Besides these seven girls already described, there was an eighth girl in
the Sunrise camp, the stranger whom Betty had brought home with her on
the day their club had first been discussed--the girl whose face was so
familiar to Mrs. Ashton but whose name was unknown. There had been a
question as to whether or not this particular girl could come to summer
camp, not because the other girls were unwilling to have her, but be se
she worked in a milliner's shop in Woodford and had to go back and forth
to be at work every day. Quite by accident on the eventful afternoon
Betty had stooped by this shop in her journey to Meg's to ask about her
new spring hat, and being so full of her plan had poured it into Edith
Norton's ear, while the little milliner was trying on her hat.
Naturally Edith thought it a wonderful plan, so Betty, with one of her
sudden impulses, immediately insisted that the young milliner come home
with her to become a member of their new Camp Fire club. This seemed at
the time a perfectly impossible dream to Edith, who was a poor girl with
her own living to make, but then she did not understand Betty's ability
to make things happen. Every obstacle had been smoothed away, Edith was
now riding Betty's bicycle back and forth from camp to town every day
and, already the headaches, which had first wakened Betty's sympathy,
because of the pallor of her face and the dark circles under her eyes,
had begun to grow better from the daily fresh air and exercise. Of the
Camp Fire Girls Edith was the oldest; she was about eighteen and had
blonde hair and delicate features, with brown eyes. She might have been
pretty, but that she needed to grow stronger in body and character, and
already the girls and their guardian had discovered that Edith was too
fond of tea and coffee and sweets and modern novels for her own health
or happiness. The trouble was that her home was too filled with small
brothers and sisters and a father and mother too poor to make them
comfortable, so that the eldest daughter had been forced to find her own