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Winona of the Camp Fire

by Margaret Widdemer · English · Gutenberg #37207 · 476,460 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Winona of the Camp Fire

Author: Margaret Widdemer


        
Release date: August 26, 2011 [eBook #37207]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37207

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINONA OF THE CAMP FIRE ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net






[Illustration: THEY DESCENDED IN A BODY ON ADELAIDE'S TENT _Page 125_]




                             WINONA OF THE
                               CAMP FIRE

                          By MARGARET WIDDEMER

                               Author of
                "Winona of Camp Karonya," "Winona's War
                         Farm," "Winona's Way."

                           A. L. BURT COMPANY
                          Publishers--New York

        _Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company_

                          Printed in U. S. A.




              COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY




WINONA OF THE CAMP FIRE




CHAPTER ONE


The room they called the Den in Winnie Merriam's house was dark, except
for the leaping wood-fire in the big stone fireplace. Around the fire
sat and lay five girls. They had been toasting marshmallows, but they
were past the point where you eat the toasted ones with pleasure, or
even steal the raw ones--which don't taste burnt--to eat
surreptitiously.

"Helen Bryan, you've been feeding Puppums all your marshmallows for the
last ten minutes," accused Winnie, sitting up. She had been draping
herself along a pile of cushions for the last fifteen minutes--thinking,
evidently, for she had been quiet--a very unusual thing for chattering
Winnie.

Winnie Merriam was fourteen, but people usually took her for a year
older, because of her slim height. She had big blue eyes in a face that
was not regularly pretty, perhaps, but so gay and pink-cheeked and
quick-smiling that people always _said_ she was pretty--which does quite
as well.

Her chum, Helen, defiantly fed a last marshmallow to the fat
near-fox-terrier in the centre of the circle, who didn't particularly
seem to want it.

"I've got to be polite to my hostess's dog, haven't I?" she retorted.
"And he asked for them so pathetically!"

"I expect the poor old pup will look more pathetic this time to-morrow,"
said Winnie. "He'll probably look like Buster Brown's Tige in the last
pictures--both paws up over his aching head. Then you'll have to come
back here and hold ice on his fevered brow, won't she, Puppums?"

"Or yours, maybe," suggested Marie Hunter, the quiet brown girl in the
corner. "What's the matter, Win? You haven't said a word for ages. I've
been watching you."

"I've been _thinking_!" explained Winnie, nodding her curly brown head
with dignity.

"For the first time?" suggested Helen. "Don't do it if it hurts, honey."

"No," said Winnie placidly, "I've often been known to do it."

"Well, what were you thinking?" asked Edith Hillis, lifting her yellow
curls from Marie's lap. Edith was the fluffy member of the crowd, small
for her age, yellow-haired and blue-eyed and rather too much dressed.
She was supposed to care more for her complexion than for anything else
on earth except Marie Hunter, but she was as sweet-tempered as she could
be, and everybody liked her. "You looked as if you were thinking about
something awfully interesting."

"Well," said Winnie slowly, "I was thinking about _us_. We know each
other very, very well, and go together, and have gorgeous times--I was
thinking that it would be nice if we made ourselves into a club, or some
sort of a society."

"Oh, say! That's a perfectly gorgeous idea!" exclaimed chubby,
red-haired Louise Lane, from behind Helen. "I vote we _be_ a club, right
away!"

"But is five enough?" asked Marie doubtfully. Marie was always the one
who thought of things. She was a good deal of a bookworm, and did a
great deal of beautiful embroidery, and never said much. But she was the
one the girls were apt to ask advice of if they needed it badly. She was
nearly a year older than Winnie and Edith. Louise wasn't quite fourteen,
and Helen would be fifteen in two months.

"I think five's plenty," said Louise.

"I don't, exactly," demurred Winnie. "Seems to me there ought to be
seven or eight anyway, or we'd be like an army all major-generals."

"All right," came from Helen sleepily. "But that can wait. I think the
thing to make up our minds about first is--what would it do if it was a
club? I mean clubs have to have some object."

"Why!" exclaimed Winnie blankly, "I never thought of that!"

"Well," still opposed Louise, "I don't see why we have to have an
object. Just meet, and have a president and secretary and things, and
enjoy ourselves."

"What about an embroidery club?" suggested Edith. "Marie and I like to
embroider."

"I _don't_," said Louise flatly.

"Nannie was telling me about a walking-club she belonged to," Helen
suggested pacifically.

Nannie was Helen's step-mother--not at all like the step-mothers in the
fairy-tales, but a pretty, gay woman of about twenty-eight, who was
great friends with her step-daughter and the step-daughter's chums.

"A hiking-club?" asked Winnie. "That would be fun. Why couldn't we
combine both those things in one?"

"Lovely!" jeered Louise. "I can see myself trotting along up a mountain,
embroidering as I go!"

"Listen to Louise being sarcastic!" said Helen. "I think the idea of
combining two or three things is a splendid one."

"What's splendid?" asked a bright voice from the darkness at the other
end of the room.

"Oh, are you there, Nannie?" called Helen. "We're planning a club--a
very fine combination club where you do everything."

"It sounds like a Camp Fire," said Nannie. "Your father's downstairs,
Helen. I ran up to tell you that we're ready to go whenever you are."

"Oh, not yet, please!" begged Winnie. "What is a Camp Fire, Mrs. Bryan?
Do come sit down by us, and have some marshmallows."

"It corresponds to the Boy Scouts," Mrs. Bryan explained, dropping down
among the girls, "and it includes doing about everything there is to do.
It's national, though, and you're affiliated with headquarters."

[Illustration: THEY MADE HER TELL THEM ALL SHE KNEW ABOUT CAMP FIRES]

"Regular dues and meetings?" asked Helen, pricking up her ears. "Oh,
stay here, Nannie, and tell us all about it!"

They surrounded Mrs. Bryan, and made her tell them all she knew about
Camp Fires, which was a good deal.

"I like it!" announced Louise when Mrs. Bryan was done. "Me be heap big
chiefess--wahoo-oo!"

She jumped up as she spoke and waved Helen's best hat above her head for
a hatchet.

"Oh, my hat!" cried Helen, making a wild dive for it. Puppums thought it
was all a game for his special benefit, and dived after them--and the
meeting broke up in disorder. But not before the girls had decided to
_be_ a Camp Fire, and made Mrs. Bryan promise to act as their Guardian.

Winnie, after the girls had gone, returned alone to the fire, and sat
down by it, thinking over the things she had been hearing.

"It's going to be heaps of fun," was the first thing she thought, and
then, "It's going to take lots of time!"

Then she got up and shook herself. "Anyway, I love it!" she decided.
Then she put the lights out and went to bed.

Helen Bryan was over early next morning.

"Oh, Winnie!" she called up to her friend's window.

"Come on up!" called Winnie back. "I've just had my bath, but I haven't
finished dressing."

Helen came in by the open back door, spoke to Mrs. Merriam, who was
getting breakfast, and tore up the stairs to Winnie's room.

"Oh, there's such heaps to tell!" she announced before she was well
inside the room. "Rings and bands and dresses and ceremonies
and--everything! Only we will have to take more girls in. You have to
have at least seven to start with."

Helen stopped for lack of breath, and dropped on the bed. Winnie, who
was doing her hair before the mirror, turned around.

"It's like the Boy Scouts, only it's girls," she decided thoughtfully.
"Helen, I don't see why we can't have just as good times as they do.
Tom's always telling about the glorious times his patrol had last
summer, camping up near Wampoag. I don't see why we shouldn't go
camping, too, and have heaps of fun!"

"Why, of course we can!" agreed Helen. "None of your mothers will mind
if Nannie goes along, and she'll have to if she's Guardian."

"Come on down and have breakfast with us," invited Winnie, straightening
up from her last shoe-lace. "You haven't told me half the things there
are to tell."

"Well, I've had breakfast," said Helen, "but----"

"Oh, you can eat some more," insisted Winnie. "We're going to have
flapjacks and maple syrup."

"Well, all right," said Helen, weakening. Flapjacks and maple syrup did
sound good. So they went down together to the breakfast table.

Winnie's family, her father and mother and her brother Tom, and
eight-year-old Florence, had to be told all about it.

"Can't I be a Fire Camp Girl, too?" demanded Florence on the spot.

"I don't know yet," said Helen. "We'll have to find out."

"I will be, whether you find out or not," said Florence, who was a
determined young person, and something of a tagger.

"Well, thank goodness, to-day's Saturday," and Winnie changed the
subject cheerfully. "We have all day to find out in, and there's
scarcely any home-work to do. Have you any, Helen?"

"Only a little history," said Helen, "and I can do that to-night."

"Such heaps of good times coming!" sang Winnie rapturously as she sprang
up from the table, to get a fresh supply of flapjacks.

"If you have as good a time as the Scouts do you'll have fun, all
right," said Tom. "But I don't see how you can--just girls!"

Helen laughed, but his sister flew up.

"We can, and better, too," she flashed. "Just you wait and see!"

"Seeing's believing," said Tom mischievously, passing his plate for the
flapjacks as Winnie brought in the heaping plate that had been keeping
hot in the oven.

"That's true," said his father gravely, putting a pile of buttered
quarter-sections on his son's plate. "At least, nobody who hadn't seen
it would believe you could eat so many flapjacks and not explode!"

Everyone laughed; but Tom calmly went on eating.

"They're awfully good, mother," he said. "I'll tell you, Winnie, if you
could learn to make as good flapjacks as mother with your Fire Camping,
as Florence calls it, you'd be doing something worth while."

"Oh, I don't suppose there's anything about flapjacks in it--do you
think there could be, Helen?" asked Winnie.

Mrs. Merriam laughed a little.

"Well, do you know, my dears," she said, "I have a strange feeling that
there _is!_"

"I don't see how," doubted Winona. "But maybe, if I get time, Tom, I'll
learn how to make them. Come on, Helen, let's go back to Nannie and ask
her all the questions we can think of."

The two girls ran out hand-in-hand.

"Are there flapjacks in it, mother?" asked little Florence.

Mrs. Merriam laughed again as she began to clear the table.

"There are, and a great deal besides, or I'm much mistaken, dear!"




CHAPTER TWO


Within the next week Mrs. Bryan had sent for and filled out and returned
the application blanks, and now the girls were merely waiting for the
return of the blanks and their charter. Meanwhile, out of school hours,
Winnie helped her mother about the house.

"I mayn't have time for much housework when I belong to the Camp Fire,"
she thought, "and I'd better do all I can now."

So she learned a good deal about cooking, and helped regularly with the
dishes--and with the supper-getting and tidying. Finally--it was almost
the end of May by then--the charter came, and material for the
ceremonial dresses, and various other things; and the girls held their
first Camp Fire. It was at Winnie's house, with its big fireplace, that
they had it. Mrs. Bryan invited two other girls to join, to make up the
number; Dorothy Gray and Adelaide Hughes. Dorothy the girls all knew and
liked--she was everybody's choice for one of the vacant places--but
nobody knew much about Adelaide, who was a newcomer in town, except that
she had no mother, and lived with her father and her younger brother and
little sister in one of the few apartment-houses that were beginning to
be put up in the little town where the girls all lived. She was a quiet,
rather sullen girl, and she dressed badly--almost untidily. The girls
were surprised at her joining, for she seemed to keep away from people
almost as if she did it on purpose. But Mrs. Bryan wanted her in, and
the girls would any of them have done anything for Mrs. Bryan. Only they
confided to each other that they hoped Adelaide wouldn't spoil the fun.

As each girl came, the night of the first meeting, she was taken, not
into the living-room, but to a little room beside it, and asked to wait
there for the rest. Edith Hillis was the last to come, and then they
were summoned into the other room. It was lighted only by the blaze of
the fire.

Helen explained things to the girls, as her step-mother had explained to
her.

"When the drum begins to beat we are to come in, Indian file," she
reminded them, as a soft, measured beat began to be heard in the next
room.

Putting herself at the head of the line, she led the seven girls into
the room to the rhythmic beating. They circled around it once, then sat
down in a ring about the fireplace, and looked at Mrs. Bryan with
admiration.

She had on a straight brownish gown, with deep fringes at its bottom.
She sat on the floor by a curious drum, of a sort most of them had never
even seen pictures of. She was beating it softly, Indian fashion, with
her closed fist.

"Welcome," she spoke clearly, rising as the girls came to a halt around
her. "Have you come desiring to make a Camp Fire and tend it?"

"Yes," answered all the girls. It was then that they dropped into their
places, in a semi-circle around the fire and their Guardian.

Then each of the girls, in turn, rose and repeated her wish to become a
Camp Fire Girl, and follow the Law of the Fire. When they had all
finished Mrs. Bryan leaned back in her corner, and talked to them about
the Law--what each of the seven parts of it meant.

"Why--it covers everything!" said Winnie.

"It certainly does!" seconded Louise. "All I have to do, it seems to me,
is to go on living, and I'll acquire unnumbered honor beads."

"You may think so," Helen warned her, "but you'll find there's plenty to
learn about it. I've been studying it out."

"Oh, that's all right!" said Louise airily. She caught up the manual as
she spoke, and ran her eye down the list of honors by the firelight.
"Wash and iron a shirtwaist--I love to wash things. Make a bed for two
months--I'd be hung with beads if I had one for every two months I've
made my bed. Abstain from gum, candy, ice-cream--oh, good gracious!"

"That counts as much as the rest," said Winnie mischievously, "and think
how good it will be for you!"

"I'll get thin," Louise remarked thoughtfully. "What are you going to
start with, Winnie?"

