This had comprised a large kitchen, a pantry and the dining room. However, a sufficiently large amount of space remained for the uses of the Camp Fire unit.
In the center the house was divided by a long hall. On one side were two comfortably large rooms. The back one was chosen for the dining room and the front for the living room. The pantry was restored so that it could serve for the kitchen; as the old stove had been destroyed, a new one was ordered from Paris. This developed into a piece of good fortune, as it required far less fuel than the old, and fuel was one of the greatest material problems in France, coal selling at this time for $120 a ton.
A single long room occupied the other side of the hall; this room had a high old-fashioned ceiling and was paneled in old French oak as beautiful as if it had adorned a French palace.
Mère Antoinette explained that the farm house had been the property of Madame de Mauprais, a wealthy French woman who had lived in the château not far away. It had been occupied by her son, who had chosen to experiment in scientific farming for the benefit of the small peasant farmers in the neighborhood.
The war had banished Monsieur de Mauprais and whatever family he may have possessed, so that Mrs. Burton had been able to rent his farm for a small sum through an agent who lived in the nearest village.
It is possible that the farm house had been spared in a measure by the German soldiers because of their greater pleasure in the destruction of the old château which was only about half a mile away. At the present time the château appeared only as a mass of fallen stone.
This single spacious room the Camp Fire girls chose for their school room for the French children in the neighborhood.
The better furniture of the farmhouse had been hacked into bits of wood by the German soldiers and was fit only for burning. The simple things had not been so destroyed. Fortunately their camping life out of doors had accustomed this particular group of American girls to exercising ingenuity, so that the problem of furnishing and making attractive their school room with so little to go upon rather added to their interest.
Two long planks raised upon clothes-horses discovered in the barn formed a serviceable table. Stools and odd chairs were brought down from the attic. On the floor were two Indian rugs Mrs. Burton had induced the Indian woman near the Painted Desert in Arizona to weave for her with the special Camp Fire design, the wood-gatherer’s, the fire-maker’s and the torch-bearer’s insignia, inserted in the chosen shades of brown, flame color, yellow and white.
On the walls hung a few Camp Fire panels and the coverings of sofa cushions and some outdoor photographs of the Sunrise Camp during former camping experiences which the girls had brought over with them.