Wyn's Camping Days: or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club. Marlowe Amy Bell
room for two, I guess,” thought Wyn; and then she made a discovery that almost made her cry out aloud. Its occupant was the very girl for whom she was in search!
Wyn controlled her impulse to run forward, and approached the bench quite casually. Before she reached it, however, she realized that the dark girl was crying softly.
Natural delicacy would have restrained Wyn from approaching the girl so abruptly. Only, she was deeply interested, and already knowing the occasion for her tears, the captain of the Go-Ahead Club could not ignore the forlorn figure on the bench.
Without speaking, she dropped into the seat beside the strange girl, and put her hand on the other’s shoulder.
“My dear!” she said, when the startled gray eyes–all a-flood with tears–were raised to her own. “My dear, tell me all about it–do! If I can’t help you, I will be your friend, and it will make you feel lots better to tell it all to somebody who sympathizes.”
“Bu-but you ca-can’t sympathize with me!” gasped the other, looking into Wyn’s steady, brown eyes and finding friendliness and commiseration there. “You–you see, you never knew the lack of anything good; you’re not poor.”
“No, I am not poor,” admitted Wyn.
“And I don’t want charity!” cried the strange girl quickly.
“I am not going to offer it to you. But I’d dearly love to be your friend,” Wyn said. “You know–you’re so pretty!” she added, impulsively.
The girl flushed charmingly again. “I–I guess I’m not very pretty in my old duds, and with my nose and eyes red from crying.”
But she was really one of those few persons who are not made ugly by crying. She had neither red eyes nor a red nose.
“Do tell me what troubles you,” urged Wyn, patting her firm, calloused hand.
Those hands were no soft, useless members–no, indeed! Pretty as she was, the stranger had evidently been in the habit of performing arduous manual labor.
“Where do you live, my dear?” asked Wyn, again, as her first question was not answered.
“Up beyond Meade’s Forge,” said the strange girl.
“Oh, my! On Lake Honotonka?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please don’t ma’am me!” cried the captain of the Go-Ahead Club. “My name is Wynifred Mallory. My friends all call me Wyn. Now, I want you to be my friend, so you must commence calling me Wyn right away.”
“But–but you don’t know me,” said the other girl, hesitatingly.
“I am going to; am I not?” demanded Wyn, with her frank smile. “Surely, now that I have confided in you, you will confide in me to the same extent? Or, don’t you like me?”
“Of course I like you!” exclaimed the still sobbing girl. “But–but I do not know that I have any right to allow you to be my friend.”
“Goodness me! why not?” exclaimed Wyn.
“Why–why, we have a bad name in this town, it seems,” said the other.
“Who have?” snapped Wyn, hating Mr. Erad harder than ever now.
“My father and I.”
“What have you done that makes you a pariah?” exclaimed Wyn, fairly laughing now. “Aren’t you foolish?”
“No. People say my father was not honest I am Polly Jarley,” said the girl, desperately.
“Polly Jolly?” cried Wyn. “Not much you are! You are anything but jolly. You are Polly Miserrimus.”
“I don’t know what that means, ma’am – ”
“Wyn!” exclaimed the other girl, quickly.
“M–Miss Wyn.”
“Not right. Just Wyn. Plain Wyn – ”
“Oh, I couldn’t call you plain,” cried the poorly dressed girl, with some spontaneity now. “For you are very pretty. But I don’t really know what Mis–Mis – ”
“‘Miserrimus’?’”
“That is it.”
“It’s Latin, and it means miserable, all right,” laughed Wyn. “And you act more to fit the name of ‘Polly Miserrimus’ than that of ‘Polly Jolly.’”
“It’s Jarley, Miss Wyn.”
“But now tell me all about it, Polly,” urged Wyn, having by this means stopped the flow of Polly’s tears. “Surely it will help you just to free your mind. And don’t be foolish enough to think that I wouldn’t want to know you and be your friend if your poor father was the biggest criminal on earth.”
“He isn’t! He is unfortunate. He has been accused wrongfully, and everybody is against him,” exclaimed Polly, with some heat.
“All right. Then let’s hear about it,” urged Wyn, capturing both of the other girl’s hands in her own, and smiling into her tear-drenched gray eyes.
CHAPTER IV
THE SILVER IMAGES
“Didn’t you ever hear of us Jarleys?” Polly first of all demanded.
“Only as being interested in the wax-work business,” replied Wyn, with twinkling eyes.
“I–I guess father never made wax-work,” said Polly, hesitatingly.
She was an innocent sort of girl, who evidently lacked many advantages of education and reading that Wyn and her friends had enjoyed as a matter of course.
“Well, I never heard the name before to-day–not your name, nor your father’s,” Wyn said.
“Well, we used to live here.”
“In Denton?”
“Yes, ma’am – ”
“Will you stop that?” cried Wyn. “I am Wyn Mallory, I tell you.”
“All right, Wyn. It’s a pretty name. I’ll be glad to use it,” returned Polly.
“Prove it by using it altogether,” commanded Wyn. “Now, what about your father?”
“I–I can’t tell you much about it–much of the particulars, I mean,” said the girl from Lake Honotonka, diffidently. “I don’t really know them. Father never speaks of it much. But even as a tiny girl mother explained to me that when folks said father had done wrong I must deny it. That it was not so. It was only circumstances that made him appear in the wrong. And–you know, Wyn–your mother wouldn’t lie to you!”
“Of course not!” cried Wyn, warmly. “Of course not!”
“Well, then, you’ll have to believe just what I tell you. Father was in some business deal with a man here in Denton, and something went wrong. The other man accused father of being dishonest. Father could not defend himself. Circumstances were dead against him. And it worried mother so that it made her sick.
“So we all left town. Father had very little money, and he built a shack up there in the woods near Honotonka. We’re just ‘squatters’ up there. But gradually father got a few boats, and built a float, and made enough in the summer from fishermen and campers to support us. Of course, mother being sick so many years before she died, kept us very poor. I only go to the district school winters. Then I have to walk four miles each way, for we own no horse. Summers I help father with the boats.”
“That’s where you got such palms! cried Wyn, touching her new friend’s calloused hands again.
“It’s rowing does it. But I don’t mind. I love the water, you see.”
“So do I. I’ve got a canoe. I’m captain of a girls’ canoe club.”
“That’s