Margaret Vandercook - The Camp Fire Girls' Careers

Yet here at the moment of her arrival Betty had not the faintest idea of what she could do or say to make herself acceptable as a visitor. She had a peculiar antipathy to being regarded as a conventional philanthropist, one of the individuals with the instinct to patronize persons less fortunate.

Long ago when through her wealth and sympathy Betty had been able to do helpful things for her acquaintances, always she had felt the same shrinking sense of embarrassment, disliking to be thanked for kindnesses. Yet actually in his last letter Anthony Graham had dared remind her of their first meeting, an occasion she wished forgotten between them both.

The matron of the children’s hospital had been sent for and a little later she was conducting Betty down a broad, bare hall and then ushering her into a big sunlit room, not half so cheerless as its visitor had anticipated.

There were two large French windows on the southern side and a table piled with books and magazines. Near one of these windows two girls were seated in rolling chairs reading. They must have been about fourteen years old and did not look particularly frail. Across from them were four other girls, perhaps a year or so younger, engaged in a game of parchesi. On the floor in the corner a pretty little girl was sewing on her doll clothes and another was hopping merrily about on her crutches, interfering with every one else. Only two of the cot beds in the room were occupied, and to these Betty’s eyes turned instinctively. In one she saw a happy little German maiden with yellow hair and pale pink cheeks propped up on pillows, busily assorting half a dozen colors of crochet cotton. In the other a figure was lying flat with the eyes staring at the ceiling. And at the first glance there was merely an effect of some one indescribably thin with a quantity of short, curly dark hair spread out on the white pillow.

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