ALMOST BEFORE ANYONE REALIZED, IT WAS THE LAST week of August and the closing week of camp. Everyone was sorry but terrifically busy and excited about the grand climax of the summer: Events Week. A bittersweet kind of feeling …
In the gala goings-on, Cherry did not like to mention anything so out of key as the Purdy affair. She talked about it only to the Wrights and to Reed Champion. Reed dropped in at Blue Water daily during this last week, partly to see about the water pageant and the final brother-sister party, but mostly to visit Cherry.
“I still want to look at you and see with my own eyes that you’re unscathed,” Reed said. “I never before met a girl who’d go through such a hair-raising adventure, and bob up smiling.”
“A nurse has to be resourceful, you know,” said Cherry, with an almost straight face.
“Well, let me tell you, I never saw one bit of that circus! I kept wishing I was on Tall Man’s Island.”
Reed and Cherry smiled at each other, and by mutual consent talked instead about this exciting last week of camp. Reed, an old-time camper, advised Cherry to brace herself for practically a week-long festival.
The keenest excitement was brought on by the awards. Even before Aunt Bet announced them at a Special Assembly in the Playhouse, the awards caused a wave of rumors and some secret, quite unnecessary tears, mopped up by Nurses Jan and Cherry. Nobody was surprised when Katy Osborn won the Camp Blue Water medal for general improvement. What made it extra nice, though, was Lil Baker’s telling in Assembly how, when she proposed Katy’s name, every girl in the Mountaineers cabin, voted yes. “They bunked with Katy—they ought to know.” Katy was so moved she burst into tears all over Sue’s shoulder. Sue had to extricate herself in order to go up on the platform to receive her own award. The Intermediates had voted Sue the best all-around camper in their group.
Ding shared gardening awards with one senior and three Midgets. Mary Alice received public notice for her cookies, baked on rainy days only. Katy won a dramatics commendation for her Juliet. And Sue, along with every girl whom Mac Cook had taught, won honorable mention for their dolls made of pine cones and driftwood and gnarled roots. Cherry was so excited about the awards that she admitted to Aunt Bet, “I wish I’d won something myself.”
“I think you did,” Aunt Bet said. “Isn’t clearing an innocent man quite a reward?”
Next, the girls and their counselors turned the Playhouse into a regular fair, heaped with the lovely and interesting things they had collected and made and grown during the summer. Many parents came especially to see their daughters’ fine “handmade originals”: handmade sewing baskets and bread baskets, bright-colored mobiles, wooden buttons and brooches and book ends. One wall was hung with new finger paintings, pencil sketches, and photographs, although Mr. Purdy was mysteriously not on hand to judge, this time. Cherry’s Can-You-Name-This Shelf contributed a fine collection of unusual growing plants, and Katy brought several varieties of delicate pressed ferns as a gift from her cabin. Heaps of luscious vegetables and bouquets of flowers testified to the girls’ harvest at the Model Farm.
The only thing not on exhibit were the Midgets’ ducklings which had grown so plump that Uncle Bob proposed, “Let’s ask Sophie to roast them and we’ll all enjoy a fine duck dinner.” The Midgets were brokenhearted at the idea, and Uncle Bob had a hard time to convince them that he was only joking. Another character besides the ducklings who had grown up during the summer was Katy’s kitten, now long-legged and almost a cat. Vernie Epler had fallen in love with the gentle little gray creature, and since Katy’s mother was not hospitable to pets, Vernie was going to adopt her. Mac Cook, too, was being adopted in a sense, but Cherry was waiting for him to come back from testifying in New York. At the big brother-sister party, Mac could tell his own good news.
First came the water pageant. Blue Water and Thunder Cliff had been preparing their floats, tableaux, music, and swimming formations for the past two weeks. Not everyone was skilled enough to take part—besides, someone had to be the audience.
The day of the water pageant, the last Friday, arrived all blue sky, sunshine, and calm blue water. Perfect! Along the leafy shores of the lake, young people, their counselors, and parents found comfortable places from which to watch. Now at the end of August, in the afternoon, the mountain air was turning cooler. Brisk breezes blew the leaves wrong side out, their undersides showing silver, like thousands of banners.
Unless an onlooker knew that each float was based on a rowboat, he would have wondered how even the powerful swimmers—senior girls and boys—swung the spectacles slowly, smoothly along. The band led the pageant, in two bunting-decorated boats, and Cherry saw D. V. tootling away for all he was worth. The Midgets, with the ducklings swimming alongside, came next. Intermediate boys offered a glee club, their voices ringing out over the water. The Ding-dong Bells floated past, costumed as flowers. There were floats of water nymphs and fierce pirates, Greek gods and gauzy ballet girls to admire, and a boatload of clowns to laugh at. Finally the chorus of senior boys and girls closed the floating pageant.
