"Do hurry and get dressed, Meg, that's a dear. You know we simply can't get on without you this afternoon. I will button you up in a jiffy and we can take this bumptious little person along with us. He will probably escape and fall down somewhere while we are having our meeting, but we can both keep our eyes on him."
"He would be too much trouble," Meg demurred, but already she was surveying her only clean shirt waists, a blue and a white one, to see which was in the better state of repair. The blue was faded but whole, so she slipped into it, letting Betty button it up the back, and then with her brother's words still rankling in her mind carefully adjusted her skirt at, the belt. "You are awfully good to let me come this afternoon, Betty, because I told you it would be just impossible for me to spend the summer with you girls as it would be for me to take a trip to the moon. John is going camping and father is to have a summer lecture course in Boston and--"
"Oh yes, and you are to stay at home and take care of this house and baby! I don't think it is fair, or that your father or brother in the least realize what you do for them. But see here, dear, if what I thinks is true, as my old nurse used to say, and you come to be a Camp Fire girl this summer, why you will learn an awful lot about keeping house and being first aid to broken babies and everything you need to know. Never mind, don't let's argue about the question now, just come along, for the motor is waiting at the gate. Nearly all the girls I have asked must be at home by this time, but I have to collect two more people, Martha McMurtry--you know how I love her--and yet she carries the information in her brain of the right way to organize a Camp Fire club. Also there is Eleanor Meade; being a genius, you know Eleanor can't be expected to remember anything, should a wave of inspiration happen to flow over her."
CHAPTER V
THEIR FIRST MEETING
The drawing-room at the Ashton homestead ran the whole length of one side of the house and on this particular May afternoon was so filled with sunshine and light that even the old portraits on the walls appeared to change their severe Puritanical expressions and to look down, from out their heavy gold frames, with something almost approaching friendliness, on the strange girl now alone in the room, although nothing in her appearance or manner suggested the birth and breeding partly responsible for their New England pride.
The girl was also humbly engaged in placing fresh flowers on the tables and mantel and in rearranging the chairs and ornaments in the room to their best advantage. Finally, after a lingering glance out the front window, she picked up her last vase of flowers, a single branch of apple blossoms in a tall, green jar, and, crossing over to the grand piano so placed it that the sunlight shone full upon it. Then she stood for a moment looking thoughtfully at the open keyboard, which had a small sheet of music spread before it. Esther Clark next sat down at the piano and lightly ran her fingers over the keys so that it could scarcely have been possible for any one farther away than the adjoining hall to have heard her playing. The refrain was simple and repeated itself, yet had dramatic force and lingered in one's memory, the musical call of the watchword for the Camp Fire Girls.
Only that morning Betty had asked Esther to try to teach this call to her friends when they came together at her home that afternoon to form their club, and though Esther was painfully shy she felt obliged to do her best. Some few of Betty's friends were known to her through their acquaintance at school, but into not one of their homes had she ever been invited socially.
The door of the drawing-room farthest from the piano opened quietly.