Produced by Jan MacGillivray
By
I. A. R. Wylie
The Penguins were always breaking out with something. Miss Thornton,who had run Camp Happy Warriors for years and still believed there wasgood in everyone, said it was merely their age. The Penguins wereolder than the Peewits, who still trailed attenuated clouds of glory;and were younger than the Pelicans, who were beginning to talkmysteriously about Life, Beaux, and Parties—things so far removedfrom the Peewits that they weren't even interested, but near enough tothe Penguins to exasperate them into having marvelous ideas of theirown.
So the Penguins were wonderfully set up when they first realized thatthey had a Social Conscience. They felt that even Priscilla ("Prissy")Adams, their counselor, who generally thought their ideas dreadful,would have to admit that a Social Conscience was a good idea.
Clara VanSittart had brought it to camp with her, just as the previoussummer she had brought the first pair of white mice. Clara was a fat,earnest child with spectacles, who would one day be chairman of aWomen's Club. Her mother, who was several chairmen already, haddiscovered the Poor that winter—rather to their consternation—sothat Clara knew that at the very moment when the Penguins were sittinground their campfire, surrounded by trees and stars and lakes, andfaintly nauseated with toasted marshmallows, there were poor,half-starved children literally gasping for air in New York City'scrowded, stifling streets. There was even a place called Hell'sKitchen, it was so hot and awful. Clara knew all the best words like"underprivileged," and by the time the last marshmallow had been drawnfrom its prong the Penguins were in tears.
"But it's no use just crying," little Janet Cooper said. She wasusually so afraid of everyone, including herself, that they all staredat her. "We ought to do something," she said. And dived back intothe shadow like an alarmed young tadpole.
No one had ever accused the Penguins of inertia. They proceeded atonce to do something. And the counselors wished afterward that it hadbeen white mice again.
* * * * *
Thus it came about that one April morning the following year Pip-EmmaBinns sat at her desk by the classroom window and wrote an Englishcomposition called "Trees." Or rather she was not writing. She waschewing bits out of a wooden pen-holder and balefully regarding theback of Vittoria Emanuella Perozzi, the class' champion essayist.Vittoria used words which Miss Perkins called metaphors and similesand which Pip-Emma called baloney. If a person looked white, why notjust say so? Why bring in sheets? However, Miss Perkins thought a lotof that sort of thing, and so, no doubt, would the dames who weregiving a prize of two months' vacation in some swell kids' camp forthe best description of trees.
What did a tree look like? In Pip-Emma's opinion it looked like atree. But she knew that wouldn't get her anywhere—certainly not toCamp Happy Warriors, where Pop and Ma were hell-bent on her going. Shepulled her dark brows together. She wiped an inky hand over her blackhair drawn back into a short defiant pigtail. Then inspiration struckher, too. Very carefully she wrote two sentences. "I can't describetrees. I haven't seen any." And signed it Emma Binns.
It was like a metaphor. It wasn't true. It was baloney. But to Mrs.VanSittart and her committee it was just too heart-rending. No trees.Poor little Emma Binns! As for Vittoria Emanuella Perozzi, she hadevidently seen so many trees so often and so beautifully that, in thecommit