Teresa Peterson hurrying on alone. She looked surprised,
even a little frightened, by their appearance.

When Tory inquired where she had been, as Teresa made no reply, the
question was dropped.

No one was supposed to leave the camp without special permission from
the Troop Captain. There was no reason, however, to suppose that
Teresa had not received this permission.

CHAPTER VII

OTHER GIRLS

The other girls in the camp in Beechwood Forest were not passing
through so trying an ordeal as Victoria Drew and Katherine Moore,
after Katherine's return to camp.

Sympathetic they were with Kara's misfortune, yet upon them it did not
press so heavily.

Frankly two of the girls acknowledged that the few weeks at camp were
the happiest of their entire lives. These two girls were Louise Miller
and Teresa Peterson. Neither of them was particularly congenial with
their home surroundings.

An odd contradiction, Louise Miller was oftentimes so quiet, so slow
and awkward in her movements that many persons regarded her as stupid.
This was never true among the friends who knew her intimately, if for
no other reason, than because of Dorothy McClain's attitude. From the
time they were children the two girls had admired and loved each
other, notwithstanding the difference in their natures. Dorothy was
one of the happy persons whose attraction was so apparent that few
natures resisted it. She was handsome and straightforward and sweet
tempered. One girl in a family of six brothers, she had learned a
freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection
that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and
her father had been such intimate friends that she had not felt the
keenness of her loss as she must have under different circumstances.

Indeed, Louise Miller, whose parents were living, endured a deeper
loneliness.

There had never been any pretence of anything else. Her father was a
business failure. This had narrowed and embittered his nature. He was
devoted to his wife but to no one else.

She had cared for society and beautiful surroundings and been forced
to do without them. To have Louise, her oldest child, another
disappointment, was difficult to bear.

If Louise had been pretty, if she had appeared to be clever, if she
had cared for her home life and been anxious to assist her mother with
the younger children, Mrs. Miller would have been quick to appreciate
any one of these