The Polly Page camping club

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Admiral’s Secret 7

II A Guidepost of Fate 16

Chapter I

At the top of the stairs Polly paused, buttoning her sweater, her head on one side like a meditative bird. There was some mystery in the air, and she couldn’t get even a hint of it.

The Admiral had been unusually genial at luncheon, but several times Polly had caught him exchanging long knowing glances with Mrs. Langdon, whereupon Aunt Evelyn had started making what Lillie Anna would have called “surreptitious and cursory remarks.”

It was something they were trying to keep a secret from her, of that much Polly felt certain. Even now she could hear them talking softly together in the study, and nobody ever disturbed the Admiral’s afternoon nap there unless a serious conference was necessary.

“The blessed darlings,” thought Polly comfortably. “They’re hatching something and are afraid that I’ll find them out.” She leaned over the polished balustrade and gave a warning cough just to let them know that she was coming down.

Instantly there was silence in the study, guilty silence. Mrs. Langdon stepped into the lower hall as Polly came down.

“I thought you had gone, Polly.”

“ J ust going now. The train won’t be in until 2.15. Did you or grandfather want me?”

Better give them a chance to tell her, Polly thought magnanimously. She watched Mrs. Langdon as the latter bent over the white lilacs in their tall lavendar vase. It seemed that Aunt Evelyn made pictures in everything she did, she was so graceful.

“You will meet the other girls at the station? ”

“Some of them. Only the committee is allowed to be there to meet Kate. Don’t you want to come too, Auntie? ”

“No, child, thank you. Bun along.”

Polly went, as she told herself, philosophically. That was one element which she had acquired during her last year at Calvert Hall, philosophy. Nearly all of the seniors acquired it before spring, Sue Warner said, but it usually wore off by the end of May. This was only April, so Polly’s still clung to her and it made her very patient and considerate in her dealings with the Admiral and Aunt Evelyn. It appeared that no matter how tall you grew or how old you were, you never even approached the grown-up stage to those nearest and dearest to you.

The railway station at Queen’s Ferry looked like a bungalow, it was so low and quaint, built of gray field stone with ivy covered walls and mullioned windows. It seemed to convey its own particular greeting to all travelers who were fortunate enough to leave the train here. On the circular patch of green grass a pattern of flowers, begonias, pansies and mignonette, in summer time spelled out the words “Queen’s Ferry.” Polly wished they said something personal instead, like “Welcome Home.” They always seemed to say it to her whenever she went away on any jaunt and returned.

Waiting today on the platform was the reception committee, appointed specially by the Senior Class of Calvert Hall to meet Kate

Julian. It hardly seemed three years since Kate had been chaperon and “ship’s husband” of the merry yacht club at Lost Island. She had graduated that June, and had taken up her hospital training in New York the following fall.

“Dear old Kate,” Sue bubbled over the instant she saw Polly. “The train’s almost due. I suppose we really should have a speech of welcome or something formal, shouldn’t we, Polly?”

“Not for Kate. If it were Isabel here, we’d have a band and a flower twined carriage and a speech of welcome on parchment, wouldn’t we, Isabel?”

“Maybe you will yet,” said Isabel happily, tucking her arm in Polly’s. The girls laughed, for she was still the same Lady Vanitas, always fond of ceremonials, or, as Crullers put it, “the pumps and vanities of this mortal life.”

Pour members of the Senior Class, the four that Kate had known best, had been appointed as a committee of welcome — Polly Page, Isabel Lee, Sue Warner, and Ted Moore, for although she was growing up, no one but Miss Calvert ever called Edwina anything except “Ted.” Back in the old days when they had been Freshmen, Kate had been their favorite in the Senior class, and had chaperoned them and mothered them generally.

“Guided our wayward footsteps and taught us how to tame a chafing dish,” Polly had said once.

So now they waited to greet her on her first return to Queen’s Ferry since her marriage to Doctor Elliott. Besides the four class-mates, there was Ruth Brooks. There had been some argument over her admittance to the committee, since she had left Calvert the previous year, but Polly insisted that, even if you were unfortunate enough to leave before all the other members of the Vacation Club, that was no reason why you should not be an honorary member of the alumnae for life.

