in Camp in a truthful atmosphere
Ethel Hollister began to change. She saw how the old lady was beloved.
She heard on every side of the good she had done, and when one day Aunt
Susan told her that she had been a wife and mother, and what she had
suffered at the hands of a brutal husband, she was spellbound. For years
she had been deserted, but when one day he was supposed to be dying she
was sent for that he might beg her forgiveness. She went and found that
for four years he had been stone blind and that he had sunk so low that
she shrank from the squalid house in which he was living. She took him
away and stayed with him until his death, making the last days of his
life more bearable.

As the girl listened and thought of the old lady's goodness and how she
was visiting her and making over her old gowns, hats, etc., into
fashionable ones to ingratiate herself for an object she saw herself as
she was--a hypocrite--and she fell on her knees to Aunt Susan confessing
everything and begging her forgiveness, whereupon the old lady took her
in her arms and told her that she knew everything--that Grandmother and
she had made up their minds that Ethel might lose her worldliness under
different environments. Then she told her of the loss of her fortune and
the girl was glad, saying as she kissed her, "Now you know that I love
you for yourself, Aunt Susan."

Ethel liked Tom Harper. He was a fine young man. He supported Aunt Susan
and gave her a liberal allowance but she banked nearly all of it, as she
told Ethel "to have something at her death to leave to those whom she
loved."

After visiting her Uncle John's family, whom she liked at once, Kate,
Ethel, and the eight girls started for Camp. It was situated in a stretch
of woods on the banks of the Muskingum river. One of the girls--Patty
Sands--became Ethel's chum. She was motherless and the only child of
Judge Sands, ex-congressman of Ohio, and greatly respected. The rest of
the girls were also congenial save two--one a Mattie Hastings, whom Ethel
avoided saying that her eyes were too close together. Mattie's parents
were poor people but she was one of Kate's Sunday School class and has
asked to be allowed to join the "Ohios." The other girl was a large,
raw-boned Irish girl, or rather of Irish parentage. Her voice was shrill
and unpleasant, while her hair was black and her eyes dark blue and
lovely, her face was covered with freckles and she dressed loudly and in
bad taste.