"I expect I know, Nan, at least better than any one else," Esther answered finally, "for you see this is the first summer of my whole life that I haven't spent at the asylum scrubbing and cooking and nobody caring anything about my work except that I got it done. Work this summer has seemed like play, hasn't it? And I wouldn't be here, except for The Princess. I wonder if I shall ever be able to repay her?"
"Oh, wonder something else, Esther," Betty returned ungraciously, for references of this kind always made her uncomfortable. "Here comes Polly and Mollie and, of course Sylvia. Bee, will you go find Eleanor and Juliet and let us have tea here by the camp fire. Donna and Edith will probably be here before we finish. Suppose each one of us places a stick on the fire and while it burns make a good wish for the Sunrise Camp. Hello, Polly, yes Sylvia is perfectly right, you must not sit down on the ground without something under you, yes, and you must let her put that wrap over your shoulders, the sun will be going down pretty soon and then it will be quite cool."
Polly submitted to Sylvia's attentions none too graciously, but a moment later turned toward the younger girl. "You are a trump, Sylvia," she murmured. "I am sure I don't know what I should have done without you these past two weeks while I will have been ill. It is funny how you should happen to know just what to do for people who are sick when you are so young!"
Sylvia sat stolidly down next the speaker. "I am going to be a trained nurse when I am old enough, that's why," she answered calmly, apparently not even observing the surprise of her companions. "You see if I thought I had sense enough I would try to be a doctor, but as I haven't I shall just take care of sick people. I have already learned a good many things this summer."
Polly whistled and several of the girls laughed. "I don't doubt it for a moment, Sylvia Wharton!" Polly exclaimed, "for heaven alone can tell what you do know! But it is absurd to talk about your being a nurse, when you will be the richest one of us, child, perhaps even richer than 'The Princess'."
There was no reply from Sylvia, only her lips shut tight and her chin looked oddly square and determined for a young girl. But then Sylvia looked like her father, who, one must remember, was a self-made man. And sometimes the daughter also inherits the traits of character that have made the father a success.
Eleanor and Juliet at this moment appearing with the tea things, the kettle was hung above the fire on an arrangement of three pronged sticks and not until tea was over did the girls or Betty remember her suggestion. Then she handed Polly a pine knot first. "Thrust this into the fire, Polly, dear, and make a parting wish for Sunrise Camp," Betty explained, "for a few days more you know, and we must fold our tents and say farewell to our summer."
Polly quickly thrust her torch into the hottest blaze. "I wish," she said at once, her cheeks hot from the closeness of the flames and from her own thoughts, "that everybody in Sunrise Camp would promise to forgive me for my foolish behavior two weeks ago and all the anxiety and trouble I caused. The camp has given me a new motto this summer that I shall at least try to live up to. It reads: 'Think first!"
"Yes, and if you had only thought second and asked for your mail at the post office that day after finding Betty's money, Polly, you would have had your own fifty dollar prize for the best essay on 'A Summer Camp Fire in the Woods'," Mollie added in her usual practical fashion, and then she gave a little sigh of relief that the money had been paid back to Betty without troubling the mother still so far away.
"I wonder if Polly is going to be our genius as well as Eleanor," Esther next suggested quietly, "every Camp Fire club is sure to turn out at least one extraordinary person and of course ours will have two or three." Then she blushed hotly in her old embarrassed, fashion, clasping her big hands closely together as Betty, half laughing at her own suggestion, whispered something in her ear.