Peggie and Natalie were disqualified for admission and so were Hallie and “Crullers,” not through any special iron-clad rule of order, but because they represented the younger crowd. Two new members had been added to the Vacation Club nearly every year to take the places of those who had gone the way of honorable Seniors. This last time the additions had been the Morris girls, Vera and Betty, whom Polly and her crew had met on the motor trip and Marjorie Lawrence.

“Don’t you begin to feel old, girls?” asked Isabel. “It seems years and years since we started school at Calvert.”

“No, I don’t,” Polly returned flatly. “And I’m never going to let myself feel old, not when I’m ninety-two, and going around with a gold headed cane and a lace cap with a pink bow. I love pink. I do hope Kate will be just the same, and not have grown settled and dignified.”

“She’ll have to be dignified if she’s a doctor’s wife,” Ruth declared. “And, besides, she had two years of training before she was married. Nurses are always rather settled in their ways. I suppose they get so used to having people mind them.”

“Wasn’t it odd for her to marry the doctor who gave her her very first case?” Ted said. “The idea of studying for two years towards your heart’s desire, then switching off and just getting married.”

“But that was Kate’s heart’s desire, Ted. Doctor Elliott had been on the house staff at the same hospital where she took her training. I forget which one it was now, but they got a lot of the poor cases there, and he had charge of the children’s clinic. Then after she had finished her course, she went out as a visiting nurse from one of the settlement houses, and she met him in that work too. I know Kate keeps up her work even better now than she could have if she hadn’t married him for their tastes are similar, and their aims too. They’re both in Child Welfare work now in New York.”

Ruth paused. It was a long speech for “Grandma” to make, and she flushed over it. Kate had corresponded with her ever since leaving Queen’s Ferry, and Ruth had envied her her chance to get in touch with actual conditions in the great centre of human life and endeavor. For Ruth, life had narrowed down to remaining at home with an invalid mother, and trying to fit her ambitions and longings to the measure of daily duties.

“Oh, but it’s so wonderful, girls,” Isabel exclaimed. “Real love is made up of sacrifice. Think if she had been like some girls, and had insisted on his giving up that work and going in for a good practice that would pay.”

“I don’t think Kate would look on it as sacrifice, though. They’re just pulling together in the work they both love,” said Sue.

Polly nodded happily over at Sue, who always took an argument seriously. Polly hardly ever did. As she said, arguing made wrinkles and tied your brain up in knots, so what was the use ? If the other fellow wanted to think differently from the way you did, let him. Anyway, it added interest and diversion to the world to have varying opinions.

“I wonder,” Sue added gloomily,” if some day Peggie and the other youngsters will be coming down here to welcome some of us home. I hate to leave school and start growing up.”

“I don’t, do you, Polly? I think it’s glorious to go forth into life’s battle and feel one’s self expanding, and expanding — ”

‘‘Isabel’s either planning to be a dirigible or one of those cannon balls that spreads itself all over creation,” Ted commented. “If there’s going to be any expanding, the Club does it altogether. United we stand, expanded we blow up.”

Polly had to laugh with the rest. Hands deep in her sweater pockets, she stood where she could watch the perspective of track leading north towards Washington. She was trying to think of two things at the same time, what the girls were saying and what it was the Admiral and

Aunt Evelyn could be planning. It was useless to imagine they were not in some secret together. Polly knew the signs. And Queen’s Ferry did not admit of much variety in the way of surprises. It could not be anything about Calvert Hall. The Easter Vacation of two weeks began on Monday. She had planned to devote that time to settling with the other girls all the plans for the summer vacation.

Up the shore came the long whistle of the train bound south from Washington. Ted and Sue slid off the baggage truck they had been ornamenting, as the station agent came leisurely forward.

“Plenty time, plenty time,” he told them. “Did you know the Admiral’s driving down along the road yonder, Miss Polly?”

“Grandfather!” exclaimed Polly in surprise. “Oh, are you sure, Andy? He can’t be coming down to meet Kate or the Doctor, so it must be somebody else. I just knew he had a secret from me.”

