She was often in
the habit of forgetting engagements and at times there was a faraway
expression in her eyes, which may have come from having neglected to
wear her glasses, but which her friends believed due to the thrall of
some wonderful creative idea which might be presented to the world some
day in the form of a great picture. And Eleanor, being but human and
seventeen, had done her best to foster this belief. She would not dress
in modern fashions like the other girls; her parents had little money,
but Eleanor's mother was a clever needlewoman and her eldest daughter
always appeared in gowns made after exactly the same pattern and of some
soft clinging material, whether cashmere or cheesecloth, they were
always short waisted with a folded girdle and deep hem and cut low in
the neck. Then Eleanor's hair, which was heavy and straight and a kind
of ashen brown, was always worn parted in the middle and fixed in a
great loose knot at the back of her neck. Eleanor was not pretty like
Betty and Meg and Mollie and, at times, Polly O'Neill, but she would
have scorned to have been thought pretty--interesting was the adjective
she preferred.
However, since Eleanor's appearance in camp for almost a week she had
forgotten to be a genius. For one thing the girls were all wearing the
regulation Camp Fire uniform, a loose blouse and dark blue serge skirt,
and so she could not dress the part.
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