"Health-craft, I think." Winona had taken the book in her turn, and was
looking through the pages. "I've always wanted to learn horseback
riding, and I think perhaps father'll let me, now it's in a book as
something you ought to do." Then she remembered what her brother had
said about the flapjacks, and she shook her head as she passed on the
book. "No," she corrected herself, "I don't believe that will be the
first thing I'll do. I think I need home-craft quite as much as I do
learning to ride."

"What about you, Helen?" asked Louise.

"Why, clay-modelling and brass-work, or things like that," was the
prompt answer. "I want to take up art-craft when I get older, and I
might as well begin."

"Can you clay-model in camp?" asked Louise.

"Just as well as you can make a shirtwaist," replied Helen, unruffled.

"I like the hand-crafts, too," said Edith Hillis. "I think I shall
specialize on fancy-work."

"Always a perfect lady!" teased Louise, who was something of a tomboy,
and frankly thought it was silly of Edith to refuse to get her hair wet
in the swimming-pool, and wear veils for her complexion.

The other three girls, Marie Hunter and Dorothy Gray and Adelaide
Hughes, did not say what honors they were going to work for. Everybody
was pretty sure that Marie was going to write a play, and Dorothy did
beautiful needle-work. But as for Adelaide, silent in her place, nobody
could guess.

"You mustn't any of you forget that there's sewing to do, right now,"
warned Mrs. Bryan. "And I want all of you to look at my dress, because
each of you will have to make one like it."

She stood up again, and they all examined the straight khaki dress with
its leather fringes.

"That won't be especially hard to make," concluded Marie, who did most
of her own sewing. "There's a pattern, isn't there, Mrs. Bryan?"

"Oh, yes, and I have it. And there's one more thing, girls--two, rather.
We must each choose a name, and a symbol to go with the name. Then we
have to name the Camp Fire."

"A name--how do you mean?" asked Winnie.

"I mean that, of course, our Camp Fire has to be called something.
Beside that, so does each Camp Fire Girl. I like birds and bird-study,
so I am going to call myself 'Opeechee,' the Robin, and take a pair of
spread wings for my symbol. It's to put on one's personal belongings
like a crest--see? as I have it on this pillow-top."

The girls clustered around her to see the symbol, stencilled on the
pillow-cover on her lap. She told them she was going to burn it on her
shirtwaist box as well, and showed them where she had woven it into her
headband, a gorgeous thing of brown and orange-red beads.

"It would go on a paddle-blade, too," said Helen thoughtfully.

"It shall on mine to-morrow," declared Marie. "That is, if I've thought
of a symbol by then," she added prudently.

"I think this new name idea is perfectly gorgeous!" cried Louise
enthusiastically. "I've always hated my name--you'd expect a Louise to
be tall and severe and haughty--and look at _me!_"

She jumped up in the firelight and spread out her plump arms tragically.

"We see you!" nodded Helen calmly, and Louise sat down again.

"You'll be glad you have red hair when you're grown up," consoled Edith.
"It's supposed to be very beautiful."

"Well, it _isn't_," said Louise energetically, "with people always
asking after the white horse. I wonder why red-haired girls and white
horses are supposed to go together?"

But nobody could tell her. They were all clustered about Mrs. Bryan and
the manual, choosing names, and planning symbols, and you couldn't hear
yourself think. Winnie and Helen and Mrs. Bryan had planned to finish
the evening by playing games, but all the girls were so busy talking
that it was impossible to get a game in edgewise.

Presently Mrs. Merriam and little Florence came in with cocoa and
sandwiches. And then, at about ten-thirty, the meeting broke up, after
planning a bacon-bat for the next Saturday.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Winnie Merriam sat, as she loved to sit, by the dying fire. Her mother
began to clear away the dishes, but Winnie stopped her with:

"Please wait a little while, and talk to me, mother. I haven't had half
enough sandwiches, and besides, the nicest part of a party is talking it
over afterwards."

"Very well," said Mrs. Merriam, sitting down across from her daughter
and helping herself to something to eat. "I didn't get much chance at
the refreshments either, I was so busy helping you serve them. What was
it you wanted to say particularly, dear?"

"I wanted to ask you about my name, mother. I wasn't christened
'Winnie,' was I?"

"Why, no, dear--you know that. You were christened 'Winona,' after your
grandmother--only somehow, we never called you that."

"It's a real Indian name, isn't it?" asked Winnie.

"It certainly is," her mother assured her. "Why, dear, I've told you the
story of it many a time."

"Not for a long time now," persuaded her daughter. "I think I've
forgotten some of it. Didn't a real Indian give it to grandmother?"

"The Indian didn't exactly give it to her, it belonged to the Indian's
baby."

"Oh, tell me the story!" urged Florence sleepily. "I want to hear, too!"

Mrs. Merriam made room for Florence in her lap, and went on above her
with the sandwich and the story.

"Your great-grandfather was an Indian missionary, and when he and your
Great-grandmother Martin went out to live among the Indians, they took
with them their little baby daughter, so young they had not named her
yet. Well, one day, while your grandmother was sitting on the steps of
the log house where they lived with her baby on her lap, a squaw came
along with _her_ baby. She had it strapped to her back, the way they
carry them, you know. She was a stranger, not one of the mission
Indians, and oh, so tired and ragged and dusty!

"Great-grandmother Martin couldn't understand her language, but she
beckoned her into the house and gave her food for herself and milk for
the baby. And then, by signs, she asked the baby's name. And the Indian
woman said 'Winona--papoose Winona--yes.' It seemed she could speak a
very little English. So then Great-grandmother Martin asked the woman
what the name meant--for all Indian names have meanings, you know. But
the woman hadn't enough English words to answer her. So she got up from
the floor where she had been sitting and took the bright steel
bread-knife that lay where great-grandmother had been cutting bread for
her. She held it in a ray of sunlight that crossed the room, and shook
it so the light flashed and was reflected, bright and quivering, in the
room.

"'That Winona!' she explained.

"After she was rested she wouldn't stay. She went on her travels,
wherever she was going,--great-grandmother never saw her again. But she
didn't forget the name, and as soon as she could she asked the Indian
interpreter what 'Winona' really meant. He told her that it was the name
of another tribe for 'ray of light that sparkles,' or 'flashing ray of
light.'

"So Great-grandmother Martin named her own little girl Winona. The name
was pretty, and the meaning was prettier still. And she grew up and
married Grandfather Merriam--and when you came we named you for her."

"Then it really is a sure-enough Indian name," said its owner. "And the
meaning is lovely. 'A ray of flashing light'--you couldn't ask to be
anything better than that, could you, mother? I believe if I can I shall
keep my own name for the Camp Fire. It is prettier than anything I could
make up or find."

"It certainly is," said her mother.

"Why didn't I have a Nindian name, too?" clamored Florence aggrievedly,
sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"Because your other grandmother didn't," said her mother, kissing her.
"One Indian maiden in a family is enough. What names have the other
girls chosen, Winnie?"

Winona began to laugh.

"Louise says she is going to call herself 'Ishkoodah'--don't you
remember, in Hiawatha, 'Ishkoodah, the Comet--Ishkoodah, with fiery
tresses?' she says she thinks she can make a lovely symbol out of it.
It's funny, but Louise is always doing funny things. I think she's
really in earnest about this. And Helen says she's going to call herself
'Night-Star.' We don't know the Indian for that yet, but we're going to
hunt it up at the library. She thinks she will specialize on
astronomy--learn what the constellations are, you know. I'd like to do
that, too. All I know is the Big Dipper, and that the slanty W set up
sidewise is Cassiopea's Chair. I learned that from the little Storyland
of Stars you gave me when I was seven."

"I want to know chairs, too," said Florence drowsily.

"All right, dear, you shall," soothed Winona. Then she went on talking
to her mother.

"So all the girls said they'd take sky names, and we decided to call our
camp by the Indian name for the sky, because we want to camp out as much
as we can."

"I think that is a good idea," said Mrs. Merriam.

"It was mine," said Winona. "But Mrs. Bryan remembered an Indian name
for it--Karonya. We're Camp Karonya--isn't that pretty? And then Marie
remembered the Indian name for South-Wind, one of them, Shawondassee,
and took it. But the rest couldn't think of Indian names, so we waited
to hunt some."

"Do the names have to be Indian?"

"Oh, no," Winnie answered sleepily, "but it's better."

"Come!" said her mother, setting Florence, who was fast asleep, on her
feet. "We'd all better go to bed, or we'll be too sleepy to go to church
to-morrow."

"And the sooner I go to sleep the sooner next Saturday will come, as you
used to say when I was a little girl," added Winona. "Oh, I can scarcely
wait to find out what a bacon-bat really is on its native heath--or
anywhere, for that matter."

"Didn't they tell you what it was?"

"No--Marie is planning it, and she wouldn't say, except that it would be
heaps of fun, and I was to bring a dozen rolls and some salt and a
jack-knife. I'll have to borrow Tom's. Good-night, mother dear."




CHAPTER THREE


"Have you got everything, Winnie?" asked Helen anxiously, as they met
half-way between Winnie's gate and Helen's, about ten o'clock on
Saturday morning.

"I think so," answered Helen a little uncertainly. "Marie told me to
bring a pound of bacon--that's all. What are you bringing?"

"Two dozen humble, necessary rolls," said Winnie, "and salt. I had to
buy a knife, because Tom lost his yesterday. He loses it regularly, once
a week."

"Pity he picked out to-day," commented Helen as they fell into step. "Do
you suppose we'll be late?"

"Mercy, no!" said Winnie, "We're more likely to be the first!"

"We won't be"--and Helen laughed--"Louise is always the earliest
everywhere. She says she's lost more perfectly good time being punctual
than any other way she knows."

"Well, we'll be ahead of Edith, anyway," Winnie remarked cheerfully. She
adjusted the two dozen rolls more easily, for that many rolls, when you
have far to carry them, have a way of feeling lumpy.

"It's a good thing it isn't far to the trolley!" said Helen. "I didn't
know how nubbly this bacon was going to be."

"So are my rolls! Let's trade," suggested Winnie brilliantly.

"Almost human intelligence!" gibed Helen; so they traded, and each found
her load much more comfortable than the one she'd had before--which says
a good deal for the powers of imagination.

"Don't let's sit up on the benches of that trolley-station--they're the
most uncomfortable things in town!" objected Winnie. "Come on, Helen.
Let's be real sports, and sit on the grass."

"I do believe we're the first!" was Helen's sole reply, as she eyed the
little trolley-station worriedly.

"Oh, we _can't_ be," said Winnie confidently, "unless Louise has died or
gone West. If she's in the land of the living I know she's here. Once I
asked the crowd over in the afternoon to make fudge, and she got there
just as I was in the middle of sweeping out the kitchen, at one
o'clock!"

"You never told me about that!" reminded Helen interestedly. "What did
you do?"

Winona laughed. "Do! I didn't have to do anything. Louise did the
doing--she took the broom out of my hands, and sent me flying upstairs
to dress, and did the sweeping herself! Oh, and there she is!
Lou-i-ise!"

"Here I am!" Louise answered placidly, rising up in her white blouse
from the very centre of the field by the station, and looking, with the
sun shining on her brilliant hair, like a large white blossom with a red
centre. "I got here long ago. Come on over here on the grass. It's
horrid on the benches, and I'm making friends with the nicest little
brown hoptoad."

"Ugh--no!" shuddered Helen, who did not care for hoptoads. "Here's
Nannie, with Adelaide and Dorothy."

So the girls ran over to meet their Guardian, and the hoptoad was
averted. Just behind the newcomers arrived Marie and Edith, Marie
dignified and neat, as usual, in her dark-blue sailor-suit, and Edith in
a fluffy pink dress that did not look as if it could stand much
strenuous picnicking.

"Did you bring the rolls, Winnie?" called Marie.

"Certainly I did, and Helen has the bacon."

"And I have the hard-boiled eggs," said Louise gayly, "and here is the
trolley--it sounds like a French lesson. We mount the trolley that we
may go to the picnic. Come on, girls."

The girls were bound for a little wood, five miles out, where nearly
everybody that went on picnics had them. They sat down on a rear seat in
a giggling row, while Marie went ruthlessly on counting supplies.

"Adelaide, did you bring condensed cream? And who was to bring
cake--were you, Edith? Dorothy has knives and forks and a kettle."

"Cake?" from Edith blankly. "Why, no, Marie, I brought eggs. I thought
you said to--I thought we were going to fry them with the bacon."

A howl of laughter went up, in which Edith joined in spite of herself.

"How did you think we'd do it, dear?" Mrs. Bryan asked at last, trying
to straighten her face.

"That's easy," promised Louise cheerfully. "You just peel the eggs
carefully, throw away the shell, poke the raw egg on the point of a
stick, and toast it over the fire till it's all gone."

Edith giggled. "Well, I don't see how you could expect me to get it
straight over the 'phone, anyway. If I'd known you expected me to bring
a cake--I don't believe it was me you--ow!"

For a lurch of the car had sent the satchel in which Dorothy had the
knives and forks smashing against the raw eggs they had been talking
about; and as Stevenson said of the cow when they asked him the immortal
question about the cow meeting the locomotive--it was "so much the worse
for the eggs." They broke promptly, and one fatal corner of the bag that
held them began to leak on Edith's pretty pink dress.

Dorothy tried to repair damages with her handkerchief, but there was a
yellow smear on the front breadth, for all they could do. As it proved
afterwards, it was poor Edith's hoodoo day.

"Poor little eggs!" Louise lamented pensively. "Nobody's wasting any
sympathy on them--and they're all broken up."

"Oh, what an awful pun!" cried everybody; but Louise went on. She lifted
the limp bag gingerly, and looked at it as if she was very sorry for it
indeed.

"Let's serenade the eggs, girls!" she said. "Just follow me!"