“Well, you’ll know it in a minute,” Ted said. “There she comes.”

Chapter II

The Admiral beamed smilingly as he stepped from the carriage and came down the platform towards the group of waiting girls.

“I’m a reception committee all by myself,” he told them. Polly slipped her arm through his, and began to coax, but he was immovable this time. “No, matey. You let me alone, and just go ahead and welcome Kate and her Doctor boy.”

“Please tell,” begged Polly. “It’s some one else who’s coming, isn’t it?”

“There’s Kate!” called Sue, waving frantically at one of the car platforms, and dancing up and down until Ted’s hand gripped and held her steady.

“Nice way for a Senior to be acting. Bow sedately, Susan, and mind j^ou keep your feet on the ground.”

For the moment Polly deserted the Admiral and assembled her committee of welcome for the returned wanderer. Kate’s face had brightened with happiness at sight of the old-time school-mates, and she stretched out both hands to them as the train drew to a standstill. Beside her was her husband, Doctor Elliott, and the girls approved her choice at first glimpse of him. He was about twenty-six, rather short in stature and stockily built, with thickly curling blonde hair, and blue eyes that half closed when he smiled. Only his rimless eyeglasses conveyed a professional air, although, as Ted said afterwards, just why rimless eyeglasses should make a person look as if he had just won a degree was more than she could say.

“You precious old crowd, come here and say hello,” cried Kate, stepping down among them. “Here they are. Bob,” she called, turning to the Doctor. “Polly with the brown eyes, and Grandma here beside me. She is Ruth, you know. And the terrible soul twins, Sue and Ted, and Lady Vanitas. Where’s Crullers, Isabel?”

“Disqualified for serving on the committee,” said Isabel. “Peggie and Natalie and Hallie and she couldn’t come, hut we’re letting them make walnut fudge for you. You always loved it, remember?”

“She does yet,” smiled the Doctor.

“Oh, Kitty Katherine, how good you do look — ” Polly stopped short. Two hands shut her eyes, and a voice told her to guess who it was.

“Caught you napping this trip, lady bird,” the Admiral said merrily. “Give you a dollar this minute if you can guess right.”

“Only one guess?” asked Polly, laughing.

“No, keep along until you get it.”

So she tried. It was none of the girls, of that she felt sure. They all were accounted for. And it was somebody who had come down from Washington. Senator Yates’s family was down at White Chimneys in tidewater land, so it could not be any of them. Penelope had returned to New York after the motor trip the previous year, and Cary Dinwiddie was too busy getting ready for her marriage with Marbury Yates to make any flying trips to Queen’s Ferry.

“Is it Aunt Faith?” she asked, but when she was turned around and kissed, it was not Aunt Faith at all, but Aunt Millicent from New York. As Polly said, it was simply wonderful to have three such aunts, just like having three fairy godmothers.

“Oh, how she has grown,” Aunt Millicent exclaimed, the tears rising and sparkling in her pretty dark eyes as she looked at Polly. “Sixteen, aren’t you, Polly?”

Ruth came over from the group of girls around Kate, and laid one hand on Polly’s shoulder.

“Go on if you like. We’ll take care of the Doctor and Kate now.”

But Polly insisted on performing all the introductions. Flushed and happy over the surprise, she wanted Mrs. Abbott to know each one of the school-mates who had grown so dear to her during the four years at Calvert.

“Bless me, I know them all as it is,” exclaimed Aunt Milly, who was like the Admiral, plump and full of happiness. “Didn’t I get all the snapshots you sent me from last year’s trip, and I managed to pick each one out, too, just from Polly’s descriptions. Where are you going this year, girls?”

“Oh, we haven’t decided that yet,” Ted answered for the others, but Sue helped her with details as usual,

“It’s going to be a camp somewhere.”

“Better come with us,” Kate said. “Doctor is to take charge this year of one of the city welfare camps in the mountains for children and mothers. That would be real work for you all.”

“Where do you expect to go?” asked Mrs. Abbott. “You know I really feel like doing missionary work whenever I hear anyone speak of camping out. The last two years we have found such a beautiful place, and I want to tell about it.”

