r to go into the water
even to wade, though other girls were swimming and splashing and
frolicking like mermaids. Elizabeth sat on the sand, her eyes following
Olga's dark head as the girl swept through the water like a
fish--swimming, floating, diving--she seemed as much at home in the
water as on land.

"You can do all those things too, Elizabeth, if you will," Laura told
her. "Look at Myra, there--she has always been afraid to try to swim,
but she's learning to-day, and see how she is enjoying it."

Elizabeth drew further into her shell of silence. She cast a fleeting
glance at Myra Karr, nervously trying to obey Mary Hastings' directions
and "act like a frog"--then her eyes searched again for Olga, now far
out in the bay.

When she could not distinguish the dark head, anxiety at last conquered
her timidity, and she turned to Laura:

"O, is she drowned?" she cried under her breath. "Olga--is she?"

Anne Wentworth laughed out at the question. "Why, Elizabeth," she said,
leaning towards her, "Olga's a perfect fish in the water. She's the best
swimmer in camp. Look--there she comes now."

She came swimming on her side, one strong brown arm cutting swiftly and
steadily through the water. When presently she walked up on the beach, a
pale smile glimmered over Elizabeth's face, but it vanished at Olga's
glance as she passed with the scornful fling--"Haven't even wet your
feet--_baby_!"

Elizabeth's face flushed and she drew her bare feet under her.

"Never mind, you'll wet them to-morrow, won't you, Elizabeth?" Laura
said; but the Poor Thing made no reply; she only gulped down a sob as
she looked after the straight young figure in the dripping bathing suit
marching down the beach.

"She notices no one but Olga," Laura said as she walked back to camp
with her friend. "If Olga would only take an interest in _her_!"

"If only she would!" Anne agreed. "But she seems to have no more feeling
than a fish!"

Many of the girls did their best to draw the Poor Thing out of her shell
of scared silence, but they all failed. And Olga would do nothing. Yet
Elizabeth followed Olga like her shadow day after day. Olga's impatient
rebuffs--even her angry commands--only made the Poor Thing hang back a
little.

When things had gone on so for a week, Laura asked Olga to go with her
to the village. She went, but they were no sooner on the road than she
began abruptly, "I know what you want of me, Miss Haven, but it's no
use. I can