Margaret Vandercook

“ Having finished her speech, Louise was leaning over, resting her head upon her hand, appearing more discouraged than the other girls considered necessary under the circumstances.
Louise’s features were large, her complexion pallid; she had only two claims to beauty, her curious light-gray eyes and copper-red hair. Ordinarily she wore unsuitable clothes, so that she looked better in her Scout uniform than in other costumes.
“Nonsense, Ouida, we are not going at things in any such spirit!” Dorothy remarked with the good sense and directness that distinguished her. ”

“ If only you would come to Westhaven I should like you to meet our Patrol of the Eagle’s Wing Troop. Besides, it would do you good. Won’t you come? The country is beautiful with its white covering of snow. My aunt, Miss Victoria Fenton, is a wonderful housekeeper and you and Uncle Richard would be sure to like each other. Besides, there is our Troop Captain, Sheila Mason. I wish some day you might know her and paint her portrait. She is lovely, but altogether unlike the portraits you have done.”
Tory glanced not very admiringly at the heads of men and women adorning the artist’s gray walls. ”

“ In the midst of her own nervousness Tory felt a regret that was half envy. Who would not desire affection like Dorothy’s and her twin brothers’? Tory so often was separated from the people she cared for most. The devoted intimacy with her artist father had been interrupted by his second marriage and his wish that she be brought up among her mother’s people and in her own country.95 Then the friendship between Katherine Moore and herself! Not altered by Kara’s illness—a thousand times no; but assuredly affecting the hours they could spend together and their happiness in each other’s society. ”

“ Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Hammond motored down from their country place, bringing Lucy with them. More than ever the little girl looked like a gorgeous butterfly in a beautiful yellow silk gown, her white leghorn hat trimmed in a wreath of golden poppies.
Half a dozen children from the Gray House on the Hill, who had been Sheila Mason’s special friends among the younger group whom Katherine Moore had once loved and mothered, were also invited.
As a special favor, “Billy Do,” of former days, was asked to sit beside his once-adored little girl friend, “Lucy Don’t.” ”

“ Fenton at once understood his appeal.
“Some one is lost in the snow. How can we manage, Tory?” he asked a little helplessly. Immediately the girl braced herself to meet the conditions intelligently. Her training as a Girl Scout counted in such moments of emergency.
“After all, there is the horse and sleigh! I had completely forgotten!” she answered. “If they have survived the night as well as I have, we can drive slowly, following the Emperor. If anyone has been overcome by the snowstorm, there is a chance we could bring him to the House in the Woods.” ”

“ You have something to propose. Somehow we always expect you to inspire us when we need a new incentive,” Margaret Hale said encouragingly.
Still the other girl hesitated.
“I don’t believe I ought to suggest anything. I had not an idea to propose when we started our Round Table discussion. I was in such a bad humor before you girls arrived, I though everybody and everything responsible except me. Then Dorothy and I fell to talking and discovered we were in the same state of mind, afterwards Louise, and then one by one each member of our Patrol. It was funny! Still, I cannot help being sorry. ”

“ Sheila Mason had not replied, but instead had covered her face with her two hands.
An instant later, when Teresa lifted them gently down, the girls were aware that her eyes had filled with tears.
“I shall continue your Troop Captain as long as you want me. No one and nothing shall interfere,” she began brokenly, with a little catch in her clear voice.
“You girls realize I never have believed that I have been able to accomplish half as much for my Girl Scouts as you have for me. You see, Tory even induced Mr. Winslow to come to live in Westhaven. ”

“ In the old room there was a momentary silence in spite of the presence of so many girls.
“I agree with Tory. It is absolutely necessary that we do something right away,” Joan remarked slowly.
Louise Miller appeared impatient.
“Yes, but what? I know it has been good for all our souls to confess that we have fallen into the slough of despond. Assuredly we are upon the downward grade! I don’t know how to express it! Having made the confession, what is to happen next? I have realized ever since Christmas that I was not living up to our Girl Scout principles, as I tried so hard to in the beginning. ”

“ I like shining places filled with light and color.”
The older woman shook her head.
“You are too impressionable, Tory dear! I wish you would not always yield to your fancies.”
In response Tory smiled and dropped her head an instant against her companion’s shoulder with one of her favorite gestures of affection.
“It is nice to hear you scold. I was just telling Dorothy and Louise that you had ceased to care for me as you did in the beginning of our friendship. I have not enjoyed it.”
“You are mistaken, Tory. I care for you perhaps more than ever. ”

