Gerry's Opportunity
The next day, weary from the long strain of the rehearsals and the final production of their play, and feeling a comfortable sense of relaxation following a labor well accomplished, the Sunrise Camp Fire members spent an unusually quiet day.
Mrs. Burton remained in her little house resting and reading.
After accomplishing the necessary domestic tasks, Mrs. Webster and the girls sat about in little groups, knitting and talking over the unexpectedly brilliant success of their play.
Of the Camp Fire girls, Gerry Williams alone kept apart from the others for the greater part of the day. Now and then she would appear with her knitting and dropping down beside some one would remain for perhaps half an hour, but seldom longer. By the end of that time she seemed to grow restless and would start off on walks by herself, but never a great distance from camp. Once disappearing inside her sleeping tent, which was unoccupied, she stayed there alone for several hours.
No one paid any particular attention to Gerry or realized that she was in an unusual frame of mind. The Camp Fire girls had spent so many months together that they did not take one another's moods seriously; besides, Gerry was not an especial favorite or intimate with any one of the girls except Sally Ashton. And Sally frequently considered Gerry far too addicted to moods, which were disturbing to her own comfortable placidity.
Indeed, Gerry's only real friend in the Sunrise Camp Fire, the only person who in any way understood her temperament and the circumstances of her past sufficiently well to offer her real sympathy and affection, was Mrs. Burton.
On this same day it chanced that Dan Webster was away looking after a small business matter.
Billy was engaged with his labors at the war camp. But now that the play was over Mrs. Webster was beginning to concern herself more seriously with the behavior of her erratic son. Billy had taken advantage of the absorption of his family and friends to continue to pursue his own way in an even more determined and secretive fashion.
If Mrs. Burton had not spent the day inside her house, whether or not she would have observed Gerry's restlessness, her troubled expression, her moments of pallor and the swift flush succeeding them, no one can say.