Chapter 3 AN UNEXPECTED REUNION

"I like that Mr. Trenwith, Bessie," said Dolly, when the meal was over and she and Bessie were working together. They usually managed to arrange their work so that they could be together at it.

"So do I, Dolly. He doesn't seem to be a bit afraid of Mr. Holmes, and I do believe he will help Mr. Jamieson an awful lot."

"I guess he'll need help, all right," said Dolly, gravely. "The more I think about that fire, the more scared I get. Why, how did those wretches know that some of us wouldn't be hurt?"

"I guess they didn't, Dolly."

"Then they simply didn't care, that's all. And isn't that dreadful, Bessie? The idea of doing such a thing!"

"I wish we knew why they did it, or why Mr. Holmes wants them to do such things. It's easy enough to see why they did it-they wanted the money he had promised to pay if they got Zara and me away from here."

"You remember what I told you. Mr. Holmes expects to make a lot of money out of you two, in some fashion. I know you laughed at me when I said that before, and said he had so much money already that that couldn't be the reason. But there simply can't be any other, Bessie; that's all there is to it."

Bessie sighed wearily.

"I wish it was all over," she said. "Sometimes I'm sorry they haven't caught me and taken me back."

"Why, Bessie, that's an awful thing for you to say! Don't you want to be with us?"

"Of course I do, Dolly! I've never been so happy in my whole life as I have been since that morning when I saw you girls for the first time. But I hate to think of the trouble my staying makes, and when I think that maybe there's danger for the rest of you, as there was last night-"

"Don't you worry about that, Bessie! I guess we can stand it if you can. That's what friends are for-to share your troubles. You musn't get to feeling that way-it's silly."

"Well, it doesn't make much difference, Dolly. I don't seem to be able to help it. But I wish it was all over. And do you know what worries me most of all?"

"No. What?"

"Why, what that nasty lawyer, Isaac Brack, said to me one time. Do you remember my telling you? That unless I went with him, and did what he and his friends wanted, I'd never find out about my father and my mother."

"I don't believe it, Bessie! I don't believe he knows anything at all about them, and I don't believe, either, that that's the only way you'll ever hear anything about them."

"But it might be true!"

"Oh, come on, Bessie, cheer up! You're going to be all right. And I'll bet that when you do find out about your parents, and why they left you with Maw Hoover so long, you'll be glad you had to wait so long, because it will make you so happy when you do know."

Just then Eleanor's voice called the girls together.

"All hands to work rebuilding the camp," she said. "We want to have the new tents set up, and everything ready for the night. I'd like those people to know, if they come snooping around here again, that it takes more than a fire to put the Camp Fire Girls out of business!"

"My, but you're a slave driver, Nell," said Charlie Jamieson, jovially. He winked in the direction of Trenwith. "I'm sorry for your husband when you get married. You'll keep him busy, all right!"

Hearing the remark, Trenwith grinned, while Eleanor flushed. His look said pretty plainly that he wouldn't waste any sympathy on the man lucky enough to marry Eleanor Mercer, and Dolly, catching the look, drew Bessie aside. Her observation in such matters was amazingly keen.

"Did you see that!" she whispered, excitedly. "Why, Bessie, I do believe he's fallen in love with her already!"

"Well, I should think he would!" said Bessie, surprisingly. "I wouldn't think much of any man who didn't! She's the nicest girl I ever saw or dreamed of seeing."

"Oh, she's all of that," agreed Dolly, loyally. "You can't tell me anything nice about Miss Eleanor that I haven't found out for myself long ago. But Mr. Jamieson isn't in love with her-and he's known her much longer than Mr. Trenwith has."

"That hasn't got anything at all to do with it," declared Bessie. "People don't have to know one another a long time to fall in love-though sometimes they don't always know about it themselves right away. And, besides, I think she and Mr. Jamieson are just like brother and sister. They're only cousins, of course, but they've sort of grown up together, and they know one another awfully well."

