Here a slight noise from the figure on the cot near them for an instant distracted Betty’s attention. Yet glancing in that direction, there seemed to have been no movement. Not for a single moment did she believe the little girl had been listening to a word she was saying. For she had never caught another glance straying in her direction.
“You were wondering what?” Agnes Edgerton demanded a little impatiently and Betty thought she saw the same expression on all the faces about her.
“Wondering if you would like my sister, Esther, to come and sing our old Camp Fire songs to you some day?” This time there was no mistaking it. Her audience did look disappointed. “And wondering something else, only perhaps I had best wait, you may not think it would be fun, or perhaps it might be too much work—” Betty’s face was flushed, again she seemed very little older than the other girls about her.
“Yes, we would,” Agnes Edgerton answered gravely, having by this time quite forgotten the interruption of Little Women in her new interest. “I know what you mean, because almost from the start I have been wondering the same thing. Do you think we girls could start a Camp Fire club here among ourselves, if you would show us how? Why, it would make everything so much easier and happier. There are some of the Camp Fire things we could not do, of course, but the greater part of them——”
Here, with a sudden exclamation of pleasure, Cricket bounced off her perch on the table and began dancing about in a fashion which showed how she had earned her name.
“Hurrah for the Shut-In Camp Fire Girls and the fairy princess who brought us the idea!” she exclaimed. Then, surveying Betty more critically, “You know you do look rather like a princess. Are you one in disguise?”
Betty laughed. She had not felt so cheerful in months. For with Agnes and Cricket on her side, the thought that had slowly been growing in her mind would surely bear fruit. But how strangely her old title sounded! How it did bring back the past Camp Fire days!
“No,” she returned, “I am not a princess or anything in the least like one. But we can all have new names in our Camp Fire club if we like, select any character or idea we choose and try to live up to it. Next time I come I will try and explain things better and bring you our manual. Now I really must hurry.”
Betty Ashton was moving quickly toward the door, accompanied by Cricket, when a hand reached suddenly out from the side of a bed clutching at her skirt.
“I would rather have that Polly girl come the next time instead of you; I am sure I should like her much better,” the voice said with a decidedly foreign accent. Then Betty looked quickly into the pair of black eyes that had been so relentlessly fixed upon the ceiling.