Lucile Triumphant. Elizabeth M. Duffield
in earnest; can’t you see? She means, she means——” and Jessie paused before the fateful word.
It was more than Lucile could stand. She jumped up, danced a few joyous and absurd little steps, then turning, made the girls a low bow.
“Greetings, fellow-travelers,” she said.
12
CHAPTER II
ECHOES OF THE CAMP-FIRE
“But whatever put it into your head to take us along?” Jessie asked, after the first wild excitement had abated a trifle.
“Well, you see, it was this way,” began Lucile, with the air of one imparting a grave secret. “When Dad came home last night, the first thing he did was to begin asking me a lot of foolish questions—or, at least, they seemed so to me. He started something like this: ‘If you had your choice, what would you want most in the world——’ ”
“If he had asked me that, I wouldn’t be through yet,” Jessie broke in.
“Never mind her, Lucy,” said Evelyn. “Go on, please.”
“I felt very much that way myself, Jessie,” and Lucile nodded understandingly at the ruffled Jessie. “Well,” she went on, “I began naming over several things, and when I’d finished Dad looked so sad I thought I must have done something terrible, but when I asked him what was the matter he simply shook his head despairingly and sighed, ‘Not there, not there.’ ”
The girls laughed merrily.
“Oh, I can just see him,” chuckled Evelyn.
“Well, what then?” Jessie urged.
“Oh, I didn’t know what to do,” Lucile continued. “The more I asked him to explain, the more disconsolate he looked. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I left the room, saying if he didn’t want to tell me, he needn’t. Then, when I got outside the door I could hear him chuckling to himself.” 13
“Just like him,” again interposed Jessie.
“Well, all the time I knew something was coming. At dinner it came when Dad calmly announced that he was going to Europe on business and that if his family wished—imagine that, wished—he might let us go along.”
“Oh, my—wished!” murmured Evelyn.
“You should have seen Phil,” Lucile went on with her story. “I never saw anyone so dumbfounded. He stopped with a piece of fish halfway to his mouth and gaped at Dad as if he were some curiosity. I must have looked funny, too, for suddenly Dad began to laugh, and he laughed and he laughed till we thought he’d die.”
“ ‘You couldn’t look more dumbfounded if I had ordered your execution,’ he gasped when he could get his breath. ‘Of course, I can always make arrangements for you to stay behind.’ ”
“Oh,” breathed the girls in unison, “what did you say?”
“Say? You had better ask what didn’t we say. We talked and talked and talked as fast as our tongues would go till after midnight, and we wouldn’t have stopped then if mother hadn’t shooed us off to bed. Oh, I don’t think I was ever so happy in all my life!”
“But where do we come in?” insisted Jessie.
“Right here. You see, I had been so excited and everything, I hadn’t realized what it would mean to leave you girls for the whole summer. I guess Dad saw there was something the matter, for, when I started upstairs, he drew me back and asked me to tell him what was wrong. When I told him I wished you girls were going, too, he surprised me by saying, ‘Why not?’ For a moment I thought he was joking—he’s always doing that, you know—but when I saw he was in sober earnest I could have danced for joy.”
“Don’t blame you. I’d not only have felt like it; I’d have done it, too,” said Evelyn. 14
“Yes, and scandalized the neighbors,” Jessie sniffed.
“I fail to see how the neighbors would have known anything about it,” retorted Evelyn, with dignity, “since they can’t see through the walls.”
“Oh, they don’t have to see,” said Jessie, witheringly. “Anybody within a mile of you can hear you dance.”
“See here, Jessie Sanderson, that’s not fair,” Lucile broke in. “Evelyn’s one of the best little dancers I know, and I won’t have her maligned.”
“Have her what? I wish you’d speak United States, Lucy,” said Jessie, plaintively.
“Don’t talk and you won’t show your ignorance.” It was Evelyn’s turn to be scornful.
“Well, what does it mean?” Jessie returned. “You tell us.”
“Some other time,” said Evelyn, calmly. “You will have to excuse me now. I am so excited now that I really can’t bring my mind down to trivial matters.”
“I knew it,” Jessie was declaiming tragically, when a clear whistle sounded from the foot of the hill and Lucile exclaimed:
“There’s Phil; I wonder what he wants now.”
The three girls made a pretty picture as they stood there gazing eagerly down the slope, Lucile with her vivid gypsy coloring and fair-haired, blue-eyed Jessie, exactly her opposite, yet, withal, her dearest and most loyal friend; and last, but not least, Evelyn, short and round and polly, with a happy disposition that won her friends wherever she went.
Although it is generally conceded that “three make a crowd,” the rule was certainly wide of the mark in this case. The girls were bound by a tie even stronger than friendship, and that tie was the law of the camp-fire. The latter had taught them many brave lessons in the game of life, lessons in self-denial, in sympathy and 15 loyalty, and they were ever anxious to prove that they had learned their lessons well.
Though, once in a while, besetting sins would crop out and Lucile would cry, despairingly, “Oh, why did I do it; I knew I shouldn’t,” and Jessie would stop, when plunging nobly through a box of candies, to cry penitently, “Oh, I’ve eaten too many,” and Evelyn would often be tempted to read too long and neglect her work, still, on the whole, they were infinitely helped by the wholesome teaching and precepts of the campfire.
“Oh, he’s got a letter,” cried Lucile, as Phil took a flying leap into their midst.
“Say,” said Phil, eyeing them pityingly, “don’t you fellows know it’s time to eat?”
“It’s never dinner-time yet,” said Jessie in dismay.
“Yes it is, too,” Evelyn contradicted. “Just look where the sun is.”
“Where is it?” cried Phil, and then, as his gaze wandered to the sky, he added, with an air of relief, “Oh, it’s still there; how you frightened me!”
“Goose!” his sister commented, and then, looking at the envelope he still held in his hand, she added, “Who’s the letter from? Be sensible and tell us about it.”
“Oh, that?” said Phil. “That’s a letter from Jim. Seems to be getting along first rate.”
“What does he say?” asked Jessie, all interest.
Phil eyed her speculatively. “I tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it on the way home.”
The girls laughed and