The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World | Page 9

you
doing in the house at this hour, Anthony Graham? You frightened me

nearly to death, turning up at my elbow in such an unexpected fashion.
I thought you had been gone hours!"
Anthony put down his coal scuttle and took hold of Betty's tray. "I have
been away, but I came back for a moment because your mother wished
me to do something for her as soon as I had the spare time." His tone
was so surly that Betty smiled. Anthony had been brought up with such
a different class of people that he was unable to understand sarcasm or
pretense of any kind. Whatever one said he accepted in exactly the
words in which it was spoken. And Betty and her friends had always
been accustomed to joking with one another, to saying one thing, often
meaning another. Anthony should have had the sense to realize that she
was not really cross, that her indignation was partly assumed. Therefore
she did not intend taking the trouble to set him right in the present
instance.
"I'll carry the dishes down myself. I have plenty of time," she protested
coldly.
But Anthony only held the more firmly to the tray, with his face
crimsoning.
The truth was that he had been appreciating in the past few days a truth
of which the girl herself was as yet unconscious. Betty's manner toward
him had noticeably changed. In the excitement of their Thanksgiving
day meeting and his romantic return of the money which she had
completely forgotten, she had shown far more interest and friendliness
than she now did. On that occasion Betty had overlooked the young
fellow's roughness, his lack of education and family advantages. Really
Anthony had never been taught even the common civilities of life and
had to trust to a kind of instinct, even in knowing when to take off his
hat, when to shake hands, how to enter or leave a room. And he
understood keenly enough his own limitations. Yet the change in
Betty's attitude had hurt him, even though he acknowledged to himself
his failure to deserve even her original kindness. She was still kind
enough of course in the things which she thought counted. She was
cordial about his having his room in the house with her mother and
herself and most careful of thanking him for any assistance which he

rendered them. Yet the difference was there. For neither in heart nor
mind had Betty yet grown big enough to feel real comradeship with a
boy so beneath her in social position and opportunities.
Nevertheless she did not mean to be ungracious and something in the
carriage of the young man's head as he moved off down the hall
suggested that he was either hurt or angry, although exactly why Betty
could not understand.
"Don't go for a second, Anthony," she called after him. "I wanted to tell
you that you are living in a house with a haunted chamber. At least I
don't know whether this room is exactly haunted, but there is something
queer about it that my mother and brother have never confided to me.
Perhaps I shall move in and find out for myself what it is. I will if there
is a chance of my friends, Esther Crippen and Polly O'Neill, coming
home for the holidays. For it is so big that we could stay in it together.
And perhaps Mrs. O'Neill will let Polly come here and visit me for a
little while. Both the girls are doing wonderful things in New York City.
And I am afraid if they don't come home pretty soon they will both
have outgrown me. It is so horrid to be a perfectly ordinary person."
As Betty moved off, the expression on her companion's face did not
suggest that he thought of her as entirely ordinary.
CHAPTER IV
TEMPTATION
"You are perfectly absurd and I haven't the faintest intention of
confiding in any one of you." And Polly O'Neill, with her cheeks
flaming, rushed away from a group of girls and into her own bedroom,
closing the door and locking it behind her.
This winter at boarding school in New York City had not been in the
least what she had anticipated. Perhaps the character of the school she
and her mother had chosen had been unfortunate. Yet they had selected
it with the greatest care and it was expensive beyond Polly's wildest
dreams. For, apart from her own small inheritance, her stepfather, Mr.

Wharton, had insisted on being allowed to contribute to her support,
and not to appear too ungracious both to her mother and to him, his
offer had been accepted. Yet Polly did not consider herself any greater
success in thus masquerading as a rich girl than she had been