And the people in the front seats of the trolley heard a hearty chorus
of young voices ringing out from the two back seats:

  Good-bye, little eggs, good-bye--
  Don't cry, little eggs, don't cry;
    Although you break for our sweet sake
  While we're marching away upon a picnic--
  Good-bye, little eggs, good-bye--
  By and bye, little eggs, by and bye
    We'll be eating up our lunch, but we won't have
      you to crunch--
  Good-bye, little eggs, good-bye!

The girls were in fits of laughter by the time they had done singing
Louise's doggerel.

"And yet--it really is silly!" said Marie consideringly when they were
done.

"Don't insult my beautiful, high-brow pome," said Louise cheerfully,
hopping out of the trolley, for they were at their journey's end. "Who's
going to fetch water? Don't all speak at once."

"We'll get the water," Edith promised, speaking for herself and Marie.
"It won't be as hard on my poor clothes as frying bacon."

So the two of them took the kettle and started off.

The place the girls had chosen for their bacon-bat was a little wood at
the end of the trolley-line, which possessed a spring, and an open,
sheltered sort of ravine where picnickers were wont to build their
fires. The girls sauntered along in ones and twos till they reached this
ravine, set down the things they carried, and scattered to look for
sticks.

Winnie and Helen, peacefully gathering wood as they went, suddenly heard
screams, and dropped their wood and ran toward the sound.

"It's--it's near the spring," panted Winona to Helen. "Oh, I do hope
nobody's fallen in!"

They arrived at the spring just as Adelaide Hughes and Mrs. Bryan
reached it from another direction.

Now the spring was not an untouched, wildwood affair at all. The
authorities had done things to it which made its water a great deal
better for drinking purposes, but much less picturesque--and deeper. Its
bed had been widened and lined with concrete, and barred across at
intervals, whether to keep the earth back or the concrete solid nobody
but the Town Council that had done it knew. And although falling between
the bars didn't seem very easy even for a slim, small girl, Edith seemed
to have accomplished it. She was wedged between two of the bars across
the water, and what was more, she had managed to drag Marie Hunter down
with her in her fall. Marie only had one foot in the water, and she was
struggling to get out, though the force of the stream was making it hard
for her, for the pool was about four feet deep. But Edith, wedged
between the bars, was devoting her energies exclusively to screaming for
help. The reason was apparent when the rescuing parties came closer. One
arm was caught down beside her, so that she could balance herself, but
not get out. Winona took one look at the situation.

"We'll get Edith out!" she called to Mrs. Bryan. "Can you manage Marie?"

Mrs. Bryan was a slender, delicate-looking woman, but she was stronger
than Winona realized.

"Certainly!" she encouraged. And Helen and Winona began eagerly trying
to extricate their friend.

It was impossible to reach Edith and take her free hand to pull her out
by--the bank each side the sluice, or stream, or whatever you choose to
call it, was too deep. Winnie thought a minute. Then she took off the
long, strong blue silk scarf she wore in a big bow at the neck of her
blouse.

"Can I have yours, too, Helen?" And Helen handed hers over promptly.
Either alone was long enough, but Winnie wanted the two to twist
together, for fear one would not bear Edith's weight.

"Can you get around to the other side with your end, Helen?" she said.

Helen scurried around up back of the source. Then she and Winnie, each
holding an end of the scarf-rope, walked down either side of the stream
till they were parallel with Edith. They knelt down and lowered the
scarf till Edith could slip her free arm over it, and pull herself up.
With its aid as a brace, she managed to free the caught arm, jammed
against her side. After that it was easy enough, and in a few minutes
she extricated herself entirely, and half dragged, half pulled herself
up the steep bank. By the time the girls were done pulling her out she
and they were pretty well worn out, and they dropped on the grass, Helen
and Edith on one side and Winnie on the other, and took time to find
their lost breaths.

Mrs. Bryan and Marie came up to them now--getting Marie out of the water
had been a fairly easy matter--and made the others get up.

"Edith and Marie must go straight and get off their wet things!" the
older woman advised. "And Adelaide's feet are wet, too."

"Where had we better go?" asked Marie, calm as ever, though nobody could
have been much wetter than she was up to her waist.

"Old Mary's is the quickest place," said Mrs. Bryan. "Hurry, now--run,
or you'll catch cold. Adelaide and I are coming, too."

The whole party--for Winnie and Helen wanted to see the finish--set off
at a brisk trot for Old Mary's.

Old Mary was an elderly Irishwoman who earned her living mostly by
taking in washing, but also by selling ginger-ale, cookies and
sandwiches to such picnics and automobile parties as came her way. Her
little house was close to the picnic-woods.

"They're sure of a good fire to change their things by, that's one
comfort," said Winnie to Helen as they ran along in the rear of their
dripping friends.

"Yes, but----" Helen began to laugh. "What are they going to change to?"
she inquired. "We didn't any of us bring our trunks--it isn't done on
picnics!"

"They'll have to go to bed!" was Winnie's solution, and they both began
to laugh again.

"It's a shame, though, to have them miss all the picnic," said Winnie,
sobering down.

But when they arrived on the scene they found the victims hadn't the
least intention of going to bed.

"Sure, I'll iron their bits of clothes dry," said Old Mary, "an' who'll
be the worse if they borry a few clothes from me ironin' horse till the
others are dry? The people that own 'em 'd never mind--I've an elegant
trade in the washin' of clothes, an' there's plenty to fit yez all on
the horse."

It was not half-past eleven yet, and the girls would not be going home
for some hours, so there would be plenty of time for the things to dry.
So Edith and Marie accepted Old Mary's offer on the spot. Among the
various family washes that she was doing were some things of their own.
They managed to pick out enough dry clothing for all their needs--all
but dresses. There were shirtwaists and blouses galore, but it was too
early for many wash-skirts to be going to the laundress.

However, there was an ample red cotton wrapper, the property of Mary
herself, which at least covered Marie. But Edith was little, and there
was nothing which came near fitting her but an expensively trimmed white
organdy party-dress, which Mary said frankly she did not feel she could
lend.

"What shall I do?" asked Edith in desperation. "I can't sit here all day
till my dress dries!"

"I dunno, darlin'. Sure 'tis too bad. Wait a minute, though." She
hurried out of the room, and presently returned waving something blue.
"If ye wouldn't mind these overalls, now," she said, "they're just
washed an' ironed for little James Dempsey to wear. An' the beauty of
overalls is they fit anybody."

"_Overalls!_" said Edith mournfully.

But overalls were better than a day in bed, and the end of it was, that
out of Old Mary's hospitable cottage walked a tall Irishwoman with two
long braids over her trailing red wrapper, and a small Irishman with
yellow curls over very baggy and much turned-up overalls, instead of
neat Marie and fluffy Edith. They and Adelaide had put on dry stockings,
and had many thicknesses of newspaper on their shoes till they could get
to the fire to dry them.

"Good-mornin'!" said Marie cheerfully to her astonished friends, as she
sailed majestically up to the freshly-made fire.

"Sure we're the world-renowned vaudeville team, Hunter an' Hillis."

"Just back from doing their justly-famous diving stunt!" added Winnie.
"Better come near the fire, girls, and try to get your shoes dry."

The fire, which the rest had made during the "diving-stunt," was burning
beautifully. The girls laid down waterproofs and blankets, and disposed
themselves comfortably around it, for the fire-makers were tired, and
the rescuers and rescued were particularly glad to lie down and be warm
and dry and limp.

"Two long hours to dinner-time!" from Winnie presently in a very sad
voice. "I don't feel as if I could stand it."

"Nor I!" several voices chimed in.

"Then why do you?" suggested Mrs. Bryan sensibly. "If everybody's hungry
we might as well have dinner now!"




CHAPTER FOUR


At the mention of dinner everybody became energetic as by magic. Winnie
split her two dozen rolls neatly down the middle, and set them in rows
on a newspaper, ready for the broiled bacon. Marie, with her red wrapper
pinned up out of harm's way, banked the fire, while Edith mixed cocoa
and condensed milk industriously in the bottom of a gigantic kettle
which was discovered, too late, to have been intended to boil the water
in. It occurred to Winnie that Edith in overalls was much more fun than
Edith in fluffy ruffles that she had to remember to take care of, as she
watched her flying around with her curls waving in the wind, looking
like a stage newsboy. Helen, on her knees by the heap of provisions, was
unwrapping her bacon, and somebody else was peeling all the hard-boiled
eggs.

"Didn't anybody bring cake?" asked Louise plaintively. "Have we nothing
but rolls, bacon and eggs?"

"Why, what else do you want?" asked Marie with a dignity rather
interfered with by the way her scarlet draperies flapped in the breeze.
"All the bacon-bats I ever heard about they just had rolls and bacon--we
have a lot of things extra."

"Glad I never attended one of the just-rolls-and-bacon kind," Louise
rebelliously declared.

Winnie, who liked cake herself, and thought she had seen some, went back
to the heap of provisions and began to dig at it like a small dog at a
mole-hill.

"Marie!" she called triumphantly in a minute, "There _is_ cake! And a
lot of bananas!"

"That's good," Marie serenely remarked. "Bring them along."

Winnie reappeared in a minute, very flushed and triumphant, with a hand
of bananas under her arm, and a huge chocolate cake, with almost
undamaged icing, poised carefully before her.

"Oh, I remember!" said absent-minded Dorothy, "I brought that cake. It
was in the satchel with the knives and forks."

"You certainly saved all our lives," said Louise feelingly, and went on
whittling toasting-sticks for the bacon. "Here, Winnie, take a stick and
start in to be useful."

"How do you do it?" Winnie wondered--"cook bacon, I mean? I never did it
this way before."

"Just string it on the stick any way at all," Marie advised, and speared
a slice scientifically as she spoke.

"Easy when you know how!" laughed Winnie, sharpening her own stick a
little more and threading some bacon on it.

In a few minutes everybody had slices of bacon frizzling gayly, and
getting more or less charred. When they were done enough they were
popped between the opened rolls, and--eaten, cinders and all. The water,
though it was boiled in something else than its own proper
kettle--something remarkably like a dish-pan cunningly slung over the
fire by a wonderful system of forked sticks--came to a boil without
accident, and was poured on the cocoa. Each girl had brought her own
drinking-cup, so there was no difficulty about crockery. It seemed to
Winnie, balanced on one elbow on her rug, that nothing had ever tasted
so good as the bacon sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, washed down by all
the hot cocoa you could drink.

By the time the cake and bananas came the girls felt as if they couldn't
eat another thing. But they did. It was delightful lying around the fire
talking and eating and laughing. It was one of those mild days which
come in May sometimes, bright, with a little breeze. After awhile
somebody started a Camp Fire song, and one by one they all joined in.
After that they lay quiet for awhile, talking and being lazy.

When they began to clear away Edith declared that she didn't dare go
near the spring again. So it was Winona and Louise who took the few
things there were to wash, the cocoa-kettle and dish-pan and
drinking-cups and the silver, over to the spring. It was pleasant, lazy
work, not a bit like home dish-washing. Louise splashed the things up
and down in the running water, and Winona dried them.

"Isn't it nice?" sighed Winnie. "Oh, I do wish we could camp outdoors
all this summer, instead of living in hot houses! Don't you always hate
to sleep indoors when it's hot?"

Louise rolled over on her back and looked at the sky.

"Yes, I think I do," she spoke thoughtfully. "You have to, though. Out
in California they say everybody has sleeping-porches, and never thinks
of going inside at night. I wish people had them here."

A brilliant idea came to Winona--which, by the way, she afterward
carried out. "Our side-porch is almost all screened. I wonder if mother
wouldn't let me sleep there? I'm going to ask her, anyway."

"I wish I could, too," breathed Louise, "but our side-porch is where
everybody goes by--that's the worst of living on a corner. I know I
never could break the milkman and the baker of contributing rolls and
milk on top of me in the early morning!"

"What a splendid idea! Then you could have 'breakfast in your bed,' like
Harry Lauder," said Winnie, and both girls stopped to giggle. "But
honestly," began Winnie again, as she reached out for some long grass
near her and began to plait it, "don't you think we can all camp out
this summer?"

"Here?"

"N-no, not here--at least, I don't believe they'd let us, the people who
own it, I mean. But there must be somewhere that we could go, somewhere
not too far off to cost a lot to get there."

"I wonder!" said Louise, pulling a thick red pig-tail around in order to
nibble its end thoughtfully. She had a habit of gnawing at her hair when
she thought hard. "What about Cribb's Creek?"

"That's too near," Winnie opposed.

"Well, where did the Boy Scouts go last year?"

"Up on Wampoag River, a little way below Wampoag," said Winona. "They
said it was a cinch, because they could sell all the fish they caught to
the Wampoag hotel-keepers, and get things they needed, and yet it was
just as wild as it could be if you went a little way along the river."

Wampoag was a summer resort not far from them.

"Well, how far's that?" asked Louise.

"About ten miles to the boys' camp," answered Winona. "But there would
be plenty of good camping-ground nearer home, and quite close to that
little village--what's its name?"

"Green's Corners," supplied Louise.

"I wonder who Green was, and if he really _did_ have corners," Winona
thoughtfully remarked.

Louise giggled. "He was a square man, I suppose," she said, and Winnie
gave her a shove. "Oh, don't!" she said. "That's an awful pun."

"I thought it was a very good one. Well, to come back to business, the
boys didn't go by train. Indeed, I don't think you can, unless you go
away round. They hiked."

"Well, why shouldn't we, too?" asked Louise.

"Or part of the way, anyway!" added Winnie,

"People would take us for a band of 'I won't works!' We'd look it, too,
by the time we got to the end of the journey."

"But we needn't do it all at once," said Winnie. "We could break the
journey overnight. Don't you know, people in England have walking-tours
that last for days and days? I've read about it. They stop in inns
overnight and have adventures."

