her life.

Evan sat down on the ground nearby.

She was a year younger than the other two girls. At this moment, in
her shabby, simple white dress, she appeared a good deal younger.

"Would you really like to know about my dancing? I have been wanting
to tell some one. It would be absurd to pretend I had not been taught,
no one with any judgment would believe me. Besides, when one is a Girl
Scout I do not think one desires to keep secrets from the other girls.
Perhaps you won't approve of me afterwards, but I shall run that
risk."

Tory laughed.

"You are a dear! I approve of nearly every one. What could there be to
object to in your wonderful dancing? Don't you know every girl who
sees you must envy you."

A little fearfully Tory glanced upward toward Kara.

Had she been tactless again? Everything she said or did appeared the
wrong thing these days.

At present apparently Kara was not looking or listening to either of
them. Her gray eyes, which showed so wistfully in her thin face, were
fixed on a far-off line of the sky between two clumps of trees.

"Well, you might as well hear the worst at the start," Evan went on,
smiling and revealing her small, even teeth.

"In the first place, I received my ridiculous name because my father
died a short time after I was born. It was intended I should be a boy,
so I was named for him. We were poor and mother had to make her own
living and mine. She did not feel troubled over this because she had
studied dancing and loved it. So she gave dancing lessons in
California, and before I was two years old I was a member of her
class. We never would have stopped save that mother was ill and we
were forced to come east to consult a doctor. We came to Westhaven to
live so she could be near New York and I at school. Mother is better,
and next winter intends to begin teaching again."

"So you wish to be a dancing teacher?" Katherine Moore asked. The
other girls were under the impression that she had not heard what they
were saying.

Evan jumped up quickly.

"Never, I should hate it! I mean to study folk dancing and some day
originate new dances that shall be as American as possible. We talk of
the folk dancing of the Irish and Spanish, and the Austrians and the
Dutch and any number of other nations. When we speak of American folk
dancing it is supposed we dance like the Indians. I don't see why we
can't create a national folk dance of our own."

Evan made a cup of her hands