“It is as if I had been asleep all my life before, Dorothy, dear, and was only beginning to wake up. Somehow I cannot explain it, even to myself, I feel so convinced that this summer in the woods will have a tremendous influence on my future life. I am going to find something in these woods that I have been looking for in a stupid fashion since I was a little girl.”
“We are what the winds and sun and waters made us,” Dorothy quoted, glad to recall at this moment the lines her father so often repeated.
Louise shook her head.
“No, I mean something different. We all are what you have just said. I feel lately that the outdoors is going to do something special for me. Actually I mean I am going to find something here the rest of you may not find.”
Louise laughed. She had a large mouth with strong, white teeth. “That speech of mine would annoy my mother dreadfully. She says I am always dreaming and never interested in real things. Nothing ever seemed real to me until this summer in Beechwood Forest.”
Carefully she smoothed the brown army blanket on her cot bed.
She and Dorothy McClain were straightening their tent preparatory for inspection in the hour after breakfast. Their flag raising and Scout drill were the first features of the long summer day.
The tent was scrupulously neat.
Dorothy McClain stooped to pick up a fallen book. She was paying a slightly puzzled attention to the other girl’s odd conversation.
“Would it not be difficult to persuade your mother to believe, Louise, that you and I are interested in our camp housekeeping? Miss Mason said the other day you probably would earn a merit badge before the summer was past for cooking over a camp fire. Is this because you are preparing to spend your entire life out of doors?”