“Tell it later, Milly,” advised the Admiral. “If you once get these girls started talking vacations, you’ll never get away. They have been provisioning and coaling up for their next cruise for the last six months, and still nobody knows what port they’re heading for.”

“We’ll see you soon again, Kate,” called Polly, as she followed in the wake of the Admiral to the carriage where waited Balaam. All smiles and bows, he sat up on the high seat, his old blue broadcloth coat brushed until it was speckless, and every button freshly polished in honor of “Miss Milly’s” home-coming.

She tenderly reached up her hand to the old man. Balaam was a treasured part of Glenwood and all its childhood memories, and now that Aunty Welcome had passed away, he was the oldest of the servants, older even than Aunt Mandy or Uncle Peter.

“Land, chile, land! Gord bless yo’ soul,” he said unsteadily, taking off his high silk hat with a trembling hand. “If Ah ain’t jes’ glad ter see yer. Held yo’ in mah arms when yo’ was five hours old. Yes, Ah did. Welcome, she cum ’long de lower hall, and she say, ‘Balaam,’ she say, ‘what yo’ guess Ah got hyar?’ ‘Bundle,’ says I. ‘Bundle! Pouf,’ ses she. ‘Most precious prize package yo’ evah see, man.’ Den she show me, an she let me hole yo’ in mah arms fo’ jes’ a lil minute while Ah ses a prayer.”

“I know you did, Balaam,” Mrs. Abbott responded, her face all glowing with smiles. “It is so good to get back home again, and be beloved.”

“It’s the prettiest time of the year with all the roses in bloom,” Polly said. “I wish Uncle Thurlow and the boys could have come too.”

“They don’t seem much like boys any more. Phil is studying architecture. He has always been a builder in his dreams of the future, you know. Jack has gone in for real estate; very prosaic, but he is thoroughly modern. He tells Phil he may improve the land after he has sold it. They are both of them dear boys. We’ll miss them this year when we go up to the castle. It’s the first time they have been left behind in the city, but they will come up for two weeks of vacation any way.”

“Castle?” repeated the Admiral. “Aren’t you progressing rather rapidly, Milly? Is it an air castle of Phil’s or has Thurlow adopted an ancestral home?”

“Dear me, no, father,” laughed Mrs. Abbott. “Don’t you dare to laugh at me. Polly, I wonder you don’t train him better. It’s not an ancestral home at all. It’s a big gray stone place with a tower on it way up in the mountains. An artist friend of Thurlow’s built it for himself and wandered away to some corner of the earth. I think he went on an assignment from one of the magazines, but any way he disappeared, and we heard of this lovely place, so Thurlow took it for three summers. It’s near Montalban in northern New York, up in the Helderberg range.”

“I never heard of them before,” Polly put in, interestedly, as the carriage rolled along the roads leading towards Glen wood. “Where are they. Auntie? Sounds like ancient Germany. Casties and black knights and kobolds tumblingdown chimneys. ,,

“Well, you’d find plenty of mysteries and stories up there if you went. They lie between the Catskills and the rise of the Adirondacks. We’ve never tried camping there, but I should think it would he delightful. There is good water and plenty of wood, and you have several villages wdthin walking distance.”

“Are there any people right near by? We did want to get out where it was really wild.”

“It’s wild enough. You don’t want to be isolated. In case of a sprained ankle or any illness, you’d be glad enough to be able to send three and a half miles down the mountain for a real doctor. But around the castle there are only a few old farms, and some cottages built by people who have come and gone for years, — artists, most of them. I tell Thurlow if I didn’t have one in my own family, I would get tired of seeing them around sketching.”

The Admiral chuckled. Nobody knew better than he how proud Milly was of her tall artist husband. But Polly listened with wide eyes of speculation.

“It sounds splendid. You know, Auntie, we girls are only waiting for a place to light on, and this wouldn’t be so very far away. Just from here to Washington, then on to New York. Could we go up the Hudson to Albany from there, and so over to wherever it is?”

