"We were so busy today that we didn't get time to say much."
"Well, I am glad to be able to tell you good news," said the little Captain cheerily. "It will be so much off your mind to be able to go to sleep tonight and be sure that things are working out right. I think you are so brave, Mabel. I never would have the courage to do what you are doing, even though I am quite grown up. And you are really only a little girl in years."
"But I feel old in experience," sighed Mabel. She thought she heard a soft giggle at the other end of the wire, but at once Mrs. Horton coughed rather loudly and Mabel knew she was mistaken.
"That makes such a difference," said the Captain. "For my part, I am a _perfect goose_. I would be so lonesome and afraid there where you are, and I would rather do any amount of mending and dishes rather than go down and work in a stuffy newspaper office and beg a lot of women for items about their silly affairs. Yes, you are really very brave. You must call me once in awhile and let me know how you are progressing. And you need not come to the Scout meetings for awhile if you are busy. I will excuse you. I will explain to the girls just what you are doing to help them all. Good-night! Oh, your mother said for me to tell you good-night for her too as she was rushing off to the theatre, so there are two good-nights for you, Mabel dear. Good luck, and I hope you will find time to ask me over to tea with you some afternoon."
"Indeed I will!" said Mabel. "Good-night!"
She turned from the receiver. Suddenly she felt very small and young, and the pretty rooms were stiller than the rooms at home somehow.
The subject for a poem flashed into her mind. And quick as a wink she made up the first verse
"Alone, alone, the world before me.
What is this I leave behind?
Happiness and heat and mother; All to train my wondrous mind."
Somehow _heat_ did not sound very poetical, but the apartment was certainly freezing cold.
CHAPTER VI
While eating a not too satisfactory supper on the corner of the kitchen table, Mabel was blissfully unaware of the fact that her venture into the world was being discussed at two dinner tables at least.
Rosanna, filled with misgivings, had repeated all that Mabel had said and she was distressed to see that Uncle Bob regarded it as a good joke, while his wife, the little Scout Captain, was convinced that the outcome would be exactly what she desired. And when Rosanna asked what that was, she laughed and said, "Wait and see."
Claire Maslin, telling her father about it, was met with shouts of laughter.
"The girl is crazy!" he merely said. "That fat little Brewster girl that ate so much candy here the other day? She will be sick of her bargain soon."
"I would like it myself," said Claire sullenly. "She can do exactly as she pleases. I wish _I_ could."
"My poor little girl," said Colonel Maslin, "that is all in the world that ails you! I can run a regiment, but I don't seem able to run one girl. I wish you would try to see, my dear, that you are a lucky, very lucky young person, and act accordingly."
"_Lucky?_" said Claire bitterly. "You call _me_ lucky? Oh, it is not your fault, daddy! I am as sorry for you as I am for myself, but it is so funny to hear you use that word."
"Well, I call _myself_ lucky," said Colonel Maslin, staring at the flowers that decorated the table.
"Do you? Why?" demanded Claire, her lip curling. She too stared at the flowers. She would not look at her father.
"I have your dear mother and I have you," he said after a long pause.
"I _am_ a comfort to you, I am sure," she said in low, tense tone, "and mother must be a comfort too. You would be glad if we both--"
"Stop!" said Colonel Maslin sharply. "You remember you are never to speak unkindly of your poor mother. You are wrong, all wrong, and I would give my right hand if I could set you right, if I could make you understand what is honestly in my heart. When you are older you will perhaps understand."
"When I am older!" cried Claire. "When I am older--" She sat staring at her father, rigid and pale, then suddenly all her self-control deserted her. She leaned forward, burst into a storm of sobs, and pounded furiously on the table. Her voice tore out in a shrill scream. "When I am older--_you_ know what I will be then!" she panted, and her sobs rose higher.
With a muttered exclamation Colonel Maslin rose from the table, dashed to his daughter's side, lifted her in his arms, and as though she was still a little child he carried her to her room and laid her struggling and writhing, on her bed. Her maid entered hurriedly.
"Take care of her," he begged, and left the room.
An hour later he sat in little Mrs. Horton's own sitting-room and talked while she watched him with eyes made soft by unshed tears of sympathy.
"It is the first time I have asked for help," he said brokenly after awhile, and she sighed to see the gallant soldier bowed by grief. "But I have pinned my hope on the Girl Scouts, and now that I know you, on you.
Save my little girl for me, dear lady, save her for her mother's sake! I need Claire so! And her coldness, her wild fits of temper, and her gloomy black moods are so unlike the sunny little tot she used to be that there are times when it seems as though I could never bear it. Is it always to be so, Mrs. Horton?"
"No!" cried the tiny Captain in quite a fierce voice. "_No indeed!_ Something shall be done to help you. Claire has just made a wrong start, and her terrible sorrow, instead of making her more loving and more tender, has made her cold and hard. Don't worry, Colonel Maslin.
