AN occasional early spring day was making its appearance in the Connecticut valley. Only a few faint spears of green showed on the long, pointed fingers of the willow trees, a bursting of the hardiest buds on the lilac bushes, while the pussy willow was enjoying its usual triumph, the first harbinger of the approaching season.
As a matter of fact, when the Girl Scouts and their Troop Captain set out on their afternoon hike, except to eager and trained eyes winter was still chiefly in evidence.
In out-of-the-way places there were thin layers of ice with the melted water showing beneath. The skies were gray, with rare streaks of blue, the atmosphere had the clear sharpness of recent frost, the wind blew with a definite chillness.
The group of twelve girls and their Captain were on their way to Beechwood Forest, where they had spent the previous summer in camping.
191 “Do you suppose we can manage to stop by the House in the Woods and see Miss Frean? I have not seen her in ages!” Dorothy McClain remarked. “Do you see as much of her as usual, Tory?”
Her companion shook her head.
“No; I don’t believe Memory cares for me as much as she did when we first knew each other. It is difficult to explain. She is as kind and charming as ever, but I have lost the feeling that she wants me with her. Uncle Richard no longer goes to see her. I don’t know what could have happened and he declined to explain. After Memory’s illness in the early winter he used to call on her frequently. I have sometimes wondered if I remind her too much of him. But here I am romancing again! Glad you do not object so seriously as Kara!”
The girls were not walking in drill formation and so were able to talk with one another.
Louise Miller at this moment caught up with her two friends.
“Forgive me if I overheard a part of what you were saying, Tory,” she began, “and forgive me again if I say that I don’t think you ought to have thought or expressed such an opinion. Miss Frean is as fond of you as192 she ever was. There is no question that she has more real affection for you than any other of the Girl Scouts. The other thing you spoke of is her own affair and I don’t feel you should have mentioned it.”
Louise had an abrupt, awkward fashion of speech that at times made her family and friends angry.
Reproachfully Dorothy McClain shook her head at this moment.
Tory had a quick temper. She rarely made unfortunate remarks to other persons, and having beautiful manners under most circumstances, perhaps possessed the right to resent the lack of them in other people.
At this moment she flushed and bit her lips, but made no reply.
“Don’t you think, after all, that what Tory thinks and declares is her own affair and not yours, Ouida? When did you decide to become the censor of our manners?”
Dorothy’s tone held a slight dryness that was a sharper rebuke than irritation, especially as she so rarely criticized the other girl, in spite of their years of intimacy.
“Dorothy is right, I beg your pardon, Tory,” Louise faltered, a slow color making her heavy features less attractive.
193 “The truth is I am so grateful for what Miss Frean has offered to do for me that I am too ready to defend her where I have no shadow of justification.”
“What is Memory going to do for you, Louise?” Tory inquired, having fought and conquered her sudden gust of temper. She was learning more self-control of late, when she had been tried in more than one fashion.
“Perhaps I should not have said what I did, but Dorothy and I have grown so intimate over the problem of Kara’s strange attitude that I tell her most things. I suppose Memory is helping you because she thinks you are specially in need of her help. She has a way of passing herself from one person to the other for this reason.”
Louise hesitated.
“I am one of the most awkward persons in the world, Tory, and you are a dear not to be angry! I overheard what was not intended for me and reproached you for it.
“Yes, I do need Miss Frean’s help. I have not had a happy winter, things at home are becoming more and more difficult. It is just such things as my having made that impolite speech to you without intending or realizing how it might affect you, that makes my mother194 hopeless concerning me. I thought after last summer I would improve.”
“Yes, Ouida, but come to the point. What is Miss Frean to do to help reconcile you to life? Don’t you suppose I appreciate that things have been specially hard for you at home? Perhaps you have not been conscious of the fact, but I have seen less of you this winter than since we were tiny girls. Even old Don noticed the fact and asked me what was the matter,” Dorothy McClain protested.
For just a flashing moment Louise’s heavy features lightened and Tory caught the look of affectionate devotion in the large, pale-gray eyes with their queerly fringed lashes.
“No day has passed without my seeing you, Dorothy, when I have not missed you and longed for you. But I knew you had Tory and the excitement of Lance and Kara. Then mother did not wish me to see so much of you,” Louise added with her fatal tactlessness.
At this it was Dorothy whose color flushed her clear, bright skin. Her gray-blue eyes dropped.
“Sorry your mother thinks I am a bad influence! Perhaps I am! Only, Tory, I trust Miss Victoria and Mr. Fenton will not reach the same conclusion, or I should be deserted indeed.”
195 “Now you are hurting Ouida. Do let’s be sensible and stop arguing. Louise did not mean that her mother considered you an undesirable character, Dorothy. Perhaps she may be just a little jealous of Louise’s affection for you. We are but mortals, all of us, even mothers, I suppose, although Dorothy has no mother and I only a stepmother.” Tory made an amusing grimace. “I would like to recall the fact, Louise, that we still are in the dark with regard to you and Memory Frean. Here, I may as well confess my jealousy. I don’t like Louise being more of a favorite than I am, just as I resented Edith Linder, I suppose.”
“Oh, it is nothing to create envy, hatred, malice or other uncharitableness, Tory,” Louise answered, her serenity restored, and smiling happily. “You would hate what Miss Frean and I are planning to do. I am to be allowed to spend an afternoon each week with her and go on with the studies of the outdoors that I found so thrilling during our summer camp. We are going to study tree-ology and bug-ology and stone-ology. Miss Frean insists she does not know about them, but we can work outdoors together and she will have as much pleasure as I feel. This196 cannot be true, but is a delightful idea. She does not think it absurd for me to wish to become a naturalist. One may have it for a pastime at least! Anyhow, I won’t do what I dislike all the time!”
Half an hour later one would scarcely have believed in the lessening of the affection between Tory Drew and Memory Frean.
The Troop of Scouts and their Captain having halted at the House in the Woods, Miss Frean had been persuaded to join them for the deeper walk into the forest.
The beech woods were full of shadows and little shivery, sighing winds. A few seared leaves that had clung all winter to the otherwise bare branches rattled and shook like castanets. The younger beeches showed a few uncurling leaves and ripples of light along the gray-brown bark of their trunks.
On the ground under the trees were the first spring beauties and wild pale violets.
The girls had scattered into groups and were investigating the favorite haunts of the past summer.
Tory Drew led Miss Frean apart from the others and away from the woods toward the shore of the small lake. Above rose the three pine hills.
197 The girl shrugged her shoulders with a faintly nervous gesture.
“I don’t like the woods to-day for some reason, Memory; they are kind of ghosty and unfriendly. I like shining places filled with light and color.”
The older woman shook her head.
“You are too impressionable, Tory dear! I wish you would not always yield to your fancies.”
In response Tory smiled and dropped her head an instant against her companion’s shoulder with one of her favorite gestures of affection.
“It is nice to hear you scold. I was just telling Dorothy and Louise that you had ceased to care for me as you did in the beginning of our friendship. I have not enjoyed it.”
“You are mistaken, Tory. I care for you perhaps more than ever. Your winter has been more absorbed than you realize in your interest in the strange circumstances concerning Kara and in your concern over Lance McClain. Besides, I thought it best to realize I might be making a mistake if I should become too devoted to one Girl Scout who might any day go away to join her father and her friends and Westhaven see her no more.”
198 There was a gravity in her companion’s voice that startled the girl, who had been only half in earnest.
“Why, I am not going away, Memory! At least I have no ............