The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World

by Margaret Vandercook

However, at present he seemed totally unaware of her existence and not in the least requiring entertainment. For he was watching the dancers with such profound concentration that apparently his entire attention was absorbed by them.

The girl had an unusually good opportunity for studying the young man's face. She had not noticed until tonight how thin he was and how clear and finely cut his features. There was no trace of his Italian mother left, save in his black hair and in the curious glow which his skin showed underneath its pallor. His nose was big—too big, Betty thought—and his lips closed and firm. He had a kind of hungry look. Hungry for what? the girl wondered. Then she had a sudden feeling of compunction. Anthony might sometimes even be hungry for food, he worked so hard, made so little money and was so busy by day and night. Before tonight she might have helped him without his knowing or even caring, if he had guessed her purpose. But after tonight? Well, Betty felt reasonably sure that she and Anthony could never be upon exactly the same footing again. For somehow she had hurt him more than she had intended, not realizing that any one could be at once so humble and so proud. And as she had made one of those mistakes that one can never apologize for, there was no point in dwelling on it any longer. Only she did regret by this time that deep down in her heart there must still linger her old narrow attitude toward money and good birth. She was poor enough herself now, and yet in her case, as in so many others, had it not made her feel all the more pride in the distinction of her family? Assuredly she had often whispered to herself that poverty did not matter when one bore a distinguished name.

Betty smothered a sigh and a yawn. It was tiresome to be sitting there thinking and reproaching herself when the others were having such a good time. How splendidly Billy Webster and Mollie danced together! He was so strong and dictatorial, so certain of his own judgment and opinions. And Mollie so gentle and yielding! She smiled over her foolish romancing, and yet there was no use pretending that they would not make a suitable match should things turn out that way. Mollie and Polly might possibly never be exactly what they had been to each other in the past, and Mrs. Wharton had re-married, and Sylvia would soon be going away to study nursing.

But some one was passing close by and trying to attract her attention. Betty waved her hand, but when she had gone frowned a little anxiously.

Edith Norton was dancing with the friend whom she had persuaded Meg to ask to her Camp Fire dinner, although none of the rest of the girls liked him. He was a good deal older than their other young men acquaintances and a stranger to most of them, having only come to Woodford in the past six months and opened a drug store. But he had been entirely devoted to Edith since, and of course as she was nearly twenty she should know her own mind. Notwithstanding, Betty felt uneasy and uncomfortable. They had been hearing things not to Frederick Howard's credit in the village, and Edith had always been unlike the rest of their Sunrise Camp Fire girls. She was vainer and more frivolous and dreadfully tired of working in a millinery shop in Woodford. This much she had confided to Betty after coming to live in the Ashton house. And both Rose Dyer and Miss McMurtry were afraid that Edith might for this reason accept the first opportunity that apparently offered to make life easier for her. So they had asked Betty to use her influence whenever it was possible. Betty it was who had first brought Edith into their club, and Edith had always cared for her and admired her more than any other of her associates.

Betty stirred restlessly. Would she never be able to get away from serious thoughts tonight? But the next instant she had jumped to her feet with a quickly smothered cry and stood with her hands clasped tightly over her eyes. For all around her, in her hair falling down upon her shoulders and about her face were glittering sparks of heat and light. They were scorching her; already she could smell the odor of her burning hair. One movement the girl made to protect her head, then in a flash her hands were covering her eyes again. She wanted to run, and yet some subconscious idea restrained her. Running would only make the flames leap faster and higher. And surely in an instant some one must come to her assistance; for her own low cry had been echoed by a dozen other voices.

Then Betty felt herself roughly seized and dragged stumbling away from her former position, while a sudden, smothering darkness destroyed her breath and vision; and none too tender hands seemed to be pressing down the top of her head.

Another moment and she was pulling feebly at the scorched coat enveloping her.

"Please take it off. I am all right now. The fire must be out, and I'm stifling," she pleaded.

But about her there followed another firm closing in of the heavy material. And then the darkness lifted, showing Anthony Graham standing close beside her in his shabby shirt sleeves, holding his ruined coat in his hands. In a terrified group near by was every other human being in the room, excepting Jim Meade and Frank Wharton, who were pulling down the burning pine and cedar branches from the wall and stamping out the last sparks of fire caused by the overturning of one of the candles.