Tory had placed her hands on the back of the wheeled chair and was about to move on, when again a querulous voice interrupted:

"Oh, no, let us not go at once. You are always tiring yourself to death for me these days. Don't think I never overhear Miss Mason and the other girls speaking of it, Tory. One learns to hear more than one should in my position. I was not always an eavesdropper. Neither did I suppose you would have to be a martyr for my sake, Tory. I wish you would try not to be; a martyr is a n.o.ble character, but one does not wish one for a constant companion."

Tory Drew made no reply. Instead she shoved the heavy chair into a cool, green shelter and dropped down on the ground beside it.

The other girl followed, anxious to be useful and not knowing what she should do.

A week had pa.s.sed since Kara's return to her friends in their Girl Scout camp in Beechwood Forest. The Kara who had gone away after her accident and the Kara who had come back seemed two utterly different human beings.

The courageous, gay, sweet-tempered girl was now rebellious, fretful, impatient. Indeed, she had become more difficult than any one who had known her previously could have imagined.

The little group of Girl Scouts were being tested, and more than any one of them, Tory Drew. So far not once had she faltered. Knowing Tory six months before, one could scarcely have believed this possible.

Always she had been sweet and charming, but self centered and spoiled.

Now, was it her affection for Katherine Moore or the months of her Scout training that had given her a new spirit?

"Suppose you tell us how you learned to dance in that beautiful fashion, Evan? Then, if Kara wishes, perhaps you will dance for us again?"

The girl with the odd, boyish name gazed at Tory Drew reflectively.

Since their arrival in camp she had conceived a deep admiration for Tory. She had never spoken of it to any human being. Tory possessed this charm, of which she was unconscious, which was to gain her friends all her life.

Evan sat down on the ground nearby.

She was a year younger than the other two girls. At this moment, in her shabby, simple white dress, she appeared a good deal younger.

"Would you really like to know about my dancing? I have been wanting to tell some one. It would be absurd to pretend I had not been taught, no one with any judgment would believe me. Besides, when one is a Girl Scout I do not think one desires to keep secrets from the other girls.

Perhaps you won't approve of me afterwards, but I shall run that risk."

Tory laughed.

"You are a dear! I approve of nearly every one. What could there be to object to in your wonderful dancing? Don't you know every girl who sees you must envy you."

A little fearfully Tory glanced upward toward Kara.

Had she been tactless again? Everything she said or did appeared the wrong thing these days.

At present apparently Kara was not looking or listening to either of them. Her gray eyes, which showed so wistfully in her thin face, were fixed on a far-off line of the sky between two clumps of trees.

"Well, you might as well hear the worst at the start," Evan went on, smiling and revealing her small, even teeth.

"In the first place, I received my ridiculous name because my father died a short time after I was born. It was intended I should be a boy, so I was named for him. We were poor and mother had to make her own living and mine. She did not feel troubled over this because she had studied dancing and loved it. So she gave dancing lessons in California, and before I was two years old I was a member of her cla.s.s. We never would have stopped save that mother was ill and we were forced to come east to consult a doctor. We came to Westhaven to live so she could be near New York and I at school. Mother is better, and next winter intends to begin teaching again."

"So you wish to be a dancing teacher?" Katherine Moore asked. The other girls were under the impression that she had not heard what they were saying.

Evan jumped up quickly.

"Never, I should hate it! I mean to study folk dancing and some day originate new dances that shall be as American as possible. We talk of the folk dancing of the Irish and Spanish, and the Austrians and the Dutch and any number of other nations. When we speak of American folk dancing it is supposed we dance like the Indians. I don't see why we can't create a national folk dance of our own."

Evan made a cup of her hands and dropped her chin into it.

"Please don't laugh; I think an American folk dance might be like these young beech trees. I know that sounds absurd. What I mean is, the dance should show youth and freshness and grace, beautiful things like a primeval American forest. Oh, I don't suppose you understand me. I am sure I don't quite understand myself!

"Since I have been at camp Miss Mason has allowed me to come here an hour each morning to practice. May I show you the dance I have been trying to compose. I don't mind if you laugh at the dance or at me, I do it so badly. I shall learn some day. I like to call it 'The Dance of the Young Beeches'."

Without waiting for Kara's or Tory's agreement, Evan was up and away.

Slowly she again circled around the beautiful dancing ground, her arms and body waving with gentle, fanciful undulations.

Now and then she seemed to be swept by light winds; again a storm pressed upon her and she bowed and swayed as if resisting with all her strength. Afterwards, wishing to suggest that the storm had pa.s.sed and the sun was shining and the birds singing, she tiptoed about, her arms gently undulating, her face looking upward.

The dancing was crude and yet would have been attractive to eyes more accustomed to trained dancing than Tory's or Kara's.

Tory's first sensation was one of pure, artistic pleasure. Then glancing at Kara she felt a deeper joy. A moment Kara appeared to have forgotten her own misfortune. She looked more interested, more entertained than in many days.

"Don't you think, Evan, that if your mother is well she might be persuaded to come to your camp and teach us dancing?" Kara demanded, as if she too could be included in the lessons. "I know when we first decided to have our camp in Beechwood Forest one of the things we talked of doing was learning outdoor dancing. We hoped Miss Mason would be able to teach us. She only knows ordinary dances, and insists she does not even know the newest of these. She has not gone into society since the death of the young officer to whom she was engaged,"

Kara confided. "Sometimes I wonder if being Captain of our Girl Scout Troop has not helped her almost as much as the rest of us?"

She stopped abruptly.

Farther off in the woods the three girls heard a strange sound.

It was as if some one were calling. Yet the noise was not the Girl Scout signal.

Ten minutes later, on the way back to camp, unexpectedly the three girls beheld Teresa Peterson hurrying on alone. She looked surprised, even a little frightened, by their appearance.

When Tory inquired where she had been, as Teresa made no reply, the question was dropped.

No one was supposed to leave the camp without special permission from the Troop Captain. There was no reason, however, to suppose that Teresa had not received this permission.

CHAPTER VII

OTHER GIRLS

The other girls in the camp in Beechwood Forest were not pa.s.sing through so trying an ordeal as Victoria Drew and Katherine Moore, after Katherine's return to camp.

Sympathetic they were with Kara's misfortune, yet upon them it did not press so heavily.

Frankly two of the girls acknowledged that the few weeks at camp were the happiest of their entire lives. These two girls were Louise Miller and Teresa Peterson. Neither of them was particularly congenial with their home surroundings.

An odd contradiction, Louise Miller was oftentimes so quiet, so slow and awkward in her movements that many persons regarded her as stupid.

This was never true among the friends who knew her intimately, if for no other reason, than because of Dorothy McClain's att.i.tude. From the time they were children the two girls had admired and loved each other, notwithstanding the difference in their natures. Dorothy was one of the happy persons whose attraction was so apparent that few natures resisted it. She was handsome and straightforward and sweet tempered. One girl in a family of six brothers, she had learned a freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and her father had been such intimate friends that she had not felt the keenness of her loss as she must have under different circ.u.mstances.

Indeed, Louise Miller, whose parents were living, endured a deeper loneliness.

There had never been any pretence of anything else. Her father was a business failure. This had narrowed and embittered his nature. He was devoted to his wife but to no one else.