“Yes. Straight up from Albany to Montalban. There is a mountain lake too where you can alL swim and have canoes. You’d love it, Polly. One artist girl came up from New York last year with two friends and a dog, and they had a regular gypsy wagon and a tent. They had touched at all the nicest places along the road up from New York and finally chose our corner of the mountains as the best place to settle down in for the rest of the summer.”

Polly slipped her arm around the shoulder nearest her.

“I always believe in following guideposts of fate,” she said, with a little sigh of relief. “You don’t know how I’ve had those girls on my mind and been wondering about the best place to camp. You make a lovely guidepost, Aunt Milly.”

“Do I?” laughed Aunt Milly. “Well, we can talk more about it after I get you to New York. Did they tell you you were going back with me for a week?”

“Not a single word,” Polly declared. “That must have been their secret besides your coming today. Why, they’ve been just like a couple of children at Christmas time, Auntie, planning and whispering, and thinking all the time that I didn’t know what they were up to.”

“Do you think you want to, lady bird?” asked the Admiral.

“Want to go?” Polly repeated. “Doesn’t he ask the foolishest questions? That’s what Aunty Welcome always said. I’m just crazy to go. I want to find out what you eat and wear and do when you’re camping.”

“I can tell you,” said the Admiral. “You just fold back the curtains of the past, and step forth into the forests as near like primaeval man as you can get in these days. Forget the towns, and let all the clocks run down, and leave behind all calendars. Upon my word, Millicent, I believe I’d like to do it myself. Haven’t camped out since I was a boy.”

“We leave behind too much fun just as soon as we think we’re getting grown-up,” replied Mrs. Abbott. “I don’t believe in letting these youngsters have all the joy of spring and youth. Phil and Jack are much more serious and dignified than their father and me. I think you’d love it, Father.”

“But there you are,” Polly said helplessly. “We want to get ’way off by ourselves, and here you’ll make it a regular family settlement. Suppose you take one mountain and we’ll take one, and you can wigwag at us when you feel lonesome or anxious.”

“I think the first wigwag would come from the campers to the castle,” Aunt Milly laughed. “Oh,” she drew in a deep breath as Glenwood came into view; “how good it is to get home again !”

Chapter III

rate’s doctor bob

Kate had said they planned to stay about a week at Oakleigh, the old Julian place down on the Bay shore.

The following day Polly saw her and the Doctor both at church, and smiled over at them from the old square Page pew. Tradition told how years before there had been one portly old ancestor of Polly’s called “King” Page. He had ruled over Glenwood many years and had stood at the head of affairs in Queen’s Ferry after the War of 1812.

Polly had often heard Welcome tell about the old “King,” of his temper and his pride, and how his wonderful collars came up on each side of his face, and stood out in long stiff points. During sermon time he would fall asleep in the big pew, and old Dr. Philipps, who had been rector then, would turn towards him half unconsciously and preach a little louder and with increased emphasis until he had stirred “King” Page out of his Sunday dreams.

Polly dearly loved the old stone church. There were not many pews in it, and a gallery encircled three sides. Outside the gray walls were covered with Virginia creeper, and there was an old churchyard in English fashion with clipped box hedge-rows around the burial plots, and flat marble tombstones as well as slate and granite ones. Today, when service was over, Mrs. Langdon and her sister lingered to greet old friends of Millicent’s, and Polly went over to where Kate had been showing the Doctor several historic stones.

“Can’t you drive over to Oakleigh this afternoon, Polly?” she asked. “I’ve asked the girls over for tea. We don’t expect to stay very long and I want to talk over your summer plans with you. Perhaps we can help each other. Where do you expect to go?”

“We don’t know yet. Aunt Milly is anxious for us to try the place up in the Helderberg Mountains where she has gone for two summers. You see, that wouldn’t be far from New York and the expense would be light because we could travel nearly all the way by boat.”

“Dear me,” sighed Kate, “I do wish we could find a suitable place where the expense would be light.”

“Are you going to camp this year?”

