The girl’s brown eyes with their curiously golden depth were wide open at this moment. “I really never could like any one except an American, Dan. I did not dream until I was in Europe how much I cared for my own country.” Dan did not appear as pleased by this speech as might have been expected. “There are more than a hundred million Americans, Sally, and I presume about ten million young men. Is it your idea that you care for them all alike because they are Americans?” “Not alike,” Sally returned. “But about Mary Gilchrist?” Dan flushed and looked as if he wished to make an angry retort. Then the sight of Sally sitting warm and safe and sweet before the open fire and the memory of the hours he had tramped the frozen earth hoping and yet dreading to discover her, softened him. “About Mary Gilchrist you know there is nothing to say, Sally, know it fully as well as I. The other afternoon she needed some one to help with the toboggan. I was accustomed to the sport and fond of it and knew how to run things when the other fellows did not. To have remained with you, which I would prefer to have done, was to have affected everybody’s pleasure. If that is the reason why you started home alone, I think you were pretty hard on us all.” To make a confession of a mistake was more difficult for Sally than for a more impetuous temperament, yet she answered with an air of unexpected penitence. “I _am_ sorry, Dan. I was angry and piqued and jealous perhaps. So I suppose I deserved what happened to me, yet it was not fair to make mother and father and Tante and the others and you, Dan, uneasy.” “Uneasy, well that is scarcely the proper word, Sally. I have never been more wretched in my life. I knew if I did not find you and if all was not well with you I should never have another happy moment.” Dan spoke simply but with such complete sincerity that Sally made a little movement and saw his hand reach out as if he wished to touch her soft hair. Then the door opened and Mrs. Burton, the Camp Fire guardian, with her sister, Mrs. Webster, came into the living-room. They were twin sisters, at one time Polly and Mollie O’Neill, and among the original group of Camp Fire girls. They had resembled each other in the past, but the years and difference in temperament and experience at present made the likeness less apparent. Mrs. Webster had grown plump, there were lines of gray in her dark hair, her checks were bright and freshly colored. She had a look of gentle and dignified maturity. Save for the death of her son, Billy Webster,[5] her life had been one of happiness and fulfilment, devoted to her husband and her two children, Dan Webster and Peggy, and to her gifted sister, Polly O’Neill Burton, in the brief periods when they were able to be together. In fact, she looked ten years the elder; the other woman’s slender figure, her dark hair and brilliant eyes, her vividness held no suggestion of age.