Something shall be done."
Colonel Maslin shook his head. "I have about given up hope," he said sadly. "These fits of excitement are growing on her. At first I thought that they were plain temper, but it is not possible. Why, Claire is in her teens, and her whole life has been a lesson in self-control! Our Chinaman is a living sermon on it. And she has been guarded against anything nerve racking or exciting or disagreeable."
"Let me think it over for a little," said Mrs. Horton, wrinkling her smooth brow. "I will find some way of reaching the poor child, I am sure. It may take a little time. Urge her to come to the Girl Scout meetings and I will watch her."
"You are more than good," and the Colonel bowed over the tiny hand that had met his in a firm, comforting grip.
She shook her head and said, "The Scouts themselves, one of them or all, will do it, I feel positive. That is one thing the Order is for, you know; to help one another."
"I trust you," said Colonel Maslin.
"Treat her as though nothing has happened this evening," suggested Mrs.
Horton.
"I shall not see her again tonight. By the time I reach home (I shall have to drive up to Camp from here) she will be asleep. In the morning nothing will be said. Claire will simply be a little more sullen and aloof."
"Be of good cheer," smiled the little Captain, and Colonel Maslin went on his lonely and sorrowful way wondering if the little lady could really find a way to help his poor child.
In her own soft, luxurious bed, Claire was lying spent and shaken by the storm she had just passed through. She tried to recall the talk at the dinner table, but in her dazed condition she could not remember anything that should have started such a dreadful scene. As she recalled her own actions, the cries and sobs, the tears and wild words, she shuddered. Each time she gave way like that seemed to be worse than the last. And Claire was proud. It shamed her to have her own father see her acting so, yet some dreadful Something within her seemed to make her explode in that way once in awhile. And the times were growing closer and closer. No matter what happened, even the greatest pleasures that her father planned for her filled her with a sort of hard anger. She hated everything and everybody. All she wanted was to be let alone, and then she read book after book until she was dull and dizzy. Then came long, sleepy rides in the limousine over smooth, uneventful roads.
When at length her maid brought her a glass of hot milk, she did not know that there was a sleeping powder in it, but sleep came quickly and mercifully and she did not waken until late the following morning.
A note was on the chair by her bedside, just the usual affectionate greeting from her father, a pretty little custom of his whenever he was obliged to leave before she was awake. No matter how hurried, he always took time to write a line or two before he left. Any other girl would have been so proud and pleased with his unfailing tenderness and attention, but Claire wrapped herself round with coldness and accepted all he did for her without even the thanks she would have offered to a stranger.
She even hesitated to read the short, loving note. It bored her, she told herself. But she opened it idly and skimmed the words that told her that she must spend an easy day because he had planned a little surprise for Rosanna and Mabel and herself. Claire lifted her eyebrows. She had forgotten to tell her father that Mabel bored her to death. Rosanna was not quite so bad; in fact, she really liked the pretty, dark-eyed girl who seemed so warm-hearted and so sincere. Then with scarcely a thought of curiosity as to the nature of the surprise, she touched the bell that summoned the maid with her breakfast, and idly picking up a copy of the Handbook for Girl Scouts, commenced to read.
"A Girl Scout is loyal," she read, "to the President, to her country, and to her officers; to her father, to her mother--"
Claire stopped there, at least something stopped her. She read the words repeatedly, "Loyal to her father." What was loyalty anyway? She read on: "She remains true to them through thick and thin. In the face of the greatest difficulties and calamities, her loyalty must remain untarnished."
Claire frowned. _She_ was faced with terrific difficulties, while a frightful calamity, like a black cloud, darkened all her future. What did loyalty to her father mean in her case? She read on: "A Girl Scout is cheerful under all circumstances." Claire thought of her wild ravings the night before, and frowned. She skipped down the page to a short paragraph that her eyes seemed unable to avoid.
"Kipling in _Kim_ says that there are two kinds of women,--one kind that builds men up, and the other that pulls men down; and there is no doubt as to where a Girl Scout should stand."
Now Claire in her most selfish moods could not blind herself to the fact that her violent scenes were always followed by days of deep mournfulness on the part of her father. Lines appeared in his handsome face and his hair seemed to grow grayer. Was she pulling her father down? She refused to answer the question, and flirted the pages over to escape that part. She scanned the qualifications for the three grades of Girl Scouts. She was only a Second-Class Scout, and she knew that she was a poor one at that. She had been too indolent to try for the First Class. She read the necessary qualifications over.
She could not set a table for any meal, and she could not sew. She had never tried to walk a mile in twenty minutes, and as for dressing or bathing a child, Claire wondered where she could borrow one to try on.