"You may know more about things like that than I do," agreed Dolly, dubiously. "But I know this much, anyhow. If I were a man, I'd certainly be in love with Miss Eleanor, if I knew her at all."

She stopped for a moment to look at Eleanor.

"Better not let her catch us whispering about her," she went on. "She wouldn't like it a little bit."

"It isn't a nice thing to do anyhow, Dolly. You're perfectly right. I do think Mr. Trenwith's a nice man. Maybe he's good enough for her. But I think I'll always like Mr. Jamieson better, because he's been so nice to us from the very start, when he knew that we couldn't pay him, the way people usually do lawyers who work so hard for them."

"He certainly is a nice man, Bessie. But then so is Mr. Trenwith."

"Look out, Dolly!" cautioned Bessie, with a low laugh. "You'll be getting jealous and losing your temper first thing you know."

"Oh, I guess not. Talking about losing one's temper, I wonder if Gladys Cooper is still mad at us?"

"Oh, I hope not! That was sort of funny, wasn't it, as well as unpleasant? Why do you suppose she was so angry, and got the other girls in their camp at Lake Dean to hating us so much when we first went there?"

"Oh, she couldn't help it, Bessie, I guess. It's the way she's been brought up. Her people have lots of money, and they've let her think that just because of that she is better than girls whose parents are poor."

"Well, the rest of them certainly changed their minds about us, didn't they?"

"Yes, and it was a fine thing! I guess they realized that we were better than they thought, when Gladys and Marcia Bates got lost in the woods that time, and you and I happened to find them, and get them home safely."

"I think they were mighty nice girls, Dolly-much nicer than you would ever have thought they could be from the way they acted when we first met them, and they ordered us off their ground, just as if we were going to hurt it. When they found out that they'd been in the wrong, and hadn't behaved nicely, they said they were sorry, and admitted that they hadn't been nice. And I think that's a pretty hard thing for anyone to do."

"Oh, it is, Bessie. I know, because I've found out so often that I'd been mean to people who were ever so much nicer than I. But there's one thing about it-it makes you feel sort of good all over when you have owned up that way. I wish Gladys Cooper had acted like the rest of them. But she was still mad."

"Oh, I think you'll find she's all right when you see her again, Dolly. I guess she's just as nice as the rest of them, really."

"That's one reason I'm sorry she acted that way. Because she's as nice as any girl you ever saw when she wants to be. I was awfully mad at her when it happened, but now, somehow, I've got over feeling that way about her, altogether, and I just want to be good friends with her again."

"You lose your temper pretty quickly, Dolly, but you get over being angry just as quickly as you get mad, don't you?"

"I seem to, Bessie. And I guess that's helping me not to get angry at people so much, anyhow. I'm always sorry when I do get into one of my rages, and if I'm going to be sorry, it's easier not to get mad in the first place."

While they talked, Bessie and Dolly were not idle, by any means. There was plenty of work for everyone to do, for the fire had made a pretty clean sweep, after all, and to put the whole camp in good shape, so that they could sleep there that night, was something of a task.

Trenwith and Jamieson, laughing a good deal, and enjoying themselves immensely, insisted on doing the heavy work of setting up the ridge poles, and laying down the floors of the new tents, but when it came to stretching the canvas over the framework, they were not in it with the girls.

"You men mean well, but I never saw anything so clumsy in my life!" declared Eleanor, laughingly. "It's a wonder to me how you ever come home alive when you go out camping by yourselves."

"Oh, we manage somehow," boasted Charlie Jamieson.

"That's just about what you do do! You manage-somehow! And, yet, when this Camp Fire movement started, all the men I knew sat around and jeered, and said that girls were just jealous of the good times the Boy Scouts had, and predicted that unless we took men along to look after us, we'd be in all sorts of trouble the first time we ever undertook to spend a night in camp!"

Charlie shook his head at Trenwith in mock alarm.

"Getting pretty independent, aren't they?" he said to his friend. "You mark my words, Billy, the old-fashioned women don't exist any more!"

