylum. For what reason he was there no one knew except that he must have intended getting music pupils in the village later on.
However, in the midst of the prevailing noise the little group about Sylvia had remained silent, for their guardian’s face was flushing strangely, her yellow-brown eyes darkening and for the first time since she came into the Sunrise Club it was possible to see how Rose Dyer felt when she was truly angry. Although her voice never lost its softness there was a severity in it that the girls felt to be rather worse than Miss McMurtry’s in her moods of disapproval.
“Do you mean, Sylvia,” Rose asked, “that you and Dr. Barton have arranged to have a young girl whom none of us know brought to our cabin to be taken care of all winter, without consulting me or even mentioning the subject to a single one of the girls? And that this child, who has been so ill she will require a great deal of care, is actually to arrive this afternoon? It seems to me that not only have you broken every principle of our Camp Fire life but you have been lacking in the very simplest courtesy.”
Never in her life would Sylvia Wharton be able to explain herself or her motives properly in words. She was one of the often misunderstood people to whom expression comes with difficulty. Now her plain face was nearly purple with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to be rude; yes, I know it looks horrid and impossible of me, but you see I meant to explain and to ask permission, only I didn’t dream that she would arrive for another week, and I was just waiting until our festivities would be over and you would be better able to be interested.” She looked rather desperately at Betty, Polly and Mollie before going on, but they appeared almost as overwhelmed as their guardian.
“You see, Betty, it was something you said a while ago that made me think of it first,” she continued. “You said to Miss Dyer one evening that you thought we Sunrise Camp Fire girls were getting rather selfish, that we were not letting strangers into our club or doing anything for outside people. So I thought as Christmas was coming I would like to help somebody. Perhaps we all would! So when Dr. Barton told me about a poor little girl (she is only thirteen, I think) who was ill, probably dying, and if only she could have an outdoor life such as we girls are living she might get well, why, I told him I thought we would like to have her in our camp.”
Sylvia stopped because her words had given out, but she could hardly have chosen a wiser moment, for Mollie, whose gentleness and good judgment everybody respected, was beginning to understand.
“I think Sylvia is trying to show the Christmas spirit of doing good to the people who need it and letting us help,” she whispered, coming closer to their guardian and slipping an arm about her waist. “Perhaps our Christmas preparations have been a little bit too much for ourselves. Of course Sylvia ought to have asked permission, Rose, and of course the little girl is not to stay if you don’t want her, but she didn’t expect her for another week and—and please don’t be angry on Christmas eve.”
This was exactly what poor Sylvia would like to have said without knowing how; however it did not matter who spoke, as Rose was plainly softening.