The Torch Bearer: A Camp Fire Girls' StoryThurston, I. T. (Ida Treadwell)
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The Torch Bearer: A Camp Fire Girls' Story
Thurston, I. T. (Ida Treadwell)
Camp Fire Girls -- Juvenile fiction
Anne nodded gravely. "I am sure you are right about Olga. It has always
seemed to me that to her 'Wohelo means work' and only that."
"And to Elizabeth it means--or will mean--service and that means,
underneath--love," said Laura, her voice full of deep feeling. "O Anne,
I so _long_ to help that poor child to get some of the beauty and joy
of life into her little neglected soul!"
"If she has love, she has the best thing in life already," Anne
reminded. "The rest will come--in time."
A day or two later Laura found another excuse for asking Elizabeth's
help, and as before, the response was quick, and again Olga's busy
fingers paused as she looked after the two, and quite unconsciously her
dark brows came together in a frown. Elizabeth had gone with scarcely a
glance at her. A week--two weeks earlier, she would have hung back and
refused. Olga shook her head impatiently as she resumed her work, and
wondered why she was dissatisfied with Elizabeth for going so willingly.
Of course she must do what her Guardian asked. Nevertheless----Olga left
it there.
It was an hour before Elizabeth came back, and this time there was in
her face something half shy, half exultant, and she did not say a word
about what Miss Laura had wanted her for. Olga made a mental note of
that, but she was far too proud to make any inquiries.
The next morning after breakfast Elizabeth disappeared again, and this
time too it was fully an hour before she returned, and as before she
came back with a shining something in her eyes--a something that changed
slowly to troubled brooding when Olga did not look at her or speak to
her all the rest of the morning.
When the third day it was the same, Olga faced the situation in stony
silence. She would not ask why Elizabeth went or where, but she silently
resented her going, and Elizabeth, sensitively conscious of her
resentment, after that, slipped away each time with a wistful backward
glance; and when she returned, there was no shining radiance in her
eyes, but only that wistful pleading which Olga coldly ignored. So it
went on day after day. Olga always knew where Elizabeth was except for
that one hour in the morning, which was never mentioned between them.
The other times she was always helping some one--darning stockings for
Louise Johnson--Elizabeth knew how to darn stockings--or helping little
Bessie Carroll hunt for some of her belongings, which she was always
losing, or helping Katie the cook, who declared that nobody in camp
could pare potatoes and apples, or peel tomatoes or pick over berries so
fast as the Poor Thing. There was not a day now that some one did not
call on Elizabeth for something like this, for the girls had found out
that she was always willing. She seemed to take it quite as a matter of
course that she should be at the service of everybody. But Laura noted
the fact that she never asked anybody to help her.
Then came a night when Mrs. Royall detained the girls for a moment after
supper in the dining-room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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