The next week before the breaking up of camp, when Mr. Casey came to take Nora home, everyone flocked around him telling of his daughter’s brave act.  He took Ethel by the hand and remarked simply: 

“It was like Honora to do that.  There’s none more brave than she—­God bless her.”

From that day Nora had no better friend than Ethel.  She felt that the girl had saved her life and her gratitude was boundless.

“Tell me,” asked; Nora, “why did you dislike me so?”

“I was wicked, Nora,” replied Ethel, “I am ashamed of it now.”

“But,” persisted the girl, “did you think me vulgar?”

“No,” replied Ethel.  “I thought you had a loud voice, and there’s something about a loud voice that I dislike.  But even so I should have overlooked that, had I been a good girl.  You are so far above me, Nora, that I am ashamed to even acknowledge it.”

“Miss Ethel—­” said Nora.

“Call me Ethel in future,” said the girl—­“please do.”

“Well—­Ethel—­you are not the first one who has criticised my voice.  My teachers have always done so, and even my mother used to say, ’Not so loud, Nora dear.  Speak more gentle like.’”

“Did she?” asked Ethel.

“Yes, my mother had her faults, Ethel, but at heart she was a lady.  So your dislike of me was not so strange after all.”

“But,” interrupted Ethel, “Nora, perhaps I wasn’t thankful to hear your loud voice when I lay there wounded and helpless, and I’m ashamed to even have told you.”

“I wish you to help me,” broke in Nora.  “I wish to make myself different—­more of a lady.  Will you tell me when I talk too loud?  It will be a favor if you will.”

Ethel assented and kissed Nora affectionately.

Nannie Bigelow arrived and the girl became a general favorite.  She at once fell in love with Nora.

“Why, she’s a heroine,” she said.  “She’d give her life for another.  I think she’s splendid.”

Nannie had much to say of their New York Camp Fire, and of the girls who belonged.

“You know some of them are quite unlike us, but Miss Westcott says they’ll improve—­that being with us will make them more gentle.  And you have no idea how they are improving.  And as for Dorothy’s nursery, it’s just booming.  There is a waiting list a mile long,” and she chatted on, entertaining the girls with her talk.

At the next and last Council Meeting, the girls received honors for having slept three months out of doors, for learning to swim, and rowing twenty miles on the Muskingum River, and for sailing a boat without help for fifty miles.  They also received extra honors for cooking, and for learning and making a mattress out of the twigs of trees; for long walks, and for washing and ironing, which the girls did well.

Whenever she looked at Nora, Ethel’s conscience troubled her.  She seemed to feel her own unworthiness.  Mrs. Hollister suggested to Mr. Casey that Nora should visit them for a couple of months in the city.