"Well, I'd like the adventures, if they didn't mean falling into ponds
and getting your clothes wet," said Louise.

Winnie yawned.

"I suppose they think we've tied the cups round our necks and jumped
in," and she lazily started to get up. "Come on, Louise, let's find Mrs.
Bryan and ask her about camping. She's sure to know about hikes and
everything."

Finding Mrs. Bryan proved to be hard, because she was not in the kind of
a place where you would expect to find a grown-up step-mother. They
finally discovered her by a flutter of blue skirt that hung down below
the branches of an old apple-tree. She was sitting comfortably in one of
its crotches, trying to carve herself a willow whistle.

"Come on up, girls!" she hailed them cheerfully. "There's always room at
the top!"

"Where are the rest of them?" asked Winnie, beginning to climb. Louise
followed more slowly, for Winnie was more slender and quicker in her
movements.

"Scattered all over, I suppose," said Mrs. Bryan. "Edith went back to
old Mary's to see if her clothes were dry. Did you want them for
anything special?"

"No indeed," Winnie assured her. "It was you we wanted for something
special."

"Well, I'm here," and Mrs. Bryan dropped an affectionate hand on the
pretty brown head beneath her. "What is it, dear?"

"It's about camping out," spoke Winnie and Louise in a breath. "Do you
think we can do it?"

Mrs. Bryan laughed.

"'Can we do it?' Why, my dears, that's just what we're for! What would
be the fun of belonging to a Camp Fire if we couldn't go camping
outdoors?"

"Oh, lovely!" cried Winnie. "Then you'll go, too?"

"I certainly will!" said Mrs. Bryan promptly. "It would have to be when
Mr. Bryan was having his vacation, though, because it would never do to
leave, not only my own hearth-fire, but my own poor helpless husband,
untended. And, of course, it will not be till school is through."

"Oh, oh, it begins to sound almost real!" Winnie cried with a joyous
little jounce that shook several pink blossoms from the tree.

"Just wait!" warned Louise from her lower limb. "When we start that
twenty-five-mile hike, it will seem quite too real for comfort, take my
word for it!"

"Don't you think we could hike to camp?" appealed Winnie.

"You'll have to practise shorter hikes first," was the answer. "If you
do that there's no reason why we couldn't all walk the distance. I
suppose we'll camp somewhere on the Wampoag River."

"Yes, that's what we thought," said the girls.

"Of course, we'd have to break the journey," Winnie went on.

"Well, yes, I think so," Mrs. Bryan answered. "Oh, here are Helen and
Marie now. Oh, Helen! We're up in this tree! No, don't come up--all the
seats are full!"

"Then come down!" called Helen. "We have something to show you."

The something proved to be a small and very scared garter-snake, that
Helen was carrying in a forked stick.

"Poor little snakelet!" said Louise. "Do let him go home, Helen--I'm
sure he's not grown-up yet."

So Helen put down the snake and off he went.

"Did you find your clothes?" Louise asked Marie rather superfluously,
for she had on her sailor-suit, rather fresher-looking than it had been
before.

"It was all done when we got there," said Marie, "but Edith's dress was
harder to do--all those ruffles, you know--so Mary's still ironing it."

"Then we'd better sit here and wait for her," suggested Louise. "And oh,
girls, we have a plan."

"A real plan, all hand-made?" mocked Helen. "Do tell us about it."

So then the camping-trip was discussed and votes taken about it. Helen,
of course, could go. Marie was sure she would be allowed to.

"Mother says I stay in the house and read too much anyway," she said.

The other girls, drifting up one by one, were all wild over the idea.
Edith, in her freshly-laundered frock, was a little doubtful about the
hike, but as she said, if she fainted from exhaustion she could take a
train or a carriage or something the rest of the way.

They talked camping till it was time to go back and pack up things for
the return trip. So the girls rose up from around the apple-tree, and
stowed everything away in the baskets and satchels they had brought, and
walked back to the trolley. First, though, they gave old Mary all the
provisions they had left; cocoa, six rolls, and a generous half of the
chocolate cake.

"That certainly was a life-sized cake!" breathed Winnie as she set it on
Mary's kitchen table. "But it won't be as hard to eat as it was to
carry, will it?"

"Sure ye needn't worry but what it'll get et," laughed Mary. "Many
thanks, an' good luck to yez all."

They piled into the trolley, rather sleepy with the long day in the
wind, and, except for Marie and Edith, rather crumpled. Winnie's blouse
had a grass-stain, and Louise's was marked neatly across the back, like
a Japanese stencil, with a wet brown bough-mark. There were also burrs,
more or less, on everybody. But what were burrs?

Everybody heaved a sight of contentment as they settled down in their
seats.

"It certainly was a lovely picnic!" they said.

"How beautifully fresh and clean Edith Hillis keeps her dresses!" said
Mrs. Merriam to Winnie, as Edith turned to wave good-bye at the Merriam
gate, and went down the street with Marie and Helen. "You'd think that
pink dress had just been washed and ironed, and yet she's been out in
the woods with the rest of you tousled-looking children all day!"

And Winona laughed so that it was at least two minutes before she could
explain.




CHAPTER FIVE


"I'd advise you girls to hurry up with those squaw dresses," hinted Tom
Merriam darkly, as he fled through the sitting-room on his way back from
Scout-practice.

Winnie looked up. She and Helen and Louise were sitting in a row on the
window-seat, sewing for dear life on their ceremonial gowns.

"We are hurrying all we can," she smiled. "These have to be done by
to-night anyway."

"They are, nearly," chimed in Louise, shaking out her garment and
observing its fringes with satisfaction. "What's he talking about, Win?"

"Tommy! Tom! Come back and tell us!" called his sister.

"Can't!" shouted Tom down the stairs. "You'll find out in time--you're
going to need 'em, that's all!"

"What on earth do you suppose he means?" wondered Helen, as the last
glimpse of Tom's khaki-clad form vanished up the stairs.

Winnie laughed as she finished off a seam.

"I don't believe it meant anything," she said. "Tom's always trying to
get up excitements."

"_I_ think it means something!" said Louise, beginning to take out
bastings. She was the best seamstress of the three, and consequently was
done first. "Here, Helen, let me finish that sleeve for you while you do
the other one."

She took up the sleeve, and jumped up and began to dance with the sleeve
for a partner.

  Something's goin' to happen, honey,
  Happen, honey, happen mighty soon!

"Oh, thank you!" said Helen gratefully, referring not to the song and
dance, but to the aid. She hated sewing, and nothing but the Camp Fire
requirements would ever have made her persevere till her gown was done.
Winnie did not mind sewing one way or the other, and by a queer
contradiction harum-scarum Louise loved it.

The girls worked on, and discussed on. Winnie was sure Tom meant
nothing, and the others were just as sure that he had some reason for
saying what he had.

That night the girls were to hold their first Council Fire. That was why
they were hurrying so to finish their dresses.

When it came Winnie's turn to answer the roll-call, she rose, slim and
graceful in her khaki dress, before her turn was reached.

"Opeechee, Guardian of the Fire, may I speak before my turn comes to
answer to my name?" she asked.

"Speak," said Mrs. Bryan.

"Opeechee, I do not want to change my name. May I not be known in the
Camp Fire as Winona? The name is one that an Indian gave one of my own
people many circles of moons ago, and it is mine by inheritance."

"Will you tell the Camp Fire about it?" asked Mrs. Bryan.

So Winnie told the Camp Fire the story her mother had told her, of the
weary Indian woman her grandmother had helped, and whose papoose had
been called "Winona," "Flashing Ray of Light."

"Could anything be better than to be a ray of light in dark places?"
asked Winona. "I like the meaning of my name, and if the Camp Fire will
let me keep it I promise to be a brightness wherever I can, always, that
will light the dark places for people who need it."

"What do you say, Daughters of the Camp Fire?" asked Mrs. Bryan when
Winona was done.

"If we all have different Camp Fire names, won't it seem strange for
Winona to have the same name straight through?" objected Marie. "It is a
beautiful name with a beautiful meaning, if it weren't that it is her
every-day name."

"Nobody ever calls me anything but Winnie," said Winona.

"Why not use the translation?" suggested Helen. "'Ray of Light' is
pretty. And then Winnie could keep the meaning."

"You have spoken well!" said Mrs. Bryan. "What do you say to that,
Daughters of the Camp Fire?"

"Good!" from all the girls.

"Kolah, Ray of Light!" spoke Mrs. Bryan.

Then she went on with the business of the evening.

"Two of our Camp Fire Girls are to become Wood-gatherers to-night. Will
they rise?"

Winona and Marie had qualified, and they stood up.

"Ray of Light," Mrs. Bryan went on, "will you tell us how you chose your
name?"

"'Flashing Ray of Light' is the name my fathers gave me," clearly spoke
Winona, "and I have told the Camp Fire the reason of its choosing. But I
keep it because I intend to carry out its meaning. I have tried to earn
my right to it by being bright, and helping all I could, no matter how
dark the days were, nor how much nicer it would have been to be cross.
As my symbol I have chosen the firefly, because it lights dark places."

"Flashing Ray of Light brings brightness to our Camp Fire," said the
Guardian. "We welcome you to your place in our Camp Fire Circle."

She gave Winona her pretty silver ring with its raying fagots, and
repeating the formula which went with it.

When the girls had welcomed her rank and sung her a cheer, Winona sat
down, she hoped, for the last time.

"How does it feel?" whispered Louise, who sat next her. "I wish I'd
collected my requirements as quickly."

"It feels partly awfully proud and partly awfully relieved," Winona
whispered back. "And I feel as if I oughtn't to have picked out such
awfully easy honors to take. Anybody could make a shirtwaist and know
about their ancestors and trim a hat----"

"No, they couldn't!" contradicted Louise, who admired Winona very much.
"You just happen to be cleverer than the rest of us, that's all."

"I'm _not!_" said Winona as vehemently as it could be said in a whisper.
"Marie's getting her Wood-gatherer's ring to-night, too."

Mrs. Bryan's voice rose again in the same formula.

"Shawondassee, tell us how you chose your name."

"Shawondassee means 'South Wind,'" answered Marie's steady voice. "I
chose the name because the South Wind coaxes instead of scolding, and I
thought it was a good name to remind me to do the same thing. As my
symbol I have chosen the willow shoots, because they come up year after
year, no matter how often they are cut down, and I wish to have their
perseverance."

"Perseverance and cheerfulness!" whispered Louise. "Who would have
thought Marie needed either of them?"

"You can't tell much about Marie, because you never can get to her to
talk about herself," answered Winona. "But she certainly is one of the
hardest workers in the class at school."

At this point the girls had to stop talking, to join in the
Wood-gatherer's verses for Marie.

Nearly all Marie's required honors were Patriotism, for she was the
student of the crowd.

"It fairly makes me shiver to think how much that girl knows," whispered
Louise. "My honors are going to be plain home-craft--making pies and
chaperoning ice-chests and massaging floors, and so forth."

"Will your mother let you?" asked Winona; for Mrs. Lane kept two maids,
having the money to do it, and a big family.

"Let me!" exploded Louise. "She'll weep tears of joy if there's any
prospect of my getting thinner!"

Just as Louise spoke there fell one of those uncanny silences which have
a way of occurring at the worst possible times. Louise's statement
pealed cheerfully through the room, and poor Louise, blushing scarlet,
tried to make herself very small--a hard matter.

The girls could not help laughing, but Mrs. Bryan had mercy on her
embarrassment, and went on with the awarding of the honor beads each
girl had won since the last meeting. Winona's were rather various--a few
from each class. Helen's were nearly all hand-craft--stencilling and
clay-modelling. She had brought along a bureau-scarf she had done, to
show, and a beautiful little bowl she had modelled and painted and
fired. Louise had only three beads so far, one for identifying birds,
one for preserving, and one for making her ceremonial dress.

Edith Hillis, to everybody's surprise, was given an honor for
folk-dancing, and proceeded, when she was asked, to get up and
demonstrate. This held up the regular course of the meeting for quite a
little while, because when she showed them the Highland Fling all the
girls wanted to learn it. So for at least a half-hour they practised it,
till the floor over Mr. Bryan's head, in his study beneath, must have
seemed to be coming down.

After they had all tired themselves thoroughly they sang for awhile.
About midway of the second song Mrs. Bryan evidently remembered
something, for she gave a start as if she were going to speak. As soon
as they had finished she raised her hand for silence, and said:

"I have a message for Camp Karonya. It should be delivered at the
business meeting, I suppose, but--it won't keep till then. The Boy
Scouts, Camp No. Six, of this town, invite the Camp Fire Girls to a
dance given by them in the school-house assembly-room next Wednesday
night."

"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" cried Edith. "Of course we'll go!"

A confused noise of voices broke out, all speaking at once. You could
catch an occasional word--"blue messaline," "white organdy,"
"orchestra," "how perfectly dandy!"--but for the most part it was just a
noise.

Mrs. Bryan waited placidly till it had quieted down.

"What is your pleasure in this matter, Daughters of the Camp Fire?" she
asked then.

"Oh, we'll go!" cried everybody at once.

"Then you'd better instruct the Secretary to write them to that effect,"
suggested Mrs. Bryan gravely, for the tumult seemed inclined to break
out again.

Winona jumped up and put it in the form of a motion that the Secretary
should reply, and actually induced the girls to second and ratify it.

"I'll write the acceptance right away!" declared Helen with enthusiasm.

She went into the next room, got paper and ink, came back, sat down in
the middle of a ring of interested suggesters, and wrote a very pleased
acceptance.

Winona, robbed of her usual confidante, turned to the girl on her other
side, to talk clothes.

"I'm going to wear my blue organdy, with the Dresden sash and
hair-ribbons," she said without looking to see to whom she was talking.

"Are you?" said the other girl, hesitating a little.