“In a way we are. Doctor will have full charge of the largest welfare camp this summer and I shall help him of course. We want to find some place where the scenery is lovely, the location healthful, the expense light, and where there is nobody around who objects to children. Because we’ll probably have over a hundred at various times and we must be where we can spread out.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Polly musingly, as she stooped to pick a sprig of myrtle from the ground, “if we all landed on the same spot of earth. Aunt Milly, and the kiddie camp, and ours.”

“Coax Mrs. Abbott to drive over with the Admiral and you this afternoon, and talk to Doctor about it. He’s half persuaded as it is.”

Polly laughed. The plot was one after her own heart.

“I’d love to, Kitty Katherine. You know it won’t be the same this year, although I love all the girls, of course. But Ted won’t go, and

Ruth thinks she can’t on account of her mother’s needing her, and if Ted won’t go, ten to one Sue drops out. That leaves only Isabel and myself of the original Hungry Six crowd that first year at school. Still there’ll be eight of us any way in the camp.”

“Just look at the Doctor and the Admiral; they are like two old chums,” said Kate happily. “Bob’s having a splendid time.”

“Grandfather always fastens on to anyone who will listen to him when he gets on the tombstones,” laughed Polly. “He simply adores anyone who has never seen the Page inscriptions and is willing to listen to him expound them. I’m going over right away to rescue the Doctor from my ancestors.”

Threading her way through the narrow boxbordered paths where the violets were already blooming, she came to where the two men stood, and slipped her arm through the Admiral’s as she always did when she wanted him thoroughly under control.

“Listen, Grandfather dear, we’re going to Oakleigh for tea and you can have the Doctor all to yourself this afternoon. Is he telling you all the history of the inscription, Doctor?”

“Not one of them, Miss Polly,” the Doctor assured her. “We’re discussing tents. The Admiral is telling me to buy tents at the government supply stores to use in my welfare camp. We plan to get some house as a central base, and then to have several tents.”

“We shall want tents too. I don’t know much about the different kinds. Two sleeping tents with four cots each I planned to have, if they were large enough, and then a sort of cook tent with a flap. I like to eat out of doors.”

“How about when it rains?” asked the Admiral. “You’re fair weather campers. I suppose you’d have a cave handy then, wouldn’t you?”

“It really would be nice,” Polly agreed. “I’ve always liked the idea of living in a cave. Remember, Grandfather, how once when we were little Sue Warner and I ran away down the river bank, and dug a cave? Mandy helped Aunt Welcome find us.”

“Who’ll help find you this summer if you’re lost?”

“But we’ll be so wise in woodcraft, and won’t get lost. You don’t know how we girls have posted ourselves about everything. We have read all the books we could get about the best way to camp out, only the queer part is that nearly every authority advises a different way.”

“The fundamental rules are the same everywhere,” the Doctor told her. “Get a healthful location. Take care of what you eat and where you get yoUr drinking water. Out in California, where I came from, we boys used to take our ponchos, a blanket and a frying pan, a fishing rod and a rifle, and face the open any time.”

“What did you eat?” asked Polly, anxiously. “We are going to bring our food supplies down to just as small a quantity as possible, and still I’m afraid we’ll need pack mules.”

“Corn meal and bacon were our staff of life. Get near a lake or river where you are sure of a good fish supply. I would locate close to a farm house too, where one could buy fresh vegetables, fruits, eggs and milk.”

“I do believe you’re right,” Polly said thoughtfully, “and we were planning to get just as far away from a chimney as we could.”

“A chimney, child?” repeated the Admiral. “What for?”

“I mean the sight of one anywhere in the surrounding view, don’t you know? It wouldn’t seem just like camping if we could see houses anywhere around.”

“Well, it’s good that you are able to pick and choose,” smiled the Doctor. “My poor little city kiddies are happy if they may only walk around on Mother Earth without any ‘keep off the grass’ signs.”

“Where do they come from?”

“Please don’t ask Bob any more questions, now, Polly,” Kate protested, coming up to them. “This afternoon you may talk camp gossip to your heart’s content. Mrs. Langdon sent me to tell you to come at once.”

Polly said goodbye, and hurried on with the Admiral to catch up with the rest of the family.