“ I have already seen how badly you look,” Dorothy protested. “Please let us sit down somewhere while I tell you what you won’t believe. We found you merely by accident. Tory and I are in New York for a few days’ holiday with Mr. Fenton. I know Mr. Fenton has been trying to find news of you to take back to father, but has not succeeded. Tory, will you please tell how we happened to come to this building? One thing, Lance, I am glad to find you have such a charming room.”
Dorothy sank down on a divan piled with sofa cushions, Lance and Tory sitting down beside her. ”

“ She looked so dispirited and so unlike the gallant, cheerful Dorothy that Tory went to her.
“Dorothy, don’t tell me you are suffering from the blues! You must not; you will depress all your family. You may not realize it, but they are dependent upon you as the only girl in the family, and more so than ever now that Lance is away. Lance was spoiled and sometimes selfish, but you know he has a delightful sense of humor and imagination.
114 “As for Louise, she adores you. I wonder if she is not troubled about something she does not think she ought to confide to you or any one of the Girl Scouts? ”

“ The only cure is to think of some one else. I have not Kara any longer to care for and that makes a big difference with me. But there must be some one else in Westhaven. So I propose that this week each one of us finds some one who is ill and needing help of some character. It does not matter whether the person is a member of our own family or a stranger, rich or poor, young or old, we must manage to make them more comfortable. Then at our next Scout meeting we can report to one another. Don’t you think this may be worth while? I am not pretending to be very original this afternoon. ”

“ No great length of time could have passed when Margaret Hale and Louise were being assisted by a dozen members of the Eagle’s Wing Troop. Afterwards the two girls remembered they had felt no surprise. The news of the burning of the factory had spread through the village and naturally the girls had come to be of service.
This was their first important test. Never before had they been able to assume any public responsibility in the village! Were they making good in the same fashion that the Boy Scouts had upon many occasions? ”

“ I too have missed our good times out there and since Christmas have worried over our failure to live up to our Scout ideals.”
Flushing, the young Scout Captain clasped her hands over her knees and began slowly rocking back and forth in an unconscious and girlish fashion.
“I had about reached the conclusion, girls, that our mistake lately has been that we have thought too much of our own happiness and self-development. It is part of the Scout ideal, but certainly not the whole. Our slogan is sufficient proof, the daily good turn is for others.”
The Scout Captain turned to Tory. ”

“ He says he is not going to look for Lance, that when he has had enough he will come home. Just the same, he does not have a moment free from uneasiness. He is crazy to find Lance, and I know he wants you and Dorothy to search for him when you go up to New York for your holiday. Wish I were coming along! Not that I’d waste any time troubling to find Lance. He deserves whatever comes to him. He always was an idiot, but I did not dream such a one as he has proved himself.”
In spite of Don’s almost sullen manner Tory partly understood his state of mind. ”

“ Still, it was hard for you to have Dorothy desert you just as you were both to take charge of your gifted invalid! I am afraid he may find that he is lonely and dissatisfied so far from the village and I want him to feel that he may make friends in Westhaven whenever he desires, although we do not wish to be troublesome.”
“I wonder if you know how pretty you are looking, Sheila? Most people do know when they are looking especially well!” ”

“ It revealed one of the banners that had hung among the evergreens high up on the wall of the House in the Woods on Christmas Eve.
“We were to declare you one of the Knights of our Round Table, Kara.” Tory smiled. “I have an order from King Arthur. Do you wish to be Sir Boris, whose eyes were an outdoor sign of all the warmth within, or Sir Lancelot, ‘his warrior, whom King Arthur loved and honored most, first in tournament’?” ”

“ Tory inquired, having fought and conquered her sudden gust of temper. She was learning more self-control of late, when she had been tried in more than one fashion.
“Perhaps I should not have said what I did, but Dorothy and I have grown so intimate over the problem of Kara’s strange attitude that I tell her most things. I suppose Memory is helping you because she thinks you are specially in need of her help. She has a way of passing herself from one person to the other for this reason.” ”