Winona looked at her, at the sound of her voice. She had thought she was
speaking to Louise. But Louise was on the other side of the room, and
the girl next her was Adelaide Hughes, one of the two girls Mrs. Bryan
had brought into their Camp Fire.

It was two months now since Winona and Adelaide had begun to meet each
other weekly at the Camp Fire good times and Ceremonials, but when you
have all the bosom friends you want it is hard to see such a very great
deal of other people. Winona realized now that she had scarcely
exchanged two consecutive sentences with Adelaide all the time she had
known her.

Adelaide was a thin, tired-looking girl of about thirteen, with big blue
eyes and a sensitive mouth, and hair that had curious yellow and brown
lights. She did not join very heartily, ever, in the frolics, but she
seemed to enjoy everything with a sort of shy, watching intensity.

"And what are you going to wear?" Winona asked, more out of friendliness
than curiosity.

Adelaide colored.

"I--I don't know," she said. "I--a white dress, I think."

"Voile?" asked Winona.

Adelaide shook her head.

"No, lawn--if I come. But maybe I won't be there."

"Why, what a shame!" said Winona with the bright friendliness that was a
part of her. "Of course you must be there. Helen accepted for all of
us."

"I know, but--but maybe I can't come," repeated Adelaide.

"Of course you can!" insisted Winona.

Adelaide's eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.

Winona slipped one arm around her. The two girls were sitting a little
apart from the rest by now, in a dusky corner.

"There's some reason why you think you can't, some horrid reason," she
coaxed. "Now, just tell Winona what it is." She spoke as if she were
petting her own younger sister, though Adelaide was only a year younger
than she was.

Adelaide's eyes overflowed, and she felt gropingly for her handkerchief,
to dry her eyes.

"Here's one," whispered Winona, slipping her own into Adelaide's hand.
"Now, tell me, dear. It isn't very bad, is it? Maybe I could help."

"You _can't!_" said Adelaide fiercely, "and I won't tell you a thing
unless you promise not to."

"All right," said Winona cheerfully, "I promise."

"I--I haven't any party dress, and father can't afford to get me one,"
choked Adelaide, "and all I have is an old white lawn I wear afternoons,
and it's _horrid_. And--and, Winona Merriam, if you offer to loan me a
dress I'll never speak to you again!"

"I wasn't going to," comforted Winona, stroking poor sobbing Adelaide's
shoulder, while her own quick, friendly mind cast about for a way out.

For Adelaide must come to the dance, and evidently she wouldn't borrow
anything from anybody.

"Not borrow--how queer!" said Winona, voicing her thought. "Why, I don't
know any of the girls I wouldn't borrow from, if I needed to, or they
from me. Don't you ever borrow anything, Adelaide--except trouble?"

"No, I don't," said Adelaide chokily but proudly. "It's--it's different
when you _have_ to!"

"I don't see why!" said sunny, friendly-hearted Winona, who always took
it for granted that she liked people, and of course that they would like
her! She had never known what it was to be rich, but never either what
it was to be painfully poor. "Well, let's think of some other way. I
suppose you haven't time to earn the money for a dress for this party.
Opeechee was telling us last week that we ought to try to earn so much
money apiece, and that there were lots of ways for doing it."

"No, there wouldn't be time," answered Adelaide mournfully; but she
stopped crying and began to look interested.




CHAPTER SIX


The two girls sat and thought hard for a moment; then Winnie suddenly
thought of something.

"Just a minute, Adelaide!" she whispered, and she went over to the
corner where Mrs. Bryan and Marie Hunter were discussing business
together. The rest were still all talking dance excitedly by the
fireplace.

"Opeechee," she said, "may I ask you something? Would there be any
reason why the girls couldn't wear their ceremonial dresses to the
dance?"

Mrs. Bryan thought for a moment.

"There's no actual reason why we shouldn't," she said. "Only the idea is
that the dresses should be kept for rather intimate and private things."

"But it would be such a good idea if we wore them," insisted Winona
eagerly. "You see, perhaps--perhaps some of us mightn't be able to
afford new party dresses, and maybe we mightn't have any old good ones,
either."

"Why, Winnie, you have that blue----" began Marie, and checked herself
as she saw a light.

"Some of us mightn't have any new party dresses," repeated Winona
obstinately, but with an appealing look at Mrs. Bryan. She did so hope
she would understand! "Anyway, the boys expect us to," she went on
eagerly. "Tom said this afternoon that we'd better get the dresses
ready, only we didn't know then what he meant."

Mrs. Bryan looked at Winona's vivid, earnest face, and--understood.

"I think you are quite right, Ray of Light. I'll speak to the girls."

She stood up and struck lightly on the little Indian drum to call the
girls' attention.

"Girls!" she said, "as the dance that the Scouts have asked us to is an
affair to which we have been invited as an official body, it seems to me
that it would be only courteous for us to wear our ceremonial gowns. So
I am going to ask that you all do it."

There was a murmur of approval all over the room. When you have just
acquired a beautiful new costume it's human nature to want to wear it
early and often. There was only a plaintive wail, which Marie
suppressed, from Edith Hillis:

"Oh, my lovely new green messaline!"

Winona crossed over to the place where Adelaide still sat.

"Well?" she said triumphantly.

"Did you tell Mrs. Bryan anything about me?" Adelaide demanded
suspiciously.

"No, I didn't," replied Winona rather indignantly. "What do you take me
for, when I said I wouldn't?"

"Well, I didn't know," apologized Adelaide. "And--thank you, ever so
much, Winona! You--you don't _know!_"

Winona laughed.

"Why, yes, I do. At least, I've often wanted new clothes when I couldn't
have them. But mother says if you can't the next best thing is to go on
wearing what you have, and be so cheerful nobody has time to think what
you have on!"

"Nobody ever told me that," pondered Adelaide, as if it were an entirely
new idea to her. "But my mother's dead, you see. And, anyway, it doesn't
sound as if it could be true. Did you ever try it?"

"Yes," Winona said, and laughed. "I did--it was funny, too. I was
visiting some cousins of mine. I hadn't expected to stay, and I hadn't
brought a single party thing, and none of their clothes would fit me.
They had perfectly lovely dresses. And suddenly we were all invited to a
party, and I had nothing but a blue linen; and all the rest of them in
the fluffiest clothes you ever saw!"

"Well," said Adelaide, "didn't it feel _horrid_."

"Yes, it did for awhile," owned Winona. "But everybody was sitting
around as stiff as stiff--you know, some parties are like that at first.
And somebody just had to say something. And pretty soon I thought of a
game that just fitted in, and asked them to play it. After that I was so
busy thinking up games that I never remembered a thing I had on till we
got home that night. And I only did then because my cousin Ethel said,
'Oh, I've torn my dress!' and I said it was queer I hadn't torn mine,
too--and then I remembered that it was linen and wouldn't tear. We
certainly had a good time at that party!"

Adelaide looked at Winona's shining eyes and flushed cheeks enviously.

"Yes, you could do that," she said, "and people would be so busy
watching you that they wouldn't know whether you had a flour-sack on or
a satin. But I can't, because I keep worrying all the time about what
people think of me."

"Oh, I should think that _would_ be horrid," Winona sympathized.

"It is," said Adelaide, "only I----"

The rest that Adelaide had been going to say was drowned, because just
then came the signal for the closing song, and soon the Council Fire was
over.

                   *       *       *       *       *

"What on earth were you talking to Adelaide Hughes so long about?"
demanded Louise curiously as they walked home, for their ways lay
together.

"Oh, just things," was Winona's answer. "I think she's awfully shy, and
a little afraid of the rest of us, Lou."

"And you think we ought to make a special fuss over her?" said Louise
mournfully. "I knew that was coming. Well, I suppose we will--Helen and
I always do what you tell us to. I wish I were shy, and people ran
around saying, 'we really must make an effort to draw poor little timid
Louise out!'"

Winona burst out laughing--the idea of "poor, little, timid Louise" was
so irresistibly funny.

"It's going to be a gorgeous dance, though." Louise went on. "Wasn't it
splendid of the Scouts to think of doing it? And what about my being
right?"

"You certainly were right," Winona admitted. "Are you sure you don't
mind going on alone?"

For they had reached the Merriam house.

"Not a bit," said Louise cheerfully. "It's only a block, anyway.
Good-night, honey."

                   *       *       *       *       *

"Oh, it's lovely!" exclaimed Winona next morning when she ran
downstairs. She flung herself on Tom bodily and hugged him hard as she
spoke.

"What's lovely?" asked Tom, detaching himself, or trying to. "Go easy,
Winnie; it was just sheer luck that you didn't break any ribs or my
collar-bone or something. Affection's all right in its place, but----"

"But its place isn't on you, you mean?" retorted Winona, unwinding
herself cheerfully from her brother. "Why, I mean the dance, of course."

"Oh, that!" said Tom. "That's nothing! It ought to be pretty good fun,
though, don't you think so?"

"Oh, I know it will!" cried Winona fervently. "Are the boys going to
wear their uniforms?"

"Well," said Tom doubtfully, "we don't know. You see, we've hiked in
'em, and rolled around on the grass in 'em wrestling, and done about
everything to those poor old uniforms that you can do to clothes, and
they really aren't fit for civilized society."

"Meaning ours?" said Winona. "Thanks for the compliment! Why don't you
have them cleaned? I suppose even khaki cleans!"

"I don't know," said her brother, "I'll ask mother. Maybe we can manage
it. But--oh, say, Winnie, there's something I wanted to speak to you
about. You know, there are new people moved in next door. They're
Southerners, here for the mother's health or something. There's a boy
about my age, and a girl somewhere around yours. I don't know much about
the girl, but Billy Lee's an awfully decent fellow, and we've got him in
the Scouts. Now what do you think about taking his sister into your Camp
Fire? She'd just about fit in as far as age goes, and it would be nice
and neighborly. We'll have to ask her for the dance anyway, because
there aren't enough of you Camp Firers yet to go around. The girl must
need something to do, because Billy seems to worry about her rather.
Stands to reason it isn't natural for a fellow to fret about his sister
having a good time unless she needs it pretty badly."

"Oh, I don't know," said Winona. "When you come to a strange place
things are bound to be stupid till you get to know people. We've lived
here always, you know. But I'll go over and see her as soon as I've done
the breakfast dishes."

Accordingly, when the breakfast dishes were done and the dining-room
tidied, Winona washed her hands over again very carefully, and put
cold-cream and talcum powder on them, for she did not like the smell of
dish-water, especially when she was going calling. Then she made her way
to the house next door.

All the houses on that block stood in deep yards, which went all around
them. Winona crossed the path and went up the porch, feeling a little
shy. She had not asked anyone to join the Camp Fire before. They were to
take in five new girls at the next monthly meeting, just before they
went camping, but all of them had let the girls know that they wanted to
join. Winona was a moving spirit in Camp Karonya, and she knew that
anyone she vouched for would be welcome. But she did hope the next-door
girl would fit in with the rest of them.

The door was opened by a colored maid, but before she could say whom she
was, a dark, handsome boy of about fifteen, in a Scout uniform, came
running down the stairs.

"You're Winnie Merriam, aren't you?" he asked eagerly. "I'm Billy Lee. I
asked your brother to send you over to see Nataly."

Winona liked Billy on the spot, he was so friendly and natural and nice,
and very good-looking besides.

"If his sister's like him she'll be splendid to have in the Camp Fire,"
she thought, and her spirits went up with such a bound that she was able
to smile brightly, and say enthusiastically as she held out her hand to
Billy Lee:

"Yes, indeed, I'm Winona Merriam, and I'm so glad Tom did send me. I
know your sister and I are going to be friends."

"Well, I do hope so," said Billy as confidentially as if he had known
her for years. "I'm having a gorgeous time in the Scouts--went on a hike
yesterday, and we never got back till nine o'clock, and three of the
fellows got all stung up with a hornet's nest."

This didn't sound much like a fine time to Winona, but she supposed boys
knew what they liked. She couldn't help laughing, though.

  If that's your idea of a wonderful time
  Take me home--take me home!

she hummed. She thought she'd sung it under her breath, but it was
evidently loud enough to be heard, for Billy Lee burst out laughing,
too.

"Well, I didn't mean that getting stung was a pleasure exactly," said
he, "but we do have dandy times."

All this time they had been standing in the hall. Suddenly it seemed to
occur to Billy that Winona had come to see his sister, not him. He
ushered her hurriedly into the living-room.

"I'll send Nataly down to you," he promised. But in another minute he
came tearing downstairs again.

"She says, would you mind coming up to her room?" he panted. "She hasn't
felt so awfully well to-day, and she isn't exactly up."

Winona followed him, consumed with curiosity as to what could ail a
girl, not to be up on a beautiful spring morning, and what "not exactly
up" meant. She found out in another minute.

The bed-room where Nataly was had all its windows closed, and there was
a close scent of toilet-water and sachet-powder and unairedness through
the whole place.

"Here's Winnie Merriam, that I told you about, sister," said Billy Lee,
and bolted. He never seemed to walk, only to run.

Nataly Lee rose from the couch where she had been lying, and came toward
Winona.

"I'm very glad to see you," she greeted Winnie languidly. "I think I
have seen you--out in your back garden yesterday."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Winona. "I was playing tag there with my
sister Florence and little Bessie Williams."

"Do you still play tag?" asked Nataly, gesturing her visitor to a seat,
and lifting one weary eyebrow.

"Not as a confirmed habit," said Winona mischievously. "But you can't
play it well with only two, and the children wanted me to, so--well, I
just did, that was all. Don't you like tag?" she added. ("I was morally
certain she'd faint," she confided to Tom afterwards, "but she didn't.")

As a matter of fact, Nataly pulled closer the blue brocaded negligee
that was obviously covering up a nightgown, and said, "I don't know much
about games. I like reading better."

