Eleanor laughed again.  She was a fresh, bright-cheeked girl, not so many years older than Bessie herself.  One might guess, indeed, that she, as Guardian of her Camp Fire, didn’t much more than manage to fulfill the requirement that Guardians, like Scoutmasters among the Boy Scouts, must be over twenty-one years of age.

“Indeed there are different sorts of farms from that one, Bessie,” she said.  “You’ll see a farm where everything is done the way it should be, and, while I think Paw Hoover’s a mighty nice man, I’ve got an idea that on his farm everything is done just about opposite to the proper fashion.”

“When are we going, Miss Eleanor?”

Zara asked that question.  In the last few days a hunted look had left Zara’s eyes, for with relief from certain worries she had begun to be happier, and she was always asking questions now.

“I don’t know exactly, Zara, but not right away.  We want all the girls to go out together.  We’re going to have our next Council Fire at the farm.  And some of them can’t get away just now.  But it will be fairly soon, I can promise you that.  You like the country, don’t you, Zara?”

“Indeed I do, Miss Eleanor!  Until they took my father away I was ever so happy there.”

“And just think, you’re going to see him tomorrow, Zara!  He’s well, and as soon as he heard that you were here and safe, he stopped worrying.  That was his chief trouble—­he seemed to think more about what would happen to you than that he was in trouble himself.”

“I knew he’d be thinking about me,” said Zara, “He always did, even when he had most to bother him.”

“I was sure he was a good father, Zara, when I heard you talk about him—­and I’ve been surer of it than ever since I’ve had a chance to find out about him.  My cousin, who’s a lawyer, you know, is going to see that he is properly treated, and be says that Mr. Weeks, who tried so hard to make you stay behind and work for him, is at the bottom of all the trouble.”

Zara shuddered at the name.

“How I hate that Farmer Weeks!” she exclaimed.

Eleanor Mercer sighed and shook her head.  She couldn’t blame Zara for hating the man, and yet, as she well knew, the spirit in the little foreign girl that cherished hatred and ideas of revenge was bad—­bad for her.  But how to eradicate it, and to make Zara feel more charitable, was something that puzzled the Guardian mightily, was, as she foresaw, likely to puzzle her still more.  She left the two girls together, then, to answer a call from outside the room.

“I don’t exactly like Farmer Weeks myself,” said Bessie, thoughtfully, when they were alone.  “But what’s the use of hating him, Zara?”

“Why, Bessie!  He made us run away from Hedgeville—­he made me anyhow.  And if he’d had his way, he’d have taken me back, and had me bound over to work for him just for board until I was twenty-one, if I hadn’t starved to death first.  You know what a miser he is.”