“Well, you can’t do that,” said the other girls in a breath.
The truth was, Nataly Lee was the one dark spot—the one cinder, as you might say—in the Camp Fire. She did not particularly like doing her share of the work, she could not be made to take an interested part in the work for honor beads, and she acted generally as if she was a caller who was much older and more languid than the others. It was, in short, very much as Louise had said when she offered to join—she was like a kitten who refused to be anything but a cat.
“I don’t know what Nataly’s doing here, anyway,” Louise went on. “And we’d be a lot happier without her. I wish she’d go home and look after her complexion. She can’t do it properly here—anybody can see that!”
“Can’t do what?” said a languid voice. It isn’t a good thing to discuss your friends too freely if they’re anywhere at all around, because they are exceedingly likely to overhear or partly hear. And this is just what happened now. Nataly herself walked out of the strip of woods that separated the camp from the river, and sat down by them.
“I thought I heard you talking about me,” she said.
“We were,” said Louise, quite unruffled. “At least I was. I was saying that you couldn’t look after your complexion properly here in the woods, and that I thought you’d be happier away from our rude young society!”
Nataly did not see in the least that Louise was laughing at her, but Helen did, and gave Louise a severe pinch. “Guying” was something that the camp spirit allowed only if the victim knew what was being done to her. But where Nataly was concerned it was hard to make Louise behave.
“Well, you know,” said Nataly, “I am thinking of going home. It makes me nervous, the idea of Aunt Lydia being near enough to pounce down on me every minute. She is so energetic. And my nerves are nearly all right now.”
“Then you really think you will go back?” said Winona.
“I really do, as soon as the carnival is over,” said Nataly.