Notwithstanding, the girls had to suffer for some time with ungratified curiosity, since Rose made no mention even of having had an unexpected visit from the older woman. Indeed, she tried to go about her regular Camp Fire work from day to day as though nothing had happened, as though there were nothing of special interest or importance on her mind, but this she did not quite succeed in doing, at least not to the watchful eyes of Betty, Esther and Polly, who were the most interested of the girls. For Rose’s face, when she supposed that no one was looking, wore an expression of surprise, of uncertainty and even of worry and uneasiness.
It was odd, Betty thought, why Rose should take Miss McMurtry’s love affair so seriously and what could there be in it to trouble over, anyhow? Either Miss Martha did or did not care for the funny old German who must have been fifteen years her senior, and who certainly was not a desirable catch from a worldly point of view. It never occurred to Betty that there could be any possibility of love not running smoothly with two such elderly persons.
However, as Rose made no confidences, after a week had passed the whole subject vanished into the background of everybody’s minds and most of the girls believed that the whole idea had been a mistaken one from the beginning.
And then one afternoon in the early part of April, Rose called Betty aside and asked her if on the following afternoon she and Esther could meet Miss McMurtry, Herr Crippen and herself in the drawing room at the Ashton house in Woodford. There was a question which had to be discussed and it was not possible to have any privacy at the cabin. Miss Dyer’s own house was closed, but a caretaker had been left in charge of the Ashton home, as it was too beautiful a place to remain for so many months unguarded.
CHAPTER XIX
Memories
Betty arrived at her home before her visitors. Esther was engaged for another half hour with a music lesson and besides Betty wished to see that the house was in order for her visitors.
It was a curious sensation to come home alone and to wander from one end of the big house to the other, hearing only the sound of her own footsteps, for Mrs. Mitchell, the caretaker, was in the kitchen preparing afternoon tea to be served the guests a little later, while her husband was working in the yard. Betty had an uncomfortable feeling of desolation, as though she were a kind of a ghost. First she went straight to her mother’s room, but there the pictures were covered with sheets, the mattress rolled up, the curtains down, and the tables and mantel so bare of ornament that Betty hurried away to her own blue sitting room across the hall. Would her father and mother never be back? Surely they would both be returning in the early summer when the weather would be less severe upon her father’s health and the great house would be reopened as it had always been.
At the cabin with the other girls the time had not seemed so long to Betty, nearly ten months now since their sailing, but here at home why it seemed that years might have passed. A sudden fear clutched the girl’s heart—would things ever be quite the same again; did life ever repeat itself in exactly the same old way? And yet Betty had no regrets, only pleasure, that she had been the moving spirit in the first organization of the Sunrise Camp Fire club. How much they had learned in their summer and winter together! And though she might count herself as having learned least of all, yet surely she would never be quite so spoiled and selfish as on that May day when she had accidentally discovered Esther Clark singing the Camp Fire hymn in their formerly deserted back room.
When her mother returned she would relieve her by taking the care of the housekeeping upon her own shoulders and certainly she would be able to cut down expenses. Now that her father’s income was so reduced, this would be a great assistance to him, as Mrs. Ashton had no idea of possible household economies. Betty smiled, not in the least mournfully. There was no thought of any real poverty to be grappled with in her mind. She was only considering in what an unexpected fashion she was going to be able to show to her mother and father the benefits of her Camp Fire training, for which she had plead so earnestly not quite a year before.
The young girl was in her own room at the time of these reflections, seated in her own blue rocking chair with her feet tucked up under her and her chin resting in her hand, looking out her open window at the desolate garden, for this April afternoon was just as cold and uninspiring as that other May afternoon, and there was also no fire in her grate, although downstairs a big blaze had been lighted for the expected company.