SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING BOOK

Ethel would have never become a Camp Fire Girl excepting for her great-aunt Susan.

Susan Carpenter was her Grandmother Hollister’s only sister, living in Akron, Ohio.  Her family consisted of Mr. Thomas Harper and herself.  Tom’s parents had been her friends, and when they were taken Aunt Susan legally adopted him and his little brother Fred, but the younger one died before graduating, while Tom went through college and was now a rising young lawyer.

Aunt Susan Carpenter was a philanthropist.  At the time of her adopting the boys she was reputed to be a millionaire.  She gave her beautiful home to the city for an Asylum for partially insane people and endowed it with fifty thousand dollars, after which the leading men in town raised fifty thousand more, thereby making it self-supporting.  She was also on the board of managers of many other charities, and was adored by her townspeople.

Four years previous to her visit to New York, she had lost every penny of her immense fortune,—­lost it through the rascality of a large and well advertised concern calling itself the “Great Western Cereal Company.”  The whole thing was a rotten affair from the first and was floated by ten unscrupulous men who after obtaining all the money they could fled from the country before the exposure came; that is, save three, one of whom was arrested while the other two committed suicide.  Aunt Susan wrote nothing of it to her sister lest it should worry her, and as she had never met her nephew’s family in New York, and they knowing no one in Akron, they were in ignorance of the change in Aunt Susan’s affairs and still thought her a wealthy woman.

Mrs. Archibald Hollister—­Ethel’s mother—­was worldly and ambitious; not so much for herself as for her daughter.  Grand-mother Hollister, whose husband had belonged to one of New York’s oldest families, owned the house in which they lived, free and clear.  It was an old-fashioned brown-stone affair near Riverside Drive.  Archibald, her son, paid the taxes in lieu of rent, but as his salary was only three thousand a year it was extremely difficult to make both ends meet, and Grandmother had no money save what was in the house.  But Mrs. Archie was clever.  She could make a dollar do the work of five.  With her own hands she would fashion for Ethel the most dainty and up-to-date gowns, wraps, hats, etc., imaginable.

The Hollisters kept but one maid.  She always appeared trim and tidy, yet she did the entire housework.  Upon the days that Mrs. Archie gave bridge parties or afternoon teas for Ethel’s young friends, she hired two extra girls who had been so perfectly trained that the guests never once doubted but that they were part of the household—­allowing to Mrs. Archie’s clever management.