Pecielena nearly cried her eyes out on the day the Quintette “broke camp.” They were obliged to go, for the Hunnicuts of Rosewood wanted the house. There was a farewell dirge on the cornet and harmonica, a touching farewell to Old Bluff and the River Dee, the big barn, the front door-yard, the white rose-bush, the spreading elms, the “broad-breasted old oak tree” in the corner; and the Quintette and the Trio retired again to private life.
“Pecy,” said Mary, as the little waif stood at the gate with her milk pail, looking mournfully at the grass, “Pecy, my mamma said I might ask you to go to my house at Laurel Grove. Would you like to go?”
“O may I?” almost screamed Pecy. “But I hain’t got no gown and bunnit to wear.”
“Don’t think about your clothes, dear; you look well enough; and when you get to my house, I’ll make you have a good time; now see if I don’t.”
Thus Pecy’s tears were happily dried. In a few weeks the “camping out” had become “old times;” a dear and fragrant memory, which the young people loved to recall. It had been a delight to the whole eight while it lasted; but what it had been to the poor families about Old Bluff,—the Pecks, Browns, and Pancakes,—who shall say?
And one day it occurred to busy Miss Pike that she hadn’t quite enough to do, for she was only teaching school, studying French and German, and getting up Christmas festivals for Laurel Grove and Rosewood children; but she must try to manage a Christmas Tree for the little outcasts of Old Bluff. There would be no leisure for it on Christmas Eve, the twenty fourth; neither on the twenty-fifth; but the twenty-sixth would answer every purpose.
And where could the tree be put? Where else but in the parlor of Camp Comfort itself? The Hunnicuts were willing at once. They had but one child, James, and he was ready to help. So were the Quintette and the Trio of course, and so were all their relatives and friends.