“Why don’t you study your new part, Polly, while you are growing stronger? Would it not help to keep you amused?”
Mrs. Burton shook her head.
“No, only make the waiting more trying. I have promised my husband and Aunt Patricia to devote this winter to my health. I shall keep my word, but beyond this winter I have made no promise. Betty, did you hear a strange sound? I am very nervous to-night and seem often to hear voices in the wind and murmurings as if all the fairy folk were whispering together. No, I am not mad; remember, Betty, how nearly I came to being born in Ireland, where not to believe in fairies is to forswear one’s birthplace. Besides, I often try to reproduce the sounds I hear in nature. It is a great training for one’s voice. And this aids one in acting. Suppose we go back now to the cabin. I want to see that my Camp Fire girls are ready for bed. A narrow escape from a tragedy this afternoon and yet Mary Gilchrist, Gill I prefer calling her, is usually the most sensible one of us. One’s guardian angel seems to take a holiday now and then, and yet Gill’s saved her in the end. Good gracious, here comes Aunt Patricia! I vainly hoped she would not discover that we were out of doors.”
Through the darkness a tall, severe figure could be seen moving with long, masculine strides.
“Polly O’Neill, is this the fashion in which you endeavor to regain your health? I presume you go out into the night air because you know it is so particularly bad for you and in order to give additional trouble to the people who are compelled to care for you?”
“It is a warm, clear night, Aunt Patricia. Besides, no one, as you say, is compelled to care for me. When I am so ill as to be especially troublesome I can send for a nurse. Betty and I were just going indoors.”
“Humph!” Miss Patricia grunted in a tone of doubt.
Mrs. Graham laughed, slipping her arm affectionately through that of Miss Patricia.
“We really were coming indoors. But look here, Aunt Patricia, if Polly and the Camp Fire girls object to being treated as if they were young and in need of advice and sometimes of discipline, while I am with you, suppose you devote yourself to me. It would be delightful to be treated as if I were a girl again, instead of the mother of a grown-up son and daughter.”
“You have a lovable nature, Betty Graham, which I think your daughter, Bettina, has in a measure inherited. Polly O’Neill Burton, I regret being forced to speak of it, is a spoiled and ungrateful woman.”