their Camp Fire
memories, and the table was also loaded with plates of German sweets and
nuts and favors sent out from town for this evening's feast.

Esther and Mrs. Ashton had been trying to keep up a semblance of
cheerfulness during dinner, but Betty had refused to make any such
effort. Now the front doorbell unexpectedly rang and their funny little
German _Maedchen_ went out of the room to open it. Betty did not even
glance up. She supposed that it must be Dick, who had changed his mind
about remaining in Berlin and had taken a later train home. However,
even Dick's return was of only limited interest this evening.

The next moment and two arms were tight about her neck, almost stifling
her. Then a voice that could only be Polly O'Neill's, though Betty could
not turn her head, was whispering:

"Oh, Princess, Princess, has it been two years or two centuries since we
met? And are you as pretty as ever, and do you love me as much?"

A little later, when both girls had laughed and cried in each other's
arms, Polly was at last able to explain to Mrs. Ashton that she and her
maid had made a mistake in their train and had taken one which did not
stop at the out-of-the-way station mentioned in the girls' letters. So
they had been compelled to go on further and then to have an automobile
to bring them back to Waldheim.

CHAPTER X

An Adventure

"Margaret, if you don't mind, we are going for a walk. Betty has been
talking to some girls in the next village about starting a Camp Fire
club with six dear little German maidens who make us think of Meg and
Mollie when they were tiny. Would you care to come with us?"

Margaret Adams shook her head. She was lying in a hammock under a tree
which made a complete green canopy above her head. At no great distance
away was the brook where Betty had thought herself in hiding several
weeks before, and by dint of keeping very quiet and concentrating all
one's senses into the single one of listening, the music of the running
water might be heard. The woman in the hammock had no desire for other
entertainment. She had been thinking but a few moments before that she
had not felt so well or so young in half a dozen years. The three girls,
Esther, Betty and Polly, had been laughing and talking not far away from
her for the past hour, but she must have been asleep since she had heard
no word of what they were saying until Polly's direct question to her.

"I am awfully lazy, Polly