"And it's a good thing if they don't!" Eleanor flashed back at him. "They do, though, only you men don't know the real thing when you see it. You have an idea that a woman ought to be helpless and clinging. Maybe that was all right in the old days, when there were always plenty of men to look after a woman. But how about the way things are now? Women have to go into shops and offices and factories to earn a living, don't they, just the way men do?"

"They do-more's the pity!" said Trenwith.

Eleanor looked at him as if she understood just what he meant.

"Maybe it isn't so much of a pity, though," she said. "I tell you one thing-a girl isn't going to make any the worse wife for being self-reliant, and knowing how to take care of herself a little bit. And that's what we want to make of our Camp Fire Girls-girls who can help themselves if there's need for it, and who don't need to have a man wasting a lot of time doing things for them that he ought to be spending in serious work-things that she can do just as well for herself."

She stood before them as she spoke, a splendid figure of youth, and health and strength. And, as she spoke, she plunged her hand into a capacious pocket in her skirt.

"There!" she said, "that's one of the things that has kept women helpless. It wasn't fashionable to have pockets, so men got one great advantage just in their clothes. Camp Fire Girls have pockets!"

"You say that as if it was some sort of a motto," said Charlie, laughing, but impressed.

"It is!" she replied. "Camp Fire Girls have pockets! That's one of the things you'll see in any Camp Fire book you read-any of the books that the National Council issues, I mean."

"I surrender! I'm converted-absolutely!" said Jamieson, with a laugh. "I'll admit right now that no lot of men or boys I know could have put this camp up in this shape in such a time. Why, hullo-what's that? Looks as if you were going to have neighbors, Nell."

His exclamation drew all eyes to the other end of the cove, and the surprise was general when a string of wagons was seen coming down a road that led to the beach from the bluff at that point.

"Looks like a camping party, all right," said Trenwith. "Wonder who they can be?"

Eleanor looked annoyed. She remembered only too well and too vividly the disturbance that had followed the coming of the yacht, and she wondered if this new invasion of the peace of Plum Beach might not likewise be the forerunner of something unpleasant.

"They've got tents," she said, peering curiously at the wagons. "See-they're stopping there, and beginning to unload."

"They're doing themselves very well, whoever they are," said Trenwith. "That's a pretty luxurious looking camp outfit. And they're having their work done for them by men who know the business, too."

"Yes, and they're not making a much better job of it than these girls did," said Charlie. "Great Scott! Look at those cases of canned goods! They've got enough stuff there to feed a regiment."

"Oh, I'm sorry they're coming!" said Eleanor, "whoever they are! I don't want to seem nasty, but we were ever so happy last summer when we we were here quite alone."

"These people won't bother you, Nell," said Jamieson.

"You don't suppose this could be another trick of Mr. Holmes's, do you, Charlie?"

"Hardly-so soon," he said, frowning.

"He didn't leave us in peace very long after we got here, you know. We only arrived yesterday-and see what happened to us last night!"

"Well, we might stroll over and have a look," suggested Trenwith. "I guess there aren't any private property rights on this beach. We'll just look them over."

"All right," said Eleanor. "Want to come, Dolly and Bessie? I see you've finished your share of the work before the others."

So the five of them walked over.

"Who's going to camp here?" Trenwith asked one of the workmen.

"I don't know, sir. We just got orders to set up the tents. That's all we know about it."

The three girls exchanged glances. That sounded as if it might indeed be Mr. Holmes who was coming. But before any more questions could be asked, there was a sudden peal of girlish laughter from above and a wild rush down from the bluff.

"Dolly Ransom! Isn't this a surprise? And didn't we tell you we had a surprise for you?"

"Why, Marcia Bates!" cried Dolly and Bessie, in one breath, as the newcomer reached them. "I didn't know you were going to leave Lake Dean so soon."

"Well, we did! And we're all here-Gladys Cooper, and all the Halsted Camp Girls!"

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