Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin

the next morning, but came back in two days for their week’s visit. The boys like Scott very much; he falls right into the camp ways, and doesn’t disturb the even current of our life; and Anne, who is a sweet little girl of twelve, has quite taken Dicky under her wing, much to our relief.

      With Laura’s advent, however, a change came over the spirit of our dreams, and, to tell the truth, we are not over and above pleased with it. By the way, she spent last summer at the hotel, and you must have seen her, did you not? Anyway, Mrs. Burton and Aunt Truth were old school friends, and Bell has known Laura for two years, but they will never follow in their mothers’ footsteps. Laura is so different from her mother that I should never think they were relations; and she has managed to change all our arrangements in some mysterious way which we can’t understand. I get on very well with her; she positively showers favours upon me, and I more than half suspect it is because she thinks I don’t amount to much. As for the others, she rubs Polly the wrong way, and I believe she is a little bit jealous of Bell.

      You see, she is several months older than the rest of us, and has spent two winters in San Francisco, where she went out a great deal to parties and theatres, so that her ideas are entirely different from ours.

      She wants every single bit of attention—one boy to help her over the brooks, one to cut walking-sticks for her, another to peel her oranges, and another to read Spanish with her, and so on. Now, you know very well that she will never get all this so long as Bell Winship is in camp, for the boys think that Bell drags up the sun when she’s ready for him in the morning, and pushes him down at night when she happens to feel sleepy.

      We, who have known Bell always, cannot realise that any one can help loving her, but there is something in Laura which makes it impossible for her to see the right side of people. She told me this morning that she thought Bell had grown so vain and airy and self-conscious that it was painful to see her. I could not help being hurt; for you know what Bell is—brimful of nonsense and sparkle and bright speeches, but just as open as the day and as warm as the sunshine. If she could have been spoiled, we should have turned her head long ago; but she hasn’t a bit of silly vanity, and I never met any one before who didn’t see the pretty charm of her brightness and goodness—did you?

      And yet, somehow, Laura sticks needles into her every time she speaks. She feels them, too, but it only makes her quiet, for she is too proud and sensitive to resent it. I can see that she is different in her ways, as if she felt she was being criticised. Polly is quite the reverse. If anybody hurts her feelings she makes creation scream, and I admire her courage.

      Aunt Truth doesn’t know anything about all this, for Laura is a different girl when she is with her or Dr. Paul; not that she is deceitful, but that she is honestly anxious for their good opinion. You remember Aunt Truth’s hobby that we should never defend ourselves by attacking any one else, and none of us would ever complain, if we were hung, drawn, and quartered.

      Laura was miffed at having to play Audrey, but we didn’t know that she could come until the last moment, and we were going to leave that part out.

      ‘I don’t believe you appreciate my generosity in taking this thankless part,’ she said to Bell, when we were rehearsing. ‘Nobody would ever catch you playing second fiddle, my dear. All leading parts reserved for Miss Winship, by order of the authors, I suppose.’

      ‘Indeed, Laura,’ Bell said, ‘if we had known you were coming we would have offered you the best part, but I only took Rosalind because I knew the lines, and the girls insisted.’

      ‘You’ve trained the girls well—hasn’t she, Geoffrey?’ asked Laura, with a queer kind of laugh.

      But I will leave the unpleasant subject. I should not have spoken of it at all except that she has made me so uncomfortable to-day that it is fresh in my mind. Bell and Polly and I have talked the matter all over, and are going to try and make her like us, whether she wants to or not. We have agreed to be just as polite and generous as we possibly can, and see if she won’t ‘come round,’ for she is perfectly delighted with the camp, and wants to stay a month.

      Polly says she is going to sing ‘Home Sweet Home’ to her every night, and drop double doses of the homoeopathic cure for home-sickness into her tea, with a view of creating the disease.

      Good-bye, and a hundred kisses from your loving

      Margery Daw.

V. The Camp Poetess Adds Her Store of Mental Riches to the General Fund

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      My darling,—I have a thousand things to tell you, but I cannot possibly say them in rhyme, merely because the committee insists upon it. I send you herewith all the poetry which has been written in camp since last Monday, and it has been a very prosy week.

      I have given them to papa, and he says that the best of my own, which are all bad enough, is the following hammock-song.

      I thought it out while I was swinging Margery, and here it is!—

      To—fro,

       Dreamily, slow,

       Under the trees;

       Swing—swing,

       Drowsily sing

       The birds and the bees;

       Sleep—rest,

       Slumber is best,

       Wakefulness sad;

       Rest—sleep,

       Forget how to weep,

       Dream and be glad!

      Papa says it is all nonsense to say that slumber is best and wakefulness sad; and that it is possible to tell the truth in poetry. Perhaps it is, but why don’t they do it oftener, then? And how was he to know that Polly and Jack had just gone through a terrible battle of words in which I was peacemaker, and that Dicky had been as naughty as—Nero—all day? These two circumstances made me look at the world through blue glasses, and that is always the time one longs to write poetry.

      I send you also Geoff’s verses, written to mamma, and slipped into the box when we were playing Machine Poetry:—

      I know a woman fair and calm,

       Whose shining tender eyes

       Make, when I meet their earnest gaze,

       Sweet thoughts within me rise.

      And if all silver were her hair,

       Or faded were her face,

       She would not look to me less fair,

       Nor lack a single grace.

      And if I were a little child,

       With childhood’s timid trust,

       I think my heart would fly to her,

       And love—because it must!

      And if I were an earnest man,

       With empty heart and life,

       I think—(but I might change my mind)—

       She’d be my chosen wife!

      Isn’t that pretty? Oh, Elsie! I hope I shall grow old as beautifully as mamma does, so that people can write poetry to me if they feel like it! Here is Jack’s, for Polly’s birthday; he says he got the idea from a real poem which is just as silly as his:—

      A pollywog from a wayside brook

       Is a goodly gift for thee;

       But a milk-white steed, or a venison sheep,

       Will do very well for me.

      For you a quivering asphodel

       (Two ducks and a good fat hen),

       For me a withering hollyhock

       (For seven and three are ten!).

      Rose-red locks