"Oh, do you?" exclaimed Winona, interested at once. "I love reading,
too, but somehow there's so little time for it except when it's bad
weather. Don't you do anything but read?"

"Not much," replied Nataly languidly. "Sports bore me."

Winona gave an inward gasp of dismay.

"Mercy!" she thought, "what a queer girl!" But outwardly she persevered.
"Don't you ever dance?"

Nataly opened her heavy hazel eyes with a little more interest.

"Oh, yes, I dance, of course."

"So do I," said Winona. "I love it."

"Do you?" said Nataly. "I shouldn't think so--you seem so--athletic."

"Oh, I'm glad," said Winona innocently, beaming with pleasure. "But I'm
not, particularly. I can swim, of course, and row and paddle a little,
and play tennis a little. But I've never played hockey or basket-ball,
either of them, much. Or baseball."

"Do girls play baseball up here?" demanded Nataly, sitting up and
letting a paper novel with a thrilling picture on the cover slide to the
floor.

"They do," averred Winona solemnly, but with sparkling eyes. She was
tempted to go on shocking her hostess by thrilling stories of invented
boxing-matches between herself and her little schoolmates, but she
thought better of it. "But that wasn't really what I came about," she
went on, looking longingly at the closed window, for the airless room
was beginning to make her cheeks burn. "Next week the Scouts are giving
us Camp Fire Girls a dance, you know--and you are coming, aren't you?"

"Yes, I think so," Nataly spoke slowly, lying back on the sofa and
beginning to finger her paper novel again.

"Well"--it came out with rather a rush--"would you like to join the Camp
Fire? I think you'd like it."

She went on enthusiastically telling Nataly all about it, till she was
brought up short by a genuine and unsuppressed yawn on Nataly's part.

"All that work?" said Nataly plaintively. "Oh, I couldn't do any of
those things--I'd die!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Winona was a little taken aback. The idea of
considering whether things were too much trouble or not was a new one to
her. She had always gone on the principle that--why--you _wanted_ to
plunge into things head-foremost, and do them with all your might--that
was the way to have fun! So the idea of lying on a sofa and shuddering
at the idea of work was a great surprise.

"No, I really couldn't join," said Nataly, with the first energy she had
shown. "But I'm very glad you came to see me."

"Yes, so am I," said Winona politely. "And you will come and see me as
soon as you can, won't you?"

"Yes, indeed," promised Nataly. She threw up her hand and pressed a
button back of her sofa as she spoke, for Winona was rising to go.

"Emma will show you the way downstairs," she said languidly, "and don't
you want this? It's very interesting--I've just finished it."

"This" was the paper novel with the melodramatic cover.

"Why, thank you!" said Winona, taking it politely. "It's very kind of
you. And you will come over?"

"Oh, yes," responded Billy Lee's sister, "I shall be very glad to call."

                   *       *       *       *       *

"Well, how was it?" demanded Tom of his sister that evening.

Winona laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

"Why, very nice. Only Nataly Lee's about a million years older than I
am, and she made me feel as if I were seven instead of fourteen. And she
certainly is the _queerest_ girl! She doesn't seem to want to do
anything for fear it will be too much trouble!"

"What about joining up with your Daughters of Pocahontas?" inquired Tom.

Winona didn't stop to rebuke him for his flippancy.

"Well, about that," she replied, "she reminded me of one of the haughty
ladies in the Japanese Schoolboy's housework experiences--don't you
remember? 'I have not the want to,' she sniffed haughtily with
considerable frequency! But she's coming to the dance."

"Queer," said Tom. "There's no nonsense about Billy--he's a good
all-around fellow. Well, you never can tell."

"No," acquiesced Winona philosophically, "you can't, and it's rather a
good thing, too!"




CHAPTER SEVEN


"You certainly are taking it easy, considering there's going to be a
dance!" declared Tom. "Usually when anything like that is going to
happen you run around like a hen with its head cut off!"

"No reason why I should, this time," said Winona, laughing. "You Scouts
are giving the dance, not we. Though perhaps it's because my dress is
off my mind. You always have to press a frock out and clean your white
shoes, and be sure your sash is all right, when you're wearing anything
festive. But thanks to your suggestion about wearing the ceremonial
dress, you'll see 'ten little Injuns' walking in to-night, headbands,
moccasins and all--and I have nothing to worry about."

Winona stretched herself out in the Morris-chair and looked provokingly
comfortable and unoccupied.

"I heard about it," said Tom.

Winona flushed.

"What did you hear?"

"About you and your ceremonial dresses. But I guessed, too."

"Who told you--and what did they tell?" demanded Winona, sitting up and
looking ruffled.

"Marie--that all the girls mightn't have party clothes," Tom placidly
replied.

"Marie hadn't any business to!" said Winona.

"Well, I guessed the rest. You see, Lonny Hughes is in the Scouts, too,
and he--well, he tells me things sometimes. And I know Adelaide felt
pretty badly for awhile because she couldn't keep up with some of
you--Edith mostly, I guess. He said he had to fairly bully his sister
into joining you girls, even after Nannie'd coaxed her. You certainly
were a good sport, Win! You know, there's just Lonny and Adelaide and a
younger sister, and the father. They have one of those little flats over
James's drug-store, in the Williamson Block, and Mr. Hughes doesn't get
an awful lot of salary. Anyway, the kids keep house, and Adelaide has to
look after herself all the way round. So she takes this hard, the money
end, I mean."

"I think she's silly!" said downright Winona.

"Maybe!" said Tom wisely, and went on bestowing loving care on his
repeating rifle, the joy of his life.

Winona retired into a book, and Tom, looking up a second later, caught
sight of its cover.

"Great Scott!" he ejaculated, eying it. "Where did you get _that?_"

"Where did she get what?" asked Louise, walking unceremoniously in.
"Hello, Tom. Oh, Winnie, I want you to show me about this headband. I
can't get the colors matched right--you know you have to be rather kind
to beautiful golden hair like mine. It won't stand every color there
is."

"No rest for the wicked!" said Winona cheerfully, sitting up and
abandoning her book. "You don't mean you're going to try to get this
done for to-night?"

"I certainly am," said Louise doggedly.

"All right." And Winona, pulled up a little table between them.
"Here--this is the way."

The two girls bent over the little loom, their heads close together.
Tom, meanwhile, finished cleaning his gun, wrapped it carefully in oiled
red flannel, and looked around for more worlds to conquer.

The first thing his eyes lighted on was the paper novel Winona had
reluctantly laid down--the one Nataly had loaned her.

"For the love of Mike, where did you get this?"

"Your friend's sister, next door," said Winona mischievously. "Don't you
like her taste in books?"

"Crazy about it!" said Tom. "'Beautiful Coralie's Doom; or, Answered in
Jest,'" he read from the vivid cover. "Say Louise, this hero was a
dream. You ought to hear the amount of things he's called the heroine,
and this is only the first chapter!"

"Go ahead," urged Louise, while Winona tried vainly to get the book away
from her brother, "I guess I can bear it!"

"Let's see. Child, sweetheart, angel, cara-mia, little one--I'll have to
start on the other hand, I've used up all my fingers on this one--loved
one, petite, schatzchen--wonder what that is? The only thing he's left
out so far is 'kiddo.' I suppose we'll come to that further on.
'Lancelot looked down at her through his long, superfluous eyelashes,'"
Tom went on, reading at the top of his strong young voice. "Those were
well-trained eyelashes all right. I'll bet he hung by 'em every day to
get 'em in shape to use so much. I've found six sentences about those
lashes on one page, and every one the same."

"You wouldn't expect him to have a new set every time, would you?"
inquired Louise sarcastically.

"It's a wonder he didn't have to. One set must have been pretty well
worn out by the end of a chapter. 'Ah, you wicked fellow,' Coralie said
archly," he went on, sitting down on the floor with the book. Winona
made a dive for it, but she wasn't quick enough. "This wicked part's
what gets me. There's an average of twenty-five 'wickeds' to every
chapter, and the poor fellow's never even forgotten to return an
umbrella!"

"Or a book his sister was reading," suggested Louise.

"And what's a 'saucy meow,' Winona? Coralie did 'em all the time. Can
you?"

But here Winona threw herself bodily on him, and this time she managed
to recover her book, which she sat on.

"Well, this literature class is very interesting, but my happy home
wants me," said Louise, rising and taking up her loom and the headband,
which was in a fair way to be properly finished now. "Thanks, ever so
much, Ray of Light. You're the best girl as ever-ever-was. See you
to-night, Tommy."

"Now, _that's_ some girl," said Tom admiringly. "No nonsense about her.
Do you want me to take you over, Winnie?"

"That would be awfully nice of you, but we thought we'd 'attend in a
body,' as the papers say," answered Winona. "Aren't you boys going to?"

"Well, you see, there are extra girls," explained Tom. "There aren't
enough of you Scoutragettes to go round, so we've asked some other
girls, and we have to go after them. But we'll get them early, and be
there to meet you when you get there."

"Well, I don't want to croak." And Winona arose to go into the kitchen,
for that way lay an honor bead, and it was nearly supper-getting time.
"But I think the boy who goes after Nataly Lee _won't_ be drawn up to
meet us, unless we kindly hold back the order of march for him."

"Shouldn't wonder," called Tom after her. "Get something good for
supper, there's a useful sister!"

But though there was a slight delay in the order of march, it was Louise
Lane, of all unexpected people, who was responsible for it: her headband
went wrong after all, she explained when, flushed and panting, she
appeared in her other one at the meeting-place.

The girls fell into step and marched, two and two, out into the street
up the short block to the school-house, where most of the public affairs
in the town were held.

"Oh, isn't it gorgeous?" whispered Winona irrepressibly as they came
steadily and lightly up the centre of the hall, till they faced the
Scouts.

These last were drawn up in a military formation, in the order of their
seniority, with the Scoutmaster at their head. He was a plump, cheerful,
middle-aged man, the father of three of the Scouts, and vice-principal
of the High School. But you would never have thought he had seen a
class-room, he looked so military and colonel-fied, there at the head of
his line of erect, soldierly-looking boys.

"It's like real receptions!" whispered Helen to Winona, as the orchestra
blared out "Hail to the Chief!" which was as near to "Welcome to the
Camp Fire Girls" as the orchestra's resources could come. Then Mrs.
Bryan and Mr. Gedney gave the order to break ranks, and the orchestra
slid with surprising ease into a Paul Jones. So did the boys and girls.

"We got here first, you see," whispered Tom to Winona as he crossed her.
The round went on for quite a little while before the whistle blew for
the breaking up into twos, so Winona was able to question and answer bit
by bit as she and her brother met and parted.

"What about the extra girls?" she whispered, for no extra girls were to
be seen.

"The fellows are going after them now," explained Tom. "This was a
dance----" Tom had to leave, and finished on the next round, "for the
Camp Fire. The others didn't come first, naturally."

And sure enough, by the time the first dance was over, the extra boys
were back, bringing partners with them--girls Camp Karonya knew, and who
were presently going to form a second Camp Fire--for Camp Karonya's
membership list was almost full now. The newcomers had evidently been
asked to wear fancy costume, and the effect of the Indian dresses that
the Camp Fire Girls wore, and the boys' military clothes, was lighted up
and made more beautiful by the dash of color made by an occasional gypsy
or Oriental lady.

The hall had been decorated in a half-military, half-woodland fashion,
with tents draped against the walls, crossed rifles, green boughs and
lighted lanterns. It was a warm night, so they had filled the big
fireplace at the side of the room with boughs. The entrance to the
kitchen, where the cooking-classes were held in the school every Friday,
was covered by a tent. Behind that tent, the exciting rumor spread, was
a real colored caterer who was going to serve refreshments of
unparalleled splendor at the proper time.

But at about ten o'clock a frenzied rapping was heard from the place
which was supposed to hold the mysterious caterer. It rose above the
music. Mr. Gedney hurried to the door to see what had happened. An irate
negro appeared--the city caterer who had been imported to lend grandeur
to the scene.

"Mr. Gedney," he said in what he may have thought was a tragic whisper,
but which echoed through half the hall, "I'se been a-caperin' fo'
nineteen yeahs, an' ah nevah had anything as shockin' happen to me as
dis heah befo'."

"Why, what's the matter, Thomas?" Mr. Gedney asked, while the more
curious of the dancers marked time gently within earshot.

"Dey done stole mah 'freshments!" wailed the darky, forgetting, in his
emotion, to lower his voice. "Ah had de ice-cream an' de san-wiches an'
de fruit-punch an' de fancy-cake"--a soft moan went up unconsciously
over the room as the hungry dancers heard of these vanished
glories--"an' Ah put dem out on de side poach till Ah wanted dem. Ah
didn't know Ah was comin' to no thief-town. An dey's _gone!_"

Mr. Gedney rose to the occasion nobly.

"We'll find some of them, Thomas," he said.

By this time nearly everyone in the room had paused about the door. Mr.
Gedney raised his voice. "Ladies," he said, "if you will excuse your
partners for half an hour they will go out on the trail of
our--ah--vanished refection. Scouts, attention! By twos, forward--hike!"

In an instant every Scout, with a hasty excuse to his partner, had
vanished from the building.

"It's that Bent Street gang," hissed Tom to his sister in passing. "We
know where they hang out, and where they're likely to have cached the
eats."

"I only hope there'll be something left by the time the Scouts find the
food," wailed Louise. "Don't look so happy, Winnie--it's insulting!"

"She's swelling as if she had an idea," suggested Helen, who had come
over. "What is it, Win?"

"So I have!" said Winona, her eyes sparkling as they always did when
Great Ideas came her way. She was rather given to them. She ran across
to Mrs. Bryan and began to talk to her in an excited whisper.

