And, though Bettina made no reply, Peggy’s last words did make an impression.
“I think I’ll wait until she sends for me,” she added finally.
So the girls waited for about two hours and, by and by, Marie came to say that Madame Burton would like to speak to Miss Bettina and that they would find her at the edge of the peach orchard, on the other side of their encampment.
Explaining that she knew the place because she and her aunt had walked there together the evening before, Peggy went with her friend.
But their Camp Fire guardian did not look very formidable, nor very impressive when the girls finally discovered her. Until one came close up to her she looked slender and young; indeed, like a girl herself. Marie had brought over a chair and she was sitting under a big peach tree, with the fruit hanging rose color and the leaves green above her head and her hands clasped together in her lap.
Yet, when they were near enough, Peggy, who understood her aunt better, saw a strained look of regret and suffering about her face, but also a look of determination, which the friends of Polly O’Neill’s and of Polly Burton’s understood very well. Possibly, if she had not been an obstinate person, she would never have succeeded as she had in her work.
“I am sorry to have you come so far to me, Bettina,” she began, “but I preferred having our talk away from the other girls. I did not expect you, Peggy, but after all it is as well you are here. Bettina may tell you what she does not think it worth while to confide in me and that is why—with, so far as I can see, no real end to gain—she defies my wish.”
The beginning was unfortunate. The woman and the two girls realized it at once and perhaps they were all sorry.
But Bettina’s face flushed and her lips closed firmly together. Nether girl sat down and Bettina held her hands clasped tight together before her. She looked very pretty and of such delicate high breeding that, watching her, Mrs. Burton felt a sensation of self-distrust.
But Bettina was also determined to be obstinate and ungrateful.