Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Part 8

De ri do!

"A la.s.sie, a dog, And an auld rowan tree, The mair that you thwacks 'em, The better they be!"

"'Thwacks 'em!' Pshaw! he's flinging that in my direction--having a fling at me--for sitting in the Devil's Chair," laughed Pem, but the laughter was bitter, two-edged. "Oh! Una," she burst forth shakily, "as long--as long's ever I live, I'll wish I hadn't done it, letting--letting that Jack at a Pinch, as he called himself, that big, boorish boy, play friend in need to me-e again. Ugh-h!"

Her stung lips quivered and were twisted, partly upon the after-taste of terror.

"Humph! forget it--oh-h! forget it," caroled the younger girl. "See that you don't make a trouble out of it, for trouble is a hor-rid kettle-o'-fish for the troublers--see!... But--listen! Listen! Surely that's singing--singing from somewhere--_other_ singing!"

She paused on tiptoe, a green dryad, one little hand, fair as a flower-petal, curled about her startled ear.

But Pem was for the moment comfort-proof.

"Bah! 'Tisn't quite so easy to forget," she murmured, bitterly.

Her less fragile fists were mounted one upon another under her chin as if to hold her head up. For the first time in her life she felt as if she were being asked to drink a cup of humiliation--she, Toandoah's little pal--and she made wry faces over even a sip.

"Humph! Doesn't it seem queer--queer--outlandish?" she snapped, bolstering the piqued head higher with each pa.s.sionate adjective. "Here for three months, ever since February--since I recovered consciousness after that freezing wreck--I've been longing, oh! longing to meet again the boy whose chaff, whose very chaff, warmed one amid the horrors....

You didn't hear it; you were too far gone. And, _now_!" The little fists lashed out. "Bah! Who could ev-er dream that he'd turn out such a 'chuff', as the boys say--an un-civ-il chuff?... Una! it's never--it isn't, it can't be Camp Fire Girls?"

"It is! It is! I told you I heard singing."

The answer was shrill with delight as the wiry note of the little black-poll warbler, nesting near.

"Why! Why! Goodness! That's what I hurled at _him_; at his crowing, c.o.c.k-a-hoop back!"

The older girl's face softened, melted into whimsicality now,--into a freakish surprise that encircled, like a golden ring, her wide-open mouth.

Up--up from the Pinnacle's softer side, its tender, heavenly side, the chant came ringing, the merry chant and challenge:

"Then--then don't take a nap, For we're on the map!"

"Camp Fire Girls! Camp Fire Girls! Here on the Pinnacle 'map'!"

Pem caught her breath wildly. Never--oh! never was a turn of the tide more welcome.

CHAPTER X

CAMP FIRE SISTERS

Never was a diversion more welcome!

"We're on the map, R-ready to prove it with snap!"

Snap was in the very sunset as the evening breeze learned the song.

As for the inventor's daughter, her joyous relief was now a hop and now a dance, anon a pine-caught hullabaloo, as she gleefully turned her back upon the Devil's Chair and nick.u.m memories--her face to the glowing sun of sisterhood.

"Camp Fire sisters! Camp Fire sisters! Was ever such luck?" she cried.

"Oh! come, let's find them--let's join them."

"Oh--let us!" a.s.sented Una, her excitement, too, running like wildfire through the wood.

And, presently, the two city girls, wafting themselves airily over bowlders, threading their way in and out among pigmy pines, with here and there a needled patriarch among them, came upon a forest scene that might well have wakened Queen Mab from her sleep in a cobweb net and made her think that some, at least, of the fairy dreams with which she inspired mortals had come true.

A dozen, and more, of sylvan figures, the green ta.s.sels of their Tam-o'-shanters waving like the ta.s.seled green of the cinnamon fern flitted busily in and out among their pa.s.sive brothers, the trees, not pines here, but a few beautiful stripling birches planted in a sunny spot.

To these white-stemmed saplings, tall and taper-like, some of the nymphs, maidens from thirteen to seventeen, were playing fairy G.o.dmother, affixing to their slender trunks placards proclaiming the exaction of dire forfeits from any wanton human churl found guilty of mutilating a silver birch tree, stripping it even of an inch of tender skin, thus entailing upon it decay and death.

Other of the maidens were gathering f.a.gots for an outdoor fire to the tune of a version of Andrew's song, not without humor in the present crisis:

"Singing whack fol de ri do, 'Twill comfort their souls, To get such fine f.a.gots, When they've got no coals!"

One, brisk spoon in hand, was busily stirring some fairy brew, batter rather--an older figure superintending, Queen Mab herself maybe, having a golden sunburst embroidered upon the heaving emerald of her breast.

Now! to these came forth two other maidens, emerging, breathless, from the Pinnacle pines, and made the hand-sign of fire.

Up went gracefully a dozen green arms, in charming tableau, as the woodland nymphs paused in their work, their curving fingers typifying the warmth of the curling flame behind the finger--the Camp Fire welcome to heart and hearth.

A genial flame which the Guardian--she of the golden maturity--put into winsome words, as she approached.

"Welcome--thrice welcome,--Sisters!" she cried. "We are the White Birch Group of Lenox, at present engaged in protecting our younger brothers, the little trees which we planted ourselves. I am Tanpa--signifying Birch--Guardian of the Group; in everyday life just Myra Seaver."

"And my name is Lorry--Pemrose Lorry--my ceremonial name Wantaam, a Wise Woman." Here the spokeswoman for the two strangers had the grace to blush, remembering the Devil's Chair. "And this--this is my friend, Una Grosvenor, who has just been initiated into 'Camp Fire.' We belong to the Woo-hi-ye--Victory--Group of Clevedon which, you know, is only a hundred miles, or so, from here; and we--"

But Tanpa's face had become suddenly fascinated--illumined--to rival the sunburst upon her breast.

"'Pemrose!'" She echoed the words softly, with transient glow. "How novel--and pretty! But--Lorry! Oh-h! you don't mean to say--you don't tell me--that you're anything to the great inventor, of whom the whole world is talking: the professor who has invented an apparatus to--to travel anywhere through the air, through s.p.a.ce--even to reach the moon?... Ah-h, there she is now! I wonder if she's listening to us!"

It was, indeed, at that moment that Yachune herself, the Silver Queen, showed her placid face above the Pinnacle pines, pale on the rim of the waning sunset. Did she dream of the Earth-valentine in store for her, mild old Mammy Moon?

No knowing! The Pinnacle, the green Pinnacle, towered until it seemed very near to her with the mounting pride in one girl's breast.

"Toandoah, the inventor, is my father--oh! Professor Lorry, I mean. The Thunder Bird--the record-breaking Thunder Bird--is his invention. I call it that; an ordinary rocket he says it is."

Well! the sky was in Pem's eyes, of a truth, now, enough blue to make a Blue Peter, the flag of embarking, the flag of adventure; no rudeness of "nick.u.m", earthbound, boastful, could ever humiliate her again, with Toandoah's emblem in her heart.

Yet, as she felt the Guardian's saluting kiss upon her young forehead, so starred by fate, as she was introduced, one by one, to her sisters of the White Birch Group and was invited, she the center of a flattering fuss, to sit with them by a Pinnacle blaze, instead of being at the pleasant pains to build her own fire, her thoughts would turn back--turn back every now and again, to Jack at a Pinch!

To the quick-witted, surefooted youth, so daring, if so unmannerly--such a chuff--who had not even waited to make the rope fast around his own body before sliding down the rock to the Devil's Chair a second time--and who had, a second time too, climbed, unaided.

But she said nothing of him--or of her recent escapade.

And she was glad that Una didn't!