When she had done Mrs. Bryan nodded.

"Splendid!" she said. "Tell the girls yourself, my dear."

So Winona stood swiftly out in the middle of the floor, a slim, gallant
little figure in her Indian frock and the long strings of scarlet beads
she had added to it.

"Girls!" she said. "Those refreshments mayn't ever come back. The boys
won't be back with them right away, anyhow. Let's get together and make
some more!"

"Good!" called out all the girls at once, and came flocking around Mrs.
Bryan and Winona for orders. But Mrs. Bryan wouldn't give any.

"You manage it, Ray of Light!" said she as Winona turned to her.

"We want sandwiches and fruit punch and cakes, and--we can't get
ice-cream this late at night," she remembered.

"We can get oysters," said Helen's competent voice from behind a group
of girls. "That oyster house down on Front Street is always open till
twelve."

"Then we can make creamed oysters--good!" said Winona. "Let's
see--sixteen couples--about fifty sandwiches, if you count three to a
person. Six loaves of bread, about. Marie, you belong to a big
family--do you think you have any bread in the house your family could
part with?"

"Three loaves, anyway," said Marie.

"I'll bring the other three," spoke up Elizabeth Greene, one of the new
members.

They both threw on their wraps and hurried out. Fortunately, most of the
girls lived close by.

"We'll send Thomas for the oysters," suggested Mrs. Bryan next. "None of
you want to go to Front Street this time of night."

She produced her purse from the pocket of her ceremonial dress, and went
to send Thomas for the oysters.

"Has anybody got anything in their house to fill sandwiches with?"
Winona went on.

"We have two pounds of dates," offered Edith Hillis, "and some rolls of
cream cheese."

"And I have the other half of both sketches, peanut butter and
lettuces," called out Louise, "three heads, and two big glasses."

"All right, go get 'em," said Winona unceremoniously, and two more
sisters of the Camp Fire hurried on their wraps and fled out into the
night.

"I have milk and butter, myself," went on Winona.

"Nannie," hinted Helen to Mrs. Bryan, who had returned, "do you remember
those three big layer cakes you made for the Presbyterian fair? I'll
make them over again if I can have them now."

"No you won't, my child, because they're my contribution," returned her
step-mother briskly. "Thank you for reminding me. I'll get them, and
pineapples and lemons for your contribution to the lemonade."

Dorothy remembered that she had some oranges and bananas, and Adelaide
finally recalled to the rest that creamed oysters need thickening, and
went after flour and salt and pepper.

A couple of the other girls had candy at home, beautifully fresh and
home-made. In fifteen minutes every girl was back laden down, and all of
them invaded the little school kitchen. Fortunately most of the sixteen
had taken cooking lessons there, and knew just where to find everything,
even to their own aprons. So there was no time lost searching for
matches and knives and bowls, and other such necessaries.

One group of four cut and squeezed and sliced fruit for the
fruit-punch--or fruit-lemonade, to give it the only name it was really
entitled to. Another set prepared the sandwiches, which, what with
pitting and chopping the dates for the date-and-peanut-butter ones, and
cutting and spreading six big loaves of bread, was quite an undertaking.
Another group handled the creamed oysters. This last wasn't exactly a
group, though, because, try as you may, it is impossible for more than
two people to make one cream gravy, or white sauce. The rest cut cake
and arranged plates and looked after the serving generally.

Thomas the "caperer" sat in a corner and "shucked oysters," as he called
it, with his two attendant waiters standing statue-like behind him. It
made a very impressive, if rather useless group.

Mrs. Bryan lent a helping hand here and there as it was needed, but in
the main she left the guidance of the affair to Winona's generalship.

"Why, I didn't know how easy it was to have people do things!" Winona
whispered to the Guardian, when that lady came over to her once to
advise a little more butter in the gravy.

"You happen to have executive ability, that's all," explained Mrs.
Bryan.

Winona laughed. "Oh, it doesn't take executive ability when people want
to help!" she returned gayly.

The boys got back in just forty-five minutes, with rather dirtier
uniforms than they had taken away. They were panting, also, and had a
general cheerful air of having had something happen. But with them they
bore, triumphantly, the untouched freezer, full of beautiful molds of
ice-cream; also a large pasteboard box full of untouched, but rather
crumpled-looking, fancy cakes.

The sandwiches, they explained regretfully, were beyond recall, and so
was the salad. The Bent Street gang had been just about to begin their
last course when the Scouts descended.

"We had a bully time!" said Billy Lee to Winona, who emerged from the
kitchen, trying hard to look unoccupied, as did all the rest of the
girls. "We didn't expect a lark like that in the middle of this. But
it's hard on you girls to miss half the refreshments!"

"Don't worry," said Winona cheerfully. "We aren't going to miss any of
the refreshments, and neither are you! What do you think Camp Fire Girls
are good for?"

"Lots!" said Billy honestly, "but I don't see----"

"That's because you aren't looking," laughed Winona.

She pointed towards the little tent that draped the kitchen door. From
out that tent issued haughtily Thomas's two negro waiters, each bearing
a steaming, creamed-oyster-laden tray.

"You'd better sit down," suggested Winona, "Everybody else has."

"Well, this is great!" cried Billy enthusiastically, between bites of
creamed oysters and sandwiches, and sips of fruit lemonade that was
really better than that the Bent Street gang had stolen. "You don't mean
to say you girls did all this right off the bat, while we were hunting
the hoodlums, do you?"

"Why, of course we did," and Winona dimpled with pleasure. "There were
such a lot of us that it wasn't hard at all."

"Anyhow, whoever managed it was a mighty clever person," said Billy,
meditatively eating his last oyster. "Don't you think so?"

This happened to be a rather embarrassing question.

"Why, no!" she said thoughtlessly.

"Then it was you!" said Billy, jumping cleverly to his conclusion.

"We all helped," said Winona, blushing. "Everybody brought something. I
only thought of it first--that was easy."

"Easy if you know how!" said Billy skeptically.

"Winona knew how," asserted Helen's voice behind them. She began to talk
to Winona and Billy very earnestly about several things that didn't seem
to have much to do with life in general. They had to turn half round to
face her, which was what she wanted, for it prevented Winona from seeing
that all the members of the Camp Fire were clustered near her place. The
first she knew of it was Mrs. Bryan's voice saying:

"All together, girls--a cheer for Ray of Light, who saved the
refreshments!"

The girls' voices rang out in the triple cheer for Winona, who blushed
harder than ever.

"I didn't do anything but suggest it!" she explained uselessly. Then she
remembered her manners and sprang up.

"Thank you, Sisters of the Camp Fire--even if I _don't_ deserve it!" she
said gayly.

Then the band started up and dancing went on.

The evening ended with a riotous Virginia reel (which, by the way, meant
an honor bead for every girl, because the boys none of them knew much
about reeling, and had to be shown) and a final ringing cheer for the
Camp Fire Girls by the Scouts. Then the party broke up. Though broke up
is hardly the word, for the girls marched out, as they had come, in a
body, with a military file of Scouts on either side of them. Altogether
it certainly was the most festive of parties, and everybody thought so
even next morning, when the mournful things about a party are apt to
occur to you.

The Scouts insisted, by the way, on replacing the various things that
had been taken out of various pantries. The girls had intended to pay
their families scrupulously back, but the Scouts extracted an exact
account of the commandeered supplies from their sisters and cousins.
Then they saw to it that everything, from the last loaf of bread to the
last peanut, was redelivered by four next day. And so ended "the very
best party," as everybody agreed, "that we ever had."




CHAPTER EIGHT


"It _was_ a nice party!" sighed Winona, for the tenth time, next day.

"It was," admitted Tom. "I enjoyed it myself. Also the eats were good.
Very clever of us to give a party like that. The question is, if you
girls had to manage a real meal what would happen?"

"That's exactly what we're going to do," said Winona. "This very
afternoon, at Mrs. Bryan's!"

"Oh, can't I go?" clamored Florence.

"Well, it's just Helen and Louise and Adelaide Hughes and I," Winona
hesitated. "It's the maid's day out, and we're going to get the supper
and clear it away. Four of the others are going to do it a day or so
later. And we're all going to try to get the same supper at our own
houses, the next night."

"Then of course I want to go!" said Florence, "so I can get the same
supper at home the next night."

Still Winona hesitated. It certainly is a nuisance to have a small
sister who wants to tag, when you are just starting off to have a
particularly nice time with your most intimate friends. And to add to
the charm of the situation, just then in rushed Puppums through the back
door, and seeing Winona with her hat in her hand, promptly sat up and
began to beg wildly. Winona began to laugh.

"Oh, come on, then, the whole family!" she said.

Florence and Puppums both yelped for joy.

"Shall I send Tom over to bring you back this evening?" asked Winona's
mother, who was sitting near.

"Oh, no--it isn't far," said Winona, "and it won't be late when I get
back. Besides, I'll have Florence and the doggie."

"Very well," said her mother. "And don't try to cook things that are too
gorgeous, my dear, because we haven't as much money as the Bryans, and
it might turn out to be very expensive."

"I'll remember," said Winona, starting off with her little sister beside
her, and Puppums careering wildly about them both. But it was one of the
things that never did worry the Merriams, whether or not they had as
much money as their neighbors. The three children and the dog, as their
friends said, "always did seem to be having such a good time!" They were
handsome and light-hearted--that is, the children were. Puppums was more
remarkable for brains than beauty, as Tom said; being part pug, part
bull-terrier and part fox-terrier, with a dash of retriever suspected in
his remote ancestry. However, as long as he had his own way and plenty
of bones and enough laps to sit on, neither his looks nor anything else
worried the Puppums dog. His family had intended to give him a very fine
name, but as Puppums he started when he was a small, wriggling
mongrel-baby, and to nothing but Puppums would he ever deign to answer.
So the family made the best of it. It was a way they had, anyway.

Florence began to career around her sister very much as the dog was
doing, singing at the top of her voice meanwhile. So, as Winona did not
have to talk, she began to think. What her mother had said about their
not having so much money as the Bryans set her to wondering, not about
herself, but about Adelaide Hughes. She had noticed that Mrs. Bryan
seemed to want Adelaide to make friends with the other girls, and that
Adelaide herself was very apt to leave the first advances to them. And
the reason, she supposed, was that Adelaide felt she was too poor to
keep up with them, or so Tom had said.

"But I don't ever feel as if I had to keep up with Helen, and she has
twice as many dresses and twice as much money to spend as I have,"
meditated Winona. "I wonder if I could ask Adelaide about it without
hurting her feelings. I will if I get the chance."

About this time Winona and her caravan reached the Bryan house, and
Florence ran ahead so quickly to ring the bell that Winona had to run,
too, to be there when the door opened.

"I've brought my family, Mrs. Bryan!" said Winona. "I hadn't any
choice--they simply would come. It's really your fault for being so
popular with them."

"Your family's very welcome!" said Mrs. Bryan. "If it's willing to be
useful. What about it, Florence,--will you run errands for us if we want
you to?"

"Course I will!" said Florence, flinging herself bodily on Mrs. Bryan
and hugging her hard. "I want to work!"

"Puppums wants to help, too," said Helen.

"Well, you can't help that way, you little villain," said Louise,
appearing aproned in the doorway and making a dash for the dog. He had
his paws on the table, and was most ill-manneredly trying to find out
what was wrapped up in the paper with the lovely meaty smell. Louise
rescued the package, and carried it out to the kitchen.

"Is everyone here?" asked Mrs. Bryan. "No, I miss Adelaide."

"She's just coming now," said Helen from the living-room window. "I
wonder if she's remembered to bring her apron?"

"Oh," cried Winona, "I never brought mine!"

"I'll go get it," said Florence. "You see, you need me already!"

She flew off, with the dog at her heels.

"Truly, I'm sorry, Mrs. Bryan," apologized Winona again, "but she would
have felt so badly if I hadn't let her come!"

"You ought to sit on her more," suggested Louise, popping her head out
of the kitchen door again. "I do on mine."

"Well, you have such a lot of brothers and sisters you have to," said
Winona, for Louise was the oldest of six.

"Bessie wanted to come," said Louise, "but I put my foot down."

"On Bessie?" laughed Winona, as she ran to open the door for Adelaide.
"I hope you didn't hurt her."

"Did you bring your apron, Adelaide?" called Helen anxiously.

"There! She's asked every one of us that question in turn," said Louise,
coming out into the living-room for the fourth time in five minutes. "I
do hope you did!"

"Oh, yes, I did," said Adelaide. "I have it here under my arm."

"And here's Florence back with mine!" said Winona. "Now may we start?"

"It isn't quite time yet," said Mrs. Bryan. "If we plan for supper at
six, one hour is a great plenty of time for supper-getting, especially
with all of us at it. It's only four-thirty now, and I want to tell you
a plan I have. Come here, Florence. It's about you and your friends."

"Oh, a plan about me!" said Florence. "That is nice!"

"You see, girls," went on Mrs. Bryan, "there are always little sisters
or cousins of Camp Fire Girls, like Florence and Bessie and the rest,
who want to play, too. They aren't old enough to belong to Camp Fires of
their own, so the way we do is to make them an annex to ours, under the
name of Blue Birds--the Blue Bird stands for happiness, you know. And we
help them, and show them how to have good times, too, and--they don't
have to tag any more."

"I didn't mean to tag," said Florence, looking a little ashamed. "I just
wanted to--to come, too!"

"Well, if you will go and find Bessie Lane, and--Adelaide, you have a
little sister about their ages, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Adelaide. "Frances is nine."

"Well, Florence, get Bessie and Frances if you can find them, and we'll
discover something for our nest of Blue Birds to do."

"I think it's lovely, being a Blue Bird," said Florence, very much
impressed by belonging to a society of her own.

