With a quick movement Betty half overturned her chair. "Good-night," she said, "we can talk things over to-morrow. I promised not to be too late to-night. It isn't that I really mind having Esther in our club, only we don't know her very well and it seems most important that we should all be congenial."
But Betty could not move toward the door because her skirts were held fast. "If you go now I shall cry my eyes out all night," Polly protested in a tone that was almost convincing. "It was horrid of me, darling, to tell you the truth and me Irish and believin' in the blarney stone," she apologized in her Pollyesque fashion. "Please never, never tell me the truth about myself and have anybody in your club you like. Only if you expect to have twelve girls who exactly agree you will have to leave both you and me out to start with."
Betty laughed, only half appeased, but Mollie was speaking quietly and because she talked less frequently than the other two girls they usually paused to listen to her.
"I think the more unlike we girls are the more fun we will have and the more we will help one another," she suggested. "But, Betty, do you know who has started this Camp Fire idea in Woodford and who knows just what we ought to do?"
Betty groaned. "Who else could it be, my dear, but my arch-enemy, the person I like least and who likes me even less in all this village. Ah, is anything ever perfect in this life? Martha McMurtry, the science teacher at the high school, who will certainly cause me to remain in the sophomore class another year unless I learn something more than what H2O means, is the only woman Esther could suggest."
The sisters laughed, since Betty's battles with this teacher had kept things lively.
"You poor dear, we can't have her for our guardian," Polly insisted sympathetically. "Can you imagine such a prim, scientific old maid ever understanding anything of the beauty and romance of life in the woods? I would like Titania, Queen of the Fairies, to be our only chaperon."
Before the other girls could dispute the absurdity of Polly's final suggestion, the kitchen door opened and Mrs. O'Neill returned looking unusually cross. "Why didn't you join me, you wicked children?" she said reproachfully. "Mr. Wharton came to ask me, since I was not going away, to look after his little girl this summer. He has to leave on some business trip and as Frank is to camp in the woods, there was nothing for the poor man to do with Sylvia. I hope you won't mind very much, for I have promised to take care of her."
"Sylvia!" The three voices made a dismal chorus.
"That stupid, ill-mannered child! I am sorry, dear, but you are not going to look after anything or anybody this summer but yourself. You see you are sailing for Ireland in a few weeks and we are going to live in the woods and be taken care of by our old mother earth and our father, the sun," Polly replied dramatically.