“ Its simplicity, which approached austerity, was relieved by half a dozen vases and bowls of flowers. The eye fell at once upon a bouquet of red roses and violets in the center of a table near a big chair where a woman was half seated and half reclining. An open book was in her hands.
Tory looked from one to the other.
She was aware that the older woman had become handsomer since her illness. The heavy dark hair was more carefully arranged, since Tory herself was responsible for it. ”

“ No longer ornamented with pines and evergreens, the living-room of the House in the Woods was beautiful with spring flowers and shrubs.
Against the brown walls were branches of blossoming dogwood, long sprays of the fragrant, rose-pink trailing arbutus. On the211 mantel and tables were vases of white and purple lilacs and a single bowl of splendid crimson roses that had come to the House in the Woods with no card attached. The hostess understood, however, that they were a gift from Mr. Fenton.
To-night they stood in the center of the Round Table. ”

“ If the room in which she and Miss Frean were at this tragic moment had since grown36 almost as familiar as her own, she recalled the impression it first had made upon her. She had realized that it possessed a kind of fine simplicity like the woman it sheltered. Tory’s artistic temperament demanded that the outward form be the expression of the inner nature. How many pleasant hours she and Memory Frean had passed together in this room! ”

“ The dog remained patiently waiting so far as any movement of his body, but always with the suggestion of imploring haste in his eyes.
This became more apparent when, dressed for the outdoors, Tory hesitated.
Was the old truism in this case a stern reality? Was discretion not the better part of valor?
Should she follow the dog to the spot where some one may have been overcome by the storm? Once there, what possible aid had she the power to render? Yet to fail to do what she could was less possible. ”

“ I am glad you think I am prettier. No woman ever grows too old or too sensible not to wish to hear this compliment.
“Now I am convinced I hear our visitors; please open the front door, if I am not to be allowed to do it.”
An hour later eight girls, their hostess and Sheila Mason, the Scout Captain, were seated close together, facing the log fire.
“I think you might tell your dream now, Tory,” Miss Frean suggested, half amused and half serious.
“My dream?” Tory answered, bright spots of color showing in her ordinarily pale cheeks. ”

“ Dorothy, please see that Tory does not weep and spoil my red roses. I suppose they are mine.”
After a little the girls found cushions and placed themselves on the floor at Kara’s feet.
“Now tell me every single thing that has happened since I left,” she said. “Don’t think anything is too unimportant.”
“But, Kara, won’t you tell us first? It is so hard to wait,” Tory pleaded. ”

“ Memory Frean says that the people of Westhaven wish to offer her a reward of some kind to show their appreciation of what she accomplished as a Girl Scout. We have no right to share in the honor, I least of all, who objected to Edith’s joining our Patrol when her name was first proposed! Don’t you think she has earned the Golden Eaglet?”
The Troop Captain nodded.
“I have been thinking the same thing. No one would dispute the justice of Edith’s claim to the highest honor a Girl Scout can attain. How often the people who do the bravest acts are those we least expect it of!” ”

“ This afternoon Tory dropped down on a stool at her feet, while Dorothy seated herself upon the divan beside Teresa.
“There seems to be no little house for rent in Westhaven that is inexpensive,” Dorothy remarked, when Tory had concluded her story. “We have made any number of inquiries. And I feel sure Mr. Winslow is poorer than he would be willing to confess. He says he must sublet his studio to be able to leave New York at all. At the same time I consider it would be best for him and a wonderful thing for Westhaven to have him spend the winter here. He is sure to make friends. ”

“ Moore has been able to do for Lance what he could not afford, and Lance adores him!” Dorothy McClain interposed, observing that Tory appeared crestfallen at the fashion in which Kara had received the amazing story.
“Yes, I understand, Dorothy. I am not in the least venturing to dispute Mr. Moore’s account of what he thinks occurred so many years ago. I only very seriously doubt that I have any part in it. I presume there are hundreds of other children who are as likely to be the girl he is seeking.” Kara’s tone lacked entire conviction.
“Please don’t say what you really know isn’t true, Kara!” ”

“ OTHER EXPERIENCES DURING the past week Tory and Dorothy had been making happy preparations for the arrival of Mr. Winslow at the evergreen cabin. They had secured the consent of the other girls without difficulty. In the meantime several of the Girl Scouts had been puzzled by the effort to keep the Scout pledge made to one another at their final meeting.
Of necessity, in the village there must be a number of persons who were ill and would like to be cared for, provided the attentions were tactfully offered. ”