'Come and dry your shoes,' said the girl hospitably, lifting her eyes. She was a rather pretty blonde girl, with a good-humored, quiet expression.
'Are you folks camping out here?' said the visitor, still looking with an air of satisfaction and pleasure at the camp. 'You’re from Chicago, relatives to Mrs. Horick in South Laketown, ain’t you? So I heard. I’ve sewed some for her. Oh, I just wisht I was you. Few cares enough for camping to do it this time of year. Your folks come here to fish?'
'No,' said the girl quietly. 'One of my cousins was taken sick this fall, and told to live outdoors. So he decided to come out here and camp with his wife and little boy and me. For a while.'
'You have a nice place for it.'
'My cousins have gone to the station on some errands,' said the girl reflectively, polishing her shoe. She could not very well say to her relative’s dressmaker, that the camp had feared the visit of Mrs. Horick on that very afternoon.
Mrs. Horick was a pretty, competent, hard-edged young woman, who enjoyed such things in life as tight face-veils, high traps, and docked horses. The adult campers had drawn lots to select her victim for the afternoon. The lot had fallen to Jim Paine. But Jim took so unbridled a pleasure in displeasing Mrs. Horick that it was decided such a fate would be too cruel to her. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Alice Paine. But Mrs. Horick depressed Alice, sometimes for several hours after her departure. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Elsie Norris. With whoops, it was determined Elsie must remain. She would not care a fig what Mrs. Horick said or thought, would be entirely amiable with her, and, besides, had no shoes to walk to the station in. One pair was wet. The other was too stiff to put on. After dressing Elsie in the most handsome garments the camp afforded, the others had left her, early in the afternoon, with Shep, Rabbie’s collie, wandering around within call, and occasionally barking at imaginary wolves in the brush.
'Perhaps you met my cousins on your way,' said Elsie.
'No. I didn’t come from that direction. I came from Gary. It ain’t much of a place to live. But I got a real good airy room, with a back-porch of my own, in a carpenter’s family there. Miss Brackett’s my name. I’m about the only dressmaker in the place, so’s I get plenty of custom, more 'n all that I can do; and well-paid, too, you can say in a way,' she added with a sigh; 'and in a way, not; because I hate sewing. But then I walk a good deal around here. There’s some fine walks through the oaks and in the dunes; just as fine as any one could wish,' she said with a look of content. 'It makes me just about homesick to see your camp. I was camping myself six years ago.'
'Were you? Here?'
'No,' said Miss Brackett, with a little hesitation. In response to Elsie’s invitation, she had seated herself on a log, near the fire. There was evidently something very stirring in their little camp to her. For a moment she even looked as if she were going to cry. 'It was on the plains,' she said finally, with a certain pride. 'A long wagon-trip, a whole year long.'