Nearly all the members of the Sunrise Camp Fire who were together for the winter season, Sally found seated in a wide circle before the open fire.
Standing beside the tea wagon, which she had just rolled into the room, was her own sister, Alice Ashton, who had remained in France with Miss Patricia Lord and Vera Lagerloff to continue the reconstruction work after the other Camp Fire girls had crossed to England with their Camp Fire guardian.
Alice Ashton was a tall, serious girl with reddish hair and blue eyes, entirely unlike Sally in appearance and disposition.
Kneeling before the fire at this moment and toasting thin slices of bread to a beautiful brownness was Vera Lagerloff, who was an American girl notwithstanding her foreign name. This was due to the fact that her parents were Russians. Vera was born in the United States and was an American enthusiast.
Not far away seated in a low chair, a pile of lavender silk in her lap, was Marguerite Arnot, her dark head bent over her work. Older than the other Camp Fire girls by a year or more, Marguerite Arnot was actually a French girl who had been received as a member of the Sunrise Camp Fire under exceptional conditions. Brought into their household in “Glorious France” as Miss Patricia Lord’s protégée, later she had become one of their number. Her presence in the United States was due to the fact that she had yielded to Mrs. Burton’s and to Bettina Graham’s persuasion and had decided to make her home in America and to go on with her work. Of gentle breeding and education, Marguerite Arnot and her mother were dressmakers in Paris, until her mother’s death during the war had left the girl ill and alone. Not long after she had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Miss Patricia Lord.
At present Miss Patricia Lord was seated behind the rest of the group, reading a lengthy report she recently had received from France, concerning a home for war orphans that she was building in the neighborhood of one of the great French battlegrounds. Every now and then, however, her glance wandered from the paper in her hand to the figure of a younger woman, half seated and half reclining in a great chair near the tea table.
Mrs. Burton, the Camp Fire guardian, whose figure was more slender than a young girl’s, was wearing a heavy, red-corded silk tea gown; the firelight playing on her dusky hair, on her white face with the long delicate chin and high cheek bones.
Seated on a stool beside her, with her head resting in the palms of her hands, was the youngest member of the household, the small daughter of an English miner. Chitty’s hair was even blacker than Mrs. Burton’s, her skin darker and more sallow, and her eyes large, black and wistful. A peculiarity of the little girl was that she rarely ever talked unless a question were addressed to her directly, expressing herself chiefly through her music.
At a table with her back to the others, Mary Gilchrist, who recently had requested the Camp Fire girls to use her father’s name for her, Gill, rather than Mary, apparently was deeply engaged with a history of the North woods which she seemed to be reading. Ordinarily one of the gayest and most animated of the group of Camp Fire girls, since her reckless action the day before she had been uncommonly silent and subdued.
Bettina Graham and her mother had not yet entered the room and tea had not been served.