CHAPTER IX
Undercurrents
A week later and life among the new Sunrise Hill Camp Fire girls appeared to be moving with entire smoothness.
The girls had their regular schedule of work and it was simple enough to gain new Camp Fire honors in a land whose every phase was unusual and absorbing, and where work in itself became an adventure.
In a low camp chair outside her own tent one morning Mrs. Burton was resting an hour or so after breakfast. She assisted with the work whenever it was possible, but it was one of her doctor’s orders that she spend a part of each day as quietly as possible.
Inside her tent she could hear Marie making their beds and sighing with each movement. Marie was still unreconciled. Still, she insisted upon wearing her conventional maid’s dress of black cloth in the mornings with white collars and cuffs and black silk in the afternoons, with always a tiny piece of white embroidery perched on top her shining black hair. She was very piquant, was Marie, but one can imagine how absurd she looked amid a group of Camp Fire girls in camp fire costumes on a plateau in Arizona.
However, Mrs. Burton was not worrying. Life at present was too delightful to allow small matters to count. And Marie would doubtless, become reconciled to the West, as many another equally homesick person has before her.
The day was blue and silver, the sky almost cloudless, the sun turning the sands to silver and glistening white on the summits of the cliffs beyond. But under the pine trees on top of the mesa it remained cool and serene.
Gerry Williams was lying at full length on the ground near Mrs. Burton. This she usually managed to accomplish, no matter how the other girls might try to forestall her. Undoubtedly, except for Peggy Webster, she appeared to be Mrs. Burton’s favorite, and Peggy was her own niece, almost her own child, as she had none of her own. But, then, Peggy was too straightforward, too downright, to let any one get ahead of her, even so clever a girl as Gerry.
Gerry had been shelling peas for luncheon, but had stopped with her task only half finished.
At present, a few yards away, Peggy was seated, stripping the husks from a great pile of sweet corn. Her hair was not long and hung straight and black just below her shoulders. She wore a band of scarlet about her head, holding the hair back from her eyes. Peggy’s cheeks were crimson and her skin browner than ever from the Arizona sun. Partly to tease her and partly because she did look like an Indian, the other girls had recently insisted upon naming her Minnehaha, “Laughing Water,” which Peggy considered ridiculous.