find them.'"

Esther had walked across the room and had her back turned during this
recitation. But now she moved around, facing her visitor until it was
Polly's eyes that dropped before her own. The older girl had always
the dignity that comes from truth and sincerity.

"Don't be absurd, Polly," she said, speaking quietly, but with no lack
of decision. "You know as well as I do that loyalty has nothing to do
with aiding one another to do what one does not believe to be right. I
don't want to preach. Yet don't you think perhaps _you_ are breaking a
part of our Camp Fire law? 'Be Trustworthy. This law teaches us not
to undertake enterprises rashly.'"

"Oh, please hush, Esther," Polly insisted. "There is no use in our
quarreling, and we are sure to if you go on preaching like that. I
told you what I have made up my mind to do. If you don't wish to help
me, that of course is your affair. All I have the right to demand is,
that what I told you in the strictest confidence you repeat to no one
else."

She picked up her coat and began slowly buttoning it, waiting for
Esther's reply, which did not come at once.

"I don't know whether I can promise you even that," the older girl
answered finally. Her face was white and she moved her hands in the
old nervous fashion that Betty had almost broken her of. "I don't
suppose you can understand, Polly, what an almost dangerous thing you
are about to undertake. And without your mother knowing it! O Polly,
please don't! Why, if anything should happen to you what would she say
to me or Molly and Betty, if knowing your intention I did not warn
them?"

Polly was like a hot flame in her anger. In her life Esther scarcely
remembered ever having seen any one in such intense yet quiet passion.
All the blue seemed to have gone out of her visitor's eyes until they
were almost black. Her lips were drawn and although she tried to
control her voice, it quivered like a too-tightly-drawn violin string.

"Esther," she said, "I shall not leave this room until I have your
solemn promise. Perhaps you don't know anything about the standards of
conduct between people of birth and breeding. You were brought up in
an orphan asylum and had no mother. Whether you disapprove of me or
not makes no difference. I am not objecting to your disapproval. I
can perfectly understand that. But what I absolutely will not endure
is for you to tell my secret because it happens to strike you