Members of their Council, made up of the most prominent and interesting people in Westhaven, were glad to be of service at any time.
Nevertheless, when a choice had to be made of a place for their Christmas entertainment there was not one dissenting voice: Memory Frean’s little House in the Woods! Here was an intimacy and an atmosphere they found nowhere else.
Moreover, as the character of the entertainment was to be a secret from all outsiders, it was much simpler to manage at a distance from town. Memory Frean was well again and as interested in their idea as the girls themselves.
Certainly the living-room at the House in the Woods was so transformed on the afternoon of Christmas Eve that one would never have recognized it. The walls were massed with pine and cedar and holly.
Raised upon a dais was an arm chair covered with a piece of tapestry worked in gold dragons.
Below, and filling the entire center of the room, was a circular table.
Extending around the walls of the room were eight banners of silver cloth, bearing no inscriptions save an embroidered design of an eagle’s wing.
Crossed over the mantel were the American flag and the flag of the Girl Scout Troop.
At nine o’clock there was a pealing of Christmas bells that swung like a censer above the round table from which a white dove also was suspended.
“Shall we read Kara’s poem that she sent from the hospital in New York as a greeting to us before we begin the other ceremony?” Tory Drew inquired.
She wore an unusual costume, but one exactly like the rest of the girls. It was composed of a stiff material, a silver cloth of cotton and silk. Cut in straight lines, it had no ornamentation save a silver girdle about an inch wide and loosely tied about the waist.
Undoubtedly the costumes were striking and original and strangely becoming.
“I have asked Margaret Hale to read Kara’s verse, for one reason because she will do it so much better than I, and for another because I so regret Kara’s not being with us to-night of all nights that I do not trust myself. I was to tell you that Kara writes she is not under the impression that she is a poet. Being in a hospital several months has forced her to spend so much time alone that she devotes many hours to thinking of us and our holiday together last summer in Beechwood Forest.[B] Small wonder that Kara is more devoted to the evergreen cottage than the rest of us because of its association with her past!”