“Don’t worry about me, Marguerite! If I never knew my own mother, I had a clever enough father until the war took him from me. So far as the Camp Fire girls are concerned I am not wishing to discover their secrets. You are not fair to me!”
“Then I am very sorry,” the other girl replied. “With whom shall I begin? Bettina Graham’s father is a United States Senator living in the city of Washington. Her mother is very beautiful and an old friend of Mrs. Burton’s. Bettina is not wealthy as Americans think of money, but she is wealthy of course as compared with us. Peggy Webster is Mrs. Burton’s niece, the daughter of her twin sister, and Peggy is engaged to marry the young American lieutenant, whom she knew long ago, when the Camp Fire girls spent a summer near the Arizona desert. I only know what Peggy told me of this herself. Her home is in New Hampshire, where her father owns a large farm. They are not wealthy, Peggy insists, although the young man whom she is to marry has a great deal of money in his family. Sally and Alice Ashton are sisters, unlike as they seem to be, and their father is a physician in Boston. Yvonne Fleury, you know, is a French girl and her parents are dead. She has only her brother left since the war, which killed her mother and younger brother. But you have heard all this before. She and Lieutenant Fleury own a château near the Marne. Mary Gilchrist is an only child and her father has an immense ranch somewhere in the west. Vera Lagerloff’s people are poor farmers. There, have I left out any one or told more than I should? I scarcely know, Julie. I am tired so you will have to let me be quiet for a little while. I know you have not the faintest understanding of half I have told you. How much United States geography did you ever study at school? I am ashamed of the mistakes I have been making recently.”
Not interested in her own ignorance but in her own wisdom, Julie for the moment made no response.
A few moments later, following a knock at the door, a trim French maid entered to say that Miss Patricia desired the two girls to stop their sewing and to go for a walk.
Really it was a puzzle to the various members of her household, the fashion in which Miss Patricia, although apparently occupied with a variety of other concerns, was at the same time able to keep a careful watch upon the welfare of every member of her household. If now and then she was something of a tyrant, at least she had the happiness of her subjects nearer her heart than was her own happiness.
Downstairs, Julie and Marguerite discovered Bettina Graham and David Hale waiting for them. Two or three of the other girls, with Dan Webster and Lieutenant Fleury, had gone on ahead.
“We are going to the park and have our walk there. I thought perhaps you would like to go with us,” Bettina Graham explained.
She turned to her companion.
“You see, Mr. Hale, since my escapade, the other girls in our household have had to suffer for my sins. We are no longer allowed to go any distance from home by ourselves.”
A quarter of an hour later, the little party reached one of the entrances to the great park.