THE GUARDIAN
Miss Martha McMurtry was an odd guardian for a Camp Fire club which owed its existence to Betty Ashton's enthusiasm, for two more different persons cannot well be imagined. Of course the girls in the club were of many kinds and characters and it would have been almost impossible for any guardian to have been congenial with all of them, but it was unfortunate that the head of the Sunrise Camp and the two girls who were its leading spirits had at the beginning of the summer so little in common. For there was no question but that Betty and Polly were leaders, one week in camp had been more than sufficient to prove this.
Betty's influence was of course easy to understand, for she was uncommonly pretty and wealthy, and though spoiled and wayward, given to sudden generous impulses and affections which made her friends willing to overlook her faults. With Polly, O'Neill the case was different, she had no money and was not particularly good looking, it was simply that the intensity of her emotions would always, whether as a woman or child, make her a force for good or evil. When Polly was happy persons about her found it almost impossible not to share in her mood, she had such a delicious sense of humor and was so full of clever jokes and delicate, unconscious flatterings. Then when an ugly mood descended upon her, and, as Polly in Irish fashion used to say, "a witch rode on her shoulders," it was almost equally impossible to ignore her foolishly tragic points of view. There is an old name for Ireland, Innis Fodhla, which means the Island of Destiny, and though Polly had been born in a little New England village, nevertheless, in her blood there was a strain of those inheritances which have made the Irish nation so unlike all others.
While Betty and Polly were friends there was apt to be peace among all the girls in camp, but if they should disagree? Ah well, they had never really had any serious differences of opinion in their lives which Mollie, after the passing of a day or two, had not been able to smooth over. And they both had every intention of making themselves as agreeable as possible to their guardian.
Of course from the beginning of things it had been perfectly apparent that Betty would never voluntarily have chosen Miss McMurtry for their camp guardian, but finding that her science teacher was the only woman in Woodford who knew about the Camp Fire movement and was able to spend the summer with them, she had accepted the situation with as good a grace as possible.
Miss Martha McMurtry was not an attractive woman when she first came into the Sunrise Camp. Names have an odd fashion of describing the persons who own them and Miss McMurtry's exactly described her. Have you not a mental picture of a tall, learned young woman, with straight black hair, which she wore pulled back very tight, forming an unattractive knot at the back of her head? Of course she also wore glasses, having spent all her life inside of books until her pupils were convinced that she knew everything in the world. She did know a great deal and because of her knowledge was a splendid Camp Fire guardian, but there were a few things about human nature which her girls were to teach her in exchange for her science. Her information covered a number of fields, for while she taught botany and chemistry at the Girls' High School, she had also taken a two years' course in domestic science before beginning her teaching. Miss McMurtry was only twenty-six, had no family and lived all alone in a small house in Woodford. However, she appeared much older, and one of the questions her pupils were never able to answer was whether she had ever had a man call on her in her life. About her early history there was very little known, as she did not care to talk about herself and no one asked about her past.
About five o'clock on the next afternoon Miss McMurtry and Esther Clark were seated not far from a small fire which they had lately built near their pine grove. The day was not cold, but New Hampshire is seldom very warm in June and, besides, no one in camp ever tried to resist the opportunity for having a fire when most of their pleasure in being in camp centered around it.
Back and forth from the pine grove to his friends Hai-ya, Little Brother, traveled. He was cheerfully engaged in bringing pine cones to Miss McMurtry, and piling them into a small mound, later to be thrown on the fire. On the ground between the woman and girl were some odd pieces of khaki galatea, bits of leather fringe, shells and beads, and Esther was busily sewing. Miss McMurtry was writing: several times she had torn up what she had written, throwing the waste paper into the fire, but finally she handed a sheet to Esther in a hesitating way.
"See what you think of this, Esther?" she asked. "You see the Camp Guardians are advised to follow certain rules and regulations in camp life and I have been trying to decide what would best suit us. Please tell me what you think?"
Esther looked the paper over thoughtfully, and then began reading it aloud.