Lucile Triumphant. Elizabeth M. Duffield
last sweet note hesitated, sighed, and softly merged in the crackling of the fire, and still their guardian did not move.
For a long moment she sat upright and still, her hands clutching the arms of her chair, her gaze fixed steadily on the tiny, darting flames. Perhaps she saw there even more than the girls sensed, for when she turned to them, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Girls, dear girls,” she cried, unsteadily, “what a welcome you have given me! And I had begun to think you had forgotten all about your guardian,” and as she spoke she held out her arms so that the girls came rushing.
Then such a hugging and kissing and asking of foolish questions and answering of them in like, but delightful manner, until Mrs. Wescott was forced to say, laughingly and in the same old tone they had heard so often in camp:
“Girls, don’t you think it would be better to hear one at a time?”
The girls laughed gaily and settled themselves so near their guardian that “they couldn’t possibly miss a word,” as Jessie explained afterward when describing the scene to her mother.
“Oh, it’s a sight for sore eyes to see all my camp-fire girls again,” said Mrs. Wescott, as her eyes traveled happily over the little group about her.
Some threw themselves on the floor at her feet, while others were curled up on the huge divan, and Marjorie and Jessie perched on the arms of her chair. But all the bright faces were turned toward her with such happy and expectant interest that a lump seemed to rise in her throat, and she had much ado to speak at all. 43
“It is wonderful to have you here after all this time,” cried Jessie, snuggling close to her guardian as she spoke. “I feel as if any minute you’re likely to fade away just as the ghosts and visions do in the moving pictures.”
There was a general laugh, and then Evelyn broke in, gallantly.
“I protest,” she said, stoutly. “I deny that our guardian is a ghost.”
“No; but she is a vision,” said a voice behind them, and Lucile slipped noiselessly into the circle.
“Goodness, Lucile, anybody would think you were the redskin you look like,” commented Dorothy, a trifle sharply, for she had started in a most undignified manner.
“See, you frightened the child, Lucile,” said Marjorie, aggravatingly. “You should be more careful with one so young.”
“What do you call yourself?” retorted Dorothy, and Lucile saw it was high time she took a hand in the argument.
“Don’t tease, Marj,” she admonished. “And don’t get mad about nothing, Dotty—I mean Dot,” she corrected quickly, as Dorothy eyed her menacingly.
“I don’t wonder she draws the line at Dotty,” laughed Jessie. “I haven’t called you that for two weeks, Dot; I’ve kept track.”
“When you haven’t called me that for two years,” said Dorothy, graciously, “I’ll begin to think you’re improving.”
“That’s right, Dot,” cried one of the girls, with a merry laugh. “Never refuse a helping hand to the wicked!”
“Encourage them once in a while and some time, soon or late, you will be rewarded,” chanted Marjorie in a solemn tone that brought a laugh from every one.
“Lucy was right, just the same,” said Margaret, with apparent irrelevance, and the girls turned inquiring eyes on the speaker as she sat, chin in hand, gazing into the fire. 44
Somehow the girls’ faces always sobered when they looked at Margaret, and when they spoke to her their voices softened to an undernote of tenderness never used among themselves. She had won her way steadily to every girl’s heart. They had marveled at her invariable sweetness of temper; they had laughed at her quaint, naive sayings, and, most of all, they had loved her for the warm, grateful heart that found room and to spare for them all.
So now Evelyn, merry, irresponsible Evelyn, said, with a gentleness that caused Mrs. Wescott to look at her in surprise:
“What do you mean, Margaret? Pictures in the fire again?”
“No; I was just thinking of what Lucy said when she first came in, before Dorothy jumped all over her,” said Margaret, with a twinkle in her eye that had only found its way there of late.
“Jumped all over her? What kind of language do you call that, Margaret Pratt Stillman?” reproved Marjorie, with her best grandmother air. “If you are not careful, the habit of using slang will grow upon you.”
“Oh, do keep still, Marj, for half a minute, can’t you?” cried Jessie. “I suppose you can’t,” she added, “but you might try, anyway. A great many impossible things come with time.”
“Speak with yourself, Johnette,” retorted Marjorie.
“Why the Johnette?” inquired Lucile, with interest.
“Feminine for John, of course,” Marjorie explained, patiently.
Jessie broke in upon the laugh that followed. “But we haven’t come to the point yet,” she complained. “Speak up, Margaret, before some other rude person interrupts.”
“That’s right,” said Lucile, ignoring the irony in her tone. “Now is your chance, Peggy.”
“Why, you said that our guardian was a vision,” said Margaret, dreamily. “I quite agree with you.”
“Come, come, I can’t allow this,” cried the vision, gaily, as the girls turned adoring eyes upon her. “I’ve 45 been thinking sundry little thoughts on my own account since I’ve seen my girls again.”
“Oh, doesn’t it seem great to be back?” cried Dorothy. “I know I should be terribly homesick if I stayed away six weeks, let alone six months.”
“Indeed it did. Just the same, New York is fascinating, with its great buildings, its busy, absorbed throng of people, each intent on getting ahead of the next one. There is something about it all that draws one irresistibly. The very air seems charged with electricity, and just to walk down Broadway gave me more real excitement and enjoyment than the most thrilling play could have done.” Helen Wescott’s face flushed and her eyes sparkled as she talked.
“Go on,” cried Evelyn breathlessly. “Do tell us all about it. Oh, I can’t even imagine it!”
“I don’t believe I could tell you everything if I should talk for a month,” she went on. “But I do remember a conversation Jack and I had soon after our arrival. We were walking up Fifth Avenue one exceptionally busy day—I don’t know why I should say that, for every day over there seems busier than the last—when Jack asked why I was so quiet. ‘Because everything else is making so much noise,’ I answered. Which, indeed, was almost reason enough. But when he insisted, I said what had been in my thoughts for the past two days:
“ ‘I’ve been wondering, as I looked at all these people rushing along as if their lives depended on their getting to a certain place on a certain second—these people with set faces and eyes that seem to see a long way off—I’ve just been wondering what they all find to do.’
“ ‘My dear,’ said Jack, and he laughed in a way I could not understand, ‘It’s easy to see you have lived a long way from little old New York, and I’m mighty glad you have. I’d rather you would face all these people for the first time with me along.’
“ ‘But you haven’t answered my question,’ I insisted, for I was still filled with wonder at the great throng surging 46 past us, whose purpose never seemed to change or falter.
“ ‘You asked what they were all doing,’ said Jack. ‘Well, for the most part, they are busily and congenially engaged in doing to the best advantage the next poor victim that comes to their net.’
“Somehow, that little remark put a different