Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl
Page 24
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CELESTIAL CLIMAX
A year from then it did!
It awoke the World with its challenging roar, silencing for ever, let ushope, the racket of guns upon this dear planet, leading man in future toseek his conquests in more transcendent ways, even outside Earth'satmosphere, as it took its pioneer flight again from the misty top ofold Mount Greylock.
The World and his wife were there to see: scientists from the fourquarters of the globe--Earth's great ones.
And other spellbound spectators, too: Una, the White Birch Group, theirBoy Scout comrades--Stud fast developing into the type of hotspur whowanted to take passage for the moon--all massed in such a stupendous GetTogether as made the mountain seem "moonshine land", indeed, to theirthrill-shod feet.
And never--oh! never since the history of Mother Earth and her satellitebegan did such a spectacular traveler start on such a flaming trip aswhen the hand of a Camp Fire Girl of America threw the switch and thesteel explorer, twenty feet long, leaped from its platform high into theair, pointed directly for the moon, with a great inventor's mathematicalprecision,--trailing its two-hundred-foot, rosy trail of fire.
There was not breath--not breath, even, to cry: "Watch it tear!"
Only breath enough, in young girls' bodies, at least, to gaze off atMammy Moon, loved patron of many an outdoor revel, and ponder upon thenature of the shock she would get when the Thunder Bird's last explosionlit up her fair face with a blue powder-flash--lit it up for earth tosee!
"Do--do you think 'twill ev-er get there--two hundred and thirtythousand miles, about, when--when an eighth of an inch out at the start;and it would m-miss--miss?" breathed a youth who knelt by the heroine ofthe evening, the inventor's daughter.
"Toandoah doesn't miss. My father doesn't miss." The young head ofPemrose Lorry queened it in the darkness, with a pride which made of oldGreylock, at that moment, the world's throne. "But how--how are we tolive through the next hundred hours--the next four days--the time theThunder Bird will take to travel?"
Yet they did succeed in living through it and in leading time a merrydance too, for young Treffrey Graham, junior, all old scores forgotten,was proving a prince of chums, as spirited in play as he was prompt in apinch.
And together--hand clasped in hand, indeed--by virtue of her being theinventor's daughter, he the son of the man who had resigned a fortune tothe transcendent invention, side by side with two or three of those VeryGreat Ones, they stood, four nights later, looking through a monstertelescope upon a mountaintop, and saw--saw the celestial climax, thefirst of the heavenly bodies reached.
Saw the blue powder-flash light up the full, round face of the SilverQueen they loved, while the Thunder Bird, expiring, dropped its bonesupon her dead surface.
"It's--got--there," breathed the youth. "What next? Some day--some day,maybe, we'll be shooting off there--together?"
"Yes! if only the Man in the Moon could shoot us back!" breathedPemrose.
Already it had come to be "we" bound up with "What next?" for it would,indeed, be a zero "next" in which the hands of youth and maiden wouldnot meet in comradeship--and love.
But the sun and center of the girl's heart was still--and would be forlong--her father.
The greatest moment of that unprecedented night came when Toandoah bentto her, and said:
"Little Pem! there was just one moment when I may have been discouraged,you remember! None knew the Wise Woman who saved the city."
* * * * *
A story of the best type of home life, with a charming heroine.
THEN CAME CAROLINE
By LELA HORN RICHARDS
With illustrations by M. L. Greer.
12mo. Cloth 306 pages.
Caroline was the fourth daughter in Doctor Ravenel's family of fivegirls,--fourth on the list, but first in mischief, in ingenuity, inoriginality, in human sympathy and democracy. The father's health madeit necessary for the Ravenels to leave their old Southern home andmigrate to Colorado. Here Caroline grew up--from ten to eighteen--herdays full of interest, her courage, as the family struggled alongunder straightened circumstances, always unflagging. Sometimes thedelight and sometimes the despair of her mother and her sisters,Caroline made friends in many quarters and met in unusual ways themany emergencies into which her impulsiveness led her.
This is a splendid story of the best type of home life, and thefour other girls--Leigh the unselfish, Alison the ambitious andself-seeking, Mayre the artistic and Hope the baby--complete awell-individualized group, alternately caressed and disciplined by oldblack "Mammy," who had accompanied her "fam'bly" from Virginia.There are plenty of boys in the story too, likable lads, such asinevitably would gather around a group of wholesome and merry girls,ready for a game, a dance or any other frolic. Caroline will be afavorite with girl readers. They will enjoy the account of her runningaway; her attempt to help her mother form a "social acquaintance" intheir new home; her outwitting of Alison at the party; her earlyliterary efforts; and the daring with which she "puts her finger" innearly everyone's "pie."
LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers
34 Beacon Street, Boston