Everyone returned to Camp Blue Water where boxed lunches of fried chicken and mounds of ice-cold watermelons awaited them on the grass.
“Sophie has done herself proud,” someone said.
“I think Mac Cook is helping her. It’s good to have him back.”
Cherry looked around for Mac. He had promised her he would try to be back in time for the big party, and he was! He came out of the Mess Hall, smooth-shaven, his hair now mostly a natural brown, smiling shyly and looking younger and happier than Cherry had ever seen him. The kids nearly upset his big platter of bread and butter, as they crowded around him.
“Mac! That doll you showed me how to make—it won an award!”
“Where have you been, Mac? Didn’t you like us any more?”
“Mac, you look so different,” Sue shrilled, “and so nice! Better, I mean.”
“I feel better, honey.”
Mac smiled at Cherry, at the Wrights, and went on to pass the platter, with a troop of children at his heels. Aunt Bet nodded quietly at Cherry. It had been agreed, earlier at a meeting in the Main House among the Wrights, the Eplers, the Clemences, Cherry, and Reed, that there was no need to announce the entire story to the campers. Anyone who was interested could read in the newspapers of Purdy’s guilt and Mac’s innocence. Mac Cook—or Jack Waldron—was now completely cleared. The newspapers, like Sergeant Braun, gave full credit to the good work done by Cherry Ames. As for Mac himself, he only wanted to forget the whole thing.
Presently he came over to where Cherry and Reed were eating their supper together. Mac sat down beside them under the tree.
“I suppose Fred told you?”
“That the loan company offered you your job back?” Cherry said. “That’s good news.”
“No, better than that. Fred wants me to have a half share in the farm.” Mac’s face actually glowed. “Fred says he means it, he thinks it never was fair that I was placed in the orphanage. You know what? I used to dream about this farm all the time I was growing up.”
Cherry was so pleased she could only gulp. Reed asked:
“Will Fred’s farm support three of you?”
“We don’t know yet. It probably will in time. In the meantime, the Clemences asked me to come back and take care of their greenhouse. Pretty nice people.”
“It looks as if your lonely days are over, Mac.”
“That’s right. Now I have a family—as well as a farm!”
No one mentioned Purdy. Though they were all thinking about him, there was nothing anyone could say. Someone teased Uncle Bob by telling him, “Now you can loaf for the other ten months of the year, can’t you?” He nearly exploded, explaining that camp work kept him and Aunt Bet busy the year round.
The long afternoon grew dusky, the first stars appeared. By the time the smallest of the boys were boosted into the truck and station wagons, and the older boys had taken the boats back to Thunder Cliff, evening had come. Reed, dashing past Cherry, paused for a moment to show her a shooting star.
“Make a wish on it,” Cherry said.
“I wish for us to meet again.” Reed smiled down at her.
“That’s easy. We will.”
The girl campers, tired and happy, went to their cabins. Tomorrow they would complete their packing. Tomorrow they would take the afternoon train.
“Give me your address, Miss Cherry,” said Sue, “and I’ll write to you faithfully.”
“Misspelled, no doubt. Oops, I’m sorry,” said Katy. “I forgot.” Katy had a brand-new grin and a new self-reliance. “Will you come to the camp reunion at Thanksgiving, Miss Cherry? Lil and our whole cabin will be there.”
“If I’m not the nurse with a traveling circus or something like that, I’ll surely be there,” Cherry promised.
She said good night and crossed the path to her own cabin. In the field the privileged seniors were having a last, sentimental campfire, a last evening sing. She entered her counselors’ cabin to find Leona Jackson standing gingerly on a bed.
“It’s that field mouse,” Leona squeaked. “I swear it’s the same one. He knows we’re moving out, and he’s moved back in!”
Cherry and Ruth J. persuaded Leona that there was room enough in the cabin for them all. They should have packed, or gone right to bed after this long, stirring day, but everyone wanted to sit up and talk. Finally, after Lights Out, Cherry stole out onto the step for one more look at lake and hills and stars.
“What a lovely summer it has been!”
She remembered a fawn she had seen this summer running in the woods, its dappled coat dappled again by shadows of leaves. She breathed in again the cool woodsy fragrance to which she had fallen asleep and awakened. And the wonderful people! It had been a rich experience getting to know all of them. Sue—who wasn’t unlike Cherry at twelve—and Katy who had put up a game fight and won it, the darling Lowells and Wrights, Fred and Vernie, and, above all, Mac.
Yes, it had been quite a summer! Smiling to herself, Cherry went contentedly into the cabin. This summer had rested and refreshed her. She was all ready for a new adventure.