But Mammy appeared at this moment wrapping her charge in a long rose-colored broadcloth cape, and Rose’s manner was unexpectedly humble. “I wouldn’t have forgotten if it had been one of my girls,” she apologized, and then more coldly, “Won’t you come into the house?”
She had so far caught but an indefinite glimpse of the young girl in Dr. Barton’s charge and was steeling her heart against her until she had had time to think of whether it was best for the other Camp Fire girls to bring this sick child into their midst. For she did look such a baby standing there in the snow with an old-fashioned knitted blue woolen hood on her head, such as little girls had not worn for almost twenty years. And then, suddenly, the girl began to cry quite helplessly and pitifully, so that Rose forgot every other consideration and put her arms about her as you would comfort a baby, drawing her toward the cabin and into the kitchen that she might be warmed and comforted by Mammy before being presented to a dozen strange older girls all at once.
The young doctor did not follow them, indeed Rose had not invited him in again. But a few moments later she must have remembered his existence, for she came out for the second time into the cold.
Dr. Barton extended his hand, but apparently Rose did not see it, for she kept her own arms by her sides, saying in somewhat the same manner she had used earlier in the day to Sylvia: “I am sorry, Dr. Barton, you do not think I can be interested in the care of a sick little girl, and that you feel me unworthy to be a Camp Fire guardian. I know that I haven’t all the knowledge and character that is necessary, but I am learning, and——”
Rose would not listen to the young man’s explanation or apology, for with a quick good-night she turned and left him endeavoring to say something to her which evidently she did not care to hear.
CHAPTER X
Esther’s Old Home
However, of all the Sunrise Camp Fire club it was Esther Clark who actually had the strangest Christmas eve experience. Betty had rather opposed her going over to the orphan asylum for a last rehearsal of her song with Herr Crippen. It was not really necessary, for Esther knew her song as well as she ever would be able to learn it and could only fail in her singing of it on Christmas night should her audience happen to frighten her voice away. Nevertheless, Esther had a kind of sentiment in seeing her old friends at the asylum on Christmas eve, since this was the first year that she could remember when her Christmas had not been spent with them, and there would be no opportunity for visiting the next day.
For some reason or other, which Esther had never had satisfactorily explained to her, she had been kept longer at the orphan asylum than any of the other children. Indeed she was sixteen, almost seventeen, in the spring before when Mrs. Ashton had persuaded the superintendent to let her try the experiment of having Esther as her daughter Betty’s companion. Ordinarily the children were sent away to live and work in other people’s homes when they were thirteen or fourteen; many of them were adopted by the farmers in the surrounding neighborhood when they were almost babies, so that Esther naturally felt her obligation to be the deeper. Notwithstanding she was not thinking a great deal about her former lonely life at the asylum, nor even of the queer German violinist’s interest in her voice, as she drove Fire Star over the now familiar road. Both her mind and heart were heavy with the news Dick Ashton had been able to whisper to her in a few hurried moments when they had been alone in the cabin that morning soon after Dick’s arrival. Mr. Ashton had lost not merely a small sum of money which might cause him temporary inconvenience, as Betty imagined. He had had such serious losses that Dick’s mother had written begging him and Betty to cut down their living expenses as closely as possible. And some one had to tell Betty. Dick was not a coward; in making his confidence he simply wondered if Esther would not be able to console his sister afterwards and to explain conditions to her better than he could, because Betty never had seemed able to understand any question of money matters however much she seemed to try. The actual facts he himself would tell her as soon as the holiday season had passed.
There was one way in which Betty could save money, Esther decided. She should no longer pay for her singing lessons. Indeed she would ask the German violinist that morning if there were not some way by which she could help him, by playing his accompaniments, perhaps, if he succeeded in getting up a violin class in Woodford. Anyhow she would earn the money for her own lessons in some way, for, unselfish as Esther was, her music lessons meant too much to her, were too important to her future, even to think of giving them up altogether.
The professor was waiting for her in the big, bare, ugly parlor of the asylum which, however, possessed the glory of a not utterly impossible piano. Nevertheless, Esther only waved her hand to him as she passed the door on the way to her older friends. She was thinking that he looked older, poorer and homelier than ever with his red hair, his spectacled, pale blue eyes and his worn clothes. He had a little sprig of holly in his buttonhole, in a determined German effort to be a part of the prevailing Christmas cheerfulness.