Tewa had been invited to camp by their guardian and had been treated as a friend. He was educated and courteous, and Bettina did not wish to appear unkind or ungrateful. Besides, by this time it struck her as absurd to have paid any attention to the young Indian’s use of her Camp Fire name.
But Tante was looking at her and waiting for an answer. And evidently she had no idea that the answer could be of but one kind.
“Very well; I shall do what you wish, of course,” Bettina replied, but speaking with a dignity and a hauteur which had partly helped to earn for her the once childish title of “Little Princess.” “But really, Tante, I do not see why you are suddenly taking this attitude; nor what Tewa has done that we should not be friendly with him. I do not see why, because he is an Indian, we should be less courteous to him than he has been to us. I am sorry that he called me by my Camp Fire title tonight, but I can’t see that it makes a great difference.”
“I prefer not to discuss the subject, Bettina,” Polly answered decisively. Nor did she show the least sign of relenting at Bettina’s acquiescence.
CHAPTER XVII
Mistakes
Certainly, in the days that followed, Bettina kept her word.
Watching her, as she felt it her duty to do, her Camp Fire guardian could not see the slightest swerving from her promise.
Yet Se-kyal-ets-tewa continued to come now and then to camp, and Mrs. Burton continued to like him, as she had from their first meeting on the train.
After all, she was not so conventional a woman that she should have objected to a friendship between Bettina and the young man, simply because he was an Indian. He was well educated; even more than that, he was a student and would one day be a leader among his own people. And never, except for a single moment the night of the storm, had he apparently failed in entire respect to each member of the Camp Fire club. He was far more courteous, more dignified and more helpful than an American fellow would have been under similar circumstances.
But it was true that Mrs. Burton considered Bettina more anxiously than she did the other girls, for several reasons. In the first place, there was always Betty—Bettina’s mother—to be thought of, who was a far more conventional woman than her celebrated friend Polly Burton would ever learn to be. This had been true in their girlhood, and the different circumstances of their lives had emphasized it. For Betty Graham, as Senator Graham’s wife, living in Washington, was compelled by the conditions of political life, as well as by her own nature and point of view, to conform to the conventions that every capital city requires. And Polly Burton and her husband, although famous members of their profession, naturally passed a wholly different existence. They knew all the actor people with whom they worked—rich and poor, successful and unsuccessful. It was impossible to Polly Burton, as it had been to Polly O’Neill, to like people for their possessions—or even for their attainments—but only for some characteristic which appealed to her vivid and emotional temperament. So she was always making odd and not always desirable friendships and generously doing for people, some of whom were worth while and some who were not.