As for Flossy, she gave a great sigh of disappointment and unrest, and turned slowly from the window.  She had vaguely hoped for help of some sort from Ruth, and as she lay down on her prayerless pillow she said to herself, “If she had only knelt down I should certainly have done so, too; and perhaps I might have been helped out of this dreadful feeling.”  Yet so ignorant was she of the way that it never once occurred to her to kneel alone and pray.

No more words were spoken by those two girls that night, but each lay awake for a long time and tossed about restlessly.  Ruth had been most effectually disturbed, and try as best she could it was impossible to banish the memory of those quiet words:  “You might have to die to-night; people do, you know.”  To actually have to do something that she had not planned to do and was not quite ready for, would be a new experience to this girl.  Yet when would she be ready to plan for dying?  At last she grew thoroughly vexed, and vented her disgust on the “religionists” who got up camp-meeting excitements for the purpose of turning weak brains like Flossy Shipley’s.  After that she went to sleep.

“Flossy Shipley, for pity’s sake don’t rig your self up in that awful cashmere!  It rains yet and you will just be going around with five wrinkles on your forehead all day, besides spoiling your dress.”

It was morning, and the door of communication between the two sleeping-rooms being thrown open the four girls were in full tide of talk and preparation for Fairpoint.  Flossy, though kept her strangely quiet face and manner; the night had not brought her peace; she had tossed restlessly for hours, and when at last she slept it was only to be haunted with troubled dreams.  With the first breath of morning she opened her eyes and felt that the weight of yesterday was still pressing on her heart.

“What shall I wear?” she asked, in an absent, bewildered way of Eurie, who had objected to the cashmere.

“I’m sure I don’t know.  Didn’t you bring anything suited to the rain?  Let me go fishing in that ponderous trunk and see if I can’t find something.”

The “fishing” produced nothing more suitable than a heavy black silk, elaborately trimmed, and looking, as Eurie phrased it, “elegantly out of place.”

Through much confusion and frolicking the four were at last entering the grounds at Chautauqua.  By reason of their superior knowledge Marion and Flossy led the way, while the others followed eagerly, looking and exclaiming.

“I’ll tell you what it is, girls,” Eurie said, eagerly.  “Let’s come over here and board.  We’ll have a tent or a cottage.  A tent will be jollier, and it will be twice as much fun as to stay at the hotel.”

There being no dissenting voice to this proposal, they started in much glee to look up a home; only Flossy demurred timidly.

“Can’t we go to the meeting, girls, and look for the tent afterward?  The meeting has commenced; I hear them singing.”