"Well, if you're a bird, fly!" said Louise, giving her a little push.

The girls talked for a while longer, then donned their aprons and went
out into the kitchen, where they stood and waited for further orders.

"There are four of you," said their Guardian. "There's the table to set,
salad and dressing to make, meat and potatoes to prepare, and dessert.
Cocoa and cake, too. You're welcome to anything in the ice-box, but the
game is to get supper without buying anything extra, unless something
like bread or sugar gives out--some staple."

"That will be more fun," said Winona, who had had some experience lately
with cooking. "It's much more interesting thinking out ways to make
things out of other things, than when you cook straight ahead!"

Adelaide stared as if Winona had said a very strange thing. But then
Adelaide always did look at Winona more or less that way.

"I think the most fun is eating out of paper bags," said Louise. "No
washee dishee. However, I only think that--I wouldn't dare say it.
How'll we divide?"

"Decide that yourselves," said Mrs. Bryan.

"Let's see what there is in the ice-box, first," Winona suggested
prudently, when Mrs. Bryan had left them alone. So they investigated.

"Eight large baked potatoes!" counted Louise. "How on earth did you
miscalculate so badly as that, Helen, or are they there for our special
benefit?"

"No, it just happened," said Helen. "Father was going to bring a friend
home to dinner last night, and neither of them could get here after
all."

There was also a large piece of cooked beefsteak, a head of lettuce, a
dish of cooked peas and some beets. There were other things in the
ice-box as well, but these were what the girls chose. They brought some
apples up from down cellar, too, and stacked them in a row on the table
with the other things.

"Now, Nannie said that the game was to use as many leftovers as possible
and do everything as inexpensively as we could and yet have everything
taste good and not seem warmed over," said Helen.

"That's something a lot of grown-up women never do," said Louise. "My
aunt----"

Mrs. Bryan came from the living-room to say. "I'll show you anything you
don't know about, girls, but you must do the actual work yourselves, or
you won't know how."

"Yes!" said Louise. "Choose your poison, Ladies and Gentlemen!" She
pulled her cooking-cap close down over her hair. "I'm going to do the
potatoes. I think I know how to fix them."

"Cold baked potatoes?" said Helen. "There isn't anything, except
creaming them."

"They're all right that way," said Louise, "but that isn't what I'm
going to do."

"Well, I'll take the cake," said Helen. "I saw some sour milk in the
ice-box, and spice-cake is the cheapest cake I know."

"I'll take the meat," said Winona. "There must be something I can do
with a beautiful piece of steak like that, even if it is cooked."

Adelaide had not said anything.

"That leaves the salad for you, Adelaide," said Mrs. Bryan cheerfully.
"Louise, you'd better see about some fruit for supper, for your potatoes
won't take you long."

Then Mrs. Bryan introduced them to the ways of the gas-range, and went
back to lie in wait for her Blue Birds.

Helen collected spice and molasses and flour and shortening around her
corner of the table, and went systematically to work on her spice-cake.

"It looks like gingerbread," said Winona, getting the bread-crumb jar.

"It is, really, only it hasn't much ginger in," explained Helen. "Lots
of people don't like ginger. What are you going to do with your steak,
Winnie?"

"Frame it!" advised Louise frivolously. "They say they have a four-pound
steak under glass at the Metropolitan Museum, as a relic of the days
when each family had at least one in a lifetime."

"If you want to frame your share of it you may," said Winona. "I'm going
to eat mine."

"They're supposed to be eaten," put in Helen mildly. "But really,
Winnie, I think you have rather a hard job. There's not nearly enough
steak there for eight people. It was only intended for five in the first
place."

"That's the game, isn't it?" said Winona placidly. "Besides, I'm going
to send Florence home to supper. It's all right for her to attach
herself to the party for the afternoon, but I draw the line at her
inviting herself to a meal--don't you think so, Louise?"

"I'm wid yez," called Louise back from the gas-range, where she was
doing something with sugar and water. "Bessie goes back, too."

Winona got the chopping-machine, divided a big stalk of celery with
Adelaide, made another excursion to the shelf over the ice-box for some
peppers and onions, and began to grind her beefsteak.

"Croquettes?" inquired Louise curiously.

"No, scalloped meat," answered Winona. "The croquettes won't go as far,
and there'll be the cream gravy extra, and we'll need milk for the
cocoa. Besides, the deep fat to fry them would be another horrible
extravagance."

She put in a layer of meat as she spoke, then the ground celery and
peppers and seasoning, and a generous layer of bread-crumbs.

"But aren't celery and peppers an extravagance, too?" put in Adelaide,
looking faintly interested. She was the only one of the four girls not
busy. She had not started on her salad.

"They would be if they weren't in the house," said Winona carelessly,
"though I don't think they are costly this time of year. But I'm using
them for their bulk. Mother flavors with celery seed when celery's too
high."

She continued to build up her edifice of meat and crumbs and so forth,
and finally drenched it with cold water and put it in the oven.

"Be careful of my cake when you look at your meat," reminded Helen,
coming and tucking her spice-cake in beside the meat as she spoke. "How
are you getting on, Adelaide?"

"Not at all," said Adelaide ashamedly. "I don't believe I know how to
make salads."

"Come help me set the table, then," invited Helen.

"All right," said Adelaide, getting up slowly from her kitchen chair,
and flinging her long, untidy braids back over her shoulders.

"No, Helen, please!" said Winona. "Let me show Adelaide. I think we can
make a perfectly lovely salad in a few minutes."

"All right, Winnie!" said Helen cheerfully, and vanished into the
dining-room alone.

"I don't see how!" said Adelaide. "I thought you had to have chicken or
lobster or such things for salad--and I'm sure I'd curdle the dressing."

"Of course you will if you expect to," said Louise, setting her syrup on
to boil, and beginning to pare and quarter apples and drop them in cold
water so they wouldn't brown. "Why don't you make boiled dressing?"

"I didn't know about it," said Adelaide.

"Good gracious!" said Louise. "How on earth do you manage at your
house?"

"Well, there's just father and Lonny and France and I, and mostly father
brings home things from the delicatessen. And sometimes we roast meat
and just eat at it till it's gone. I'm not old enough to know much about
housekeeping, father says. But Lonny cooks sometimes."

Winona and Louise both stared at her.

"I'd go crazy," said Louise frankly. "I should think you'd get so you
never wanted to eat anything."

"Anyway, you can 'try this on your piano' when you go home," Winona
threw in hastily, giving Louise a furtive, if thorough, pinch as she
passed her, for she had seen Adelaide color up. "Boiled dressing's easy.
You know how to make drawn butter, don't you--white sauce?"

"Oh, yes," said Adelaide, rising.

"Well," explained Winona, "when you melt the butter in the pan to mix
with the flour, you add some mustard, just a pinch, and salt and pepper.
Then when you've put in the flour, and the milk, and it's just going to
thicken, you put in the yolk of an egg. When it's cold you thin it with
vinegar. That isn't hard, is it?"

Adelaide was swiftly following directions as Winona talked.

"Thin the egg with milk, and beat it a little--that's right," said
Winona. "There--now take it off. The egg only wants to cook a minute.
Now all you have to do is wait till it cools and add the vinegar,
and--there's your dressing!"

"Why, it isn't a bit hard!" said Adelaide wonderingly.

"Nor a bit expensive," said Winona. "As for the salad, you can make
salad out of any kind of vegetable that will cut up."

"Let me see if I can work it out alone," said Adelaide.

She washed the lettuce and set it on the individual salad plates Helen
found for her. Then she began to combine peas and beets and celery quite
as if she knew how.

Winona watched her for a minute, then went over to see what Louise was
doing. While she had been helping Adelaide Louise's syrup had cooked
enough to have the quartered apples dropped into it, and now it was
bubbling on the back of the stove. Just as Winona came over Louise took
off the apples, cooked through, but not to the point of losing their
shape, and put them outdoors to cool. Then she turned her attention to
the baked potatoes of yesterday.

She had heated them through, and now she cut off the tops and scooped
out the inside, and was mixing it with milk and butter and a little
onion, and beating it till it was creamy.

"They're harder to do than if they were fresh," she said, pounding
vigorously, "but I guess they'll come out all right, when they've been
browned a minute."

"They'll be browned just about the time my scalloped meat's done,"
responded Winona, dropping to her knees before the oven. "Oh, Helen,
come take out your cake! It's all done--I've tried it with a straw."

"Oh, it isn't burned, is it?" cried Helen, dashing in.

It wasn't. She put it on the shelf over the range, to keep warm, and
headed a party bound upstairs to tidy up.

"You didn't set places for those little taggers?" called Louise to Helen
on the way up.

"Not at our table," said Helen.




CHAPTER NINE


When the four girls came down and put on the supper they found a
surprise waiting for them. Beside the large table the little
sewing-table had been moved in, spread with a white cloth and set; and
around it, very flushed and important, sat Florence, Bessie Lane,
Frances Hughes, and Edith Hillis's little sister Lucy. Before Frances,
who was the oldest, sat a big dish of creamed potatoes, a platter of
Hamburg steak, and in front of each girl steamed a bowl of tomato soup.

"Well, where----" began everybody. All the small sisters answered at
once.

"We cooked 'em on the gas-stove in the back parlor!"

"All but the soup," added conscientious little blonde Lucy. "We dumped
that out of a can."

"Well, we cooked it, too, didn't we?" inquired Frances.

"So that was what was in the package Puppums wanted!" said Winona.
"Where _is_ Puppums, anyway?" she added as she set down her scalloped
meat.

"I d'no," said Florence carelessly.

But just at that moment Puppums accounted for himself. He came in from
the direction of the half-open back door, in his mouth a neatly done up
package.

"_Oh!_" cried Winona and Florence in one despairing voice, "he's been
stealing again! Drop it, you little wretch!"

Mrs. Bryan went around to Puppums, who was proudly sitting up on his
haunches over his spoils.

"It isn't ours," she said, opening the bundle.

"What is it?" asked Winona. "I might as well know the worst."

"Chops," answered Mrs. Bryan briefly. "Two pounds of very nice lamb
chops, with nothing at all to tell where they belong!"

"Oh, Puppums!" said Winona and Florence together tragically. The rest
were all laughing but to Puppums's family it was far from a laughing
matter.

Puppums Merriam was a splendid watch-dog. He was sweet-tempered and
intelligent and obedient and cheerful, and everything a family dog
should be. But he had one fault. He would occasionally snoop around back
porches in search of anything the butcher might have left. The fact that
he got three good meals a day, and was losing his figure far too fast
for such a young and sprightly dog did not matter to him at all. Neither
did he mind the fact that he got a good whipping every time Tom caught
him at it. Happy indeed was the week wherein the Merriams did not have
to apologetically return roasts or steaks to furious owners; or--if the
condition of the prey made it necessary--buy new ones. But this last did
not happen very often, for Puppums rarely brought home the bills with
him, and it is hard to trace anonymous meat.

So when he proudly presented his contribution to the feast there was
nothing to do but to pick up the chops and put them away.

"I can't spoil the fun by whipping him, and he always thinks my
whippings are fun anyway, and wags his tail!" mourned Winona. "And we'll
never know whose chops they were!"

"They're Puppums's chops now," said Louise. "Go on, give 'em to him,
Winnie. If you went out and gathered chops you wouldn't want to be
scolded."

"Well, I suppose he may as well have them," said Winona still sadly. So,
although it was very wrong, and as she explained to the dog, it didn't
create a precedent, soon the collector of chops was happily crunching
them outside the back door, while the Camp Fire Girls ate made-over meat
within.

"What about our camping out?" Louise demanded, after the first pangs of
appetite were over. "What's the use of being us if we can't camp?"

"We _can_ camp," answered their Guardian as she helped Helen to some
more salad. "This is lovely dressing, Adelaide. I didn't know what good
cooks all of you were. I have been looking things up, and I don't see
why we shouldn't go in a short time now, if all of your parents are
willing and can spare you."

There was a great commotion over at the table where the Blue Birds sat,
and then hurried whispers--

"You ask, Lucy."

"No, you ask, Frances!"

Finally Florence spoke up.

"Can't the Blue Birds go camping, too?"

"Why, of course they can!" said Mrs. Bryan cordially. "That is, just as
with the Camp Fire Girls, if their mothers are willing."

"Oh, then I can go, if we take Frances," said Adelaide relievedly.
"Father and Lonny can get along all right by themselves, but Frances
couldn't. Oh, I'm so glad!" Which was quite a good deal for reserved
Adelaide to say.

"So are we glad," said Helen heartily.

"I wonder whether we couldn't go to that place up on the Wampoag River.
Have you thought of any place, Mrs. Bryan?"

"None but there or thereabouts," she said. "It's the best camping-place
for a long distance, and only about twelve miles off."

"But won't the boys want to camp there, too?" asked Helen.

"There's plenty of room for everybody," said her step-mother. "I've been
talking it over with Mr. Gedney, the Scoutmaster, and he says their camp
will be about two and a half miles from the place I'd thought of our
going. Wampoag River is very long, you know, and there must be five
miles of woodland along both sides. So we needn't interfere with each
other at all."

"Then that's all right," said everybody.

"And oh, let's hike there!" cried Louise. "We can do it in two days as
easily as anything. Please, dear, nice, kind Guardian, let us hike
there!"

"I think it would be a very good thing to do," approved Mrs. Bryan. "But
it isn't for me to settle. You'll have to have a business meeting to
decide that, and to decide another thing that nobody's thought of."

"Ways and means?" ventured Adelaide, perhaps because they had been in
her mind, too.

"Exactly," said Mrs. Bryan. "We haven't enough in the treasury to pay
expenses, even if we only stay a little while. It's for you all to
decide whether you want to get the money from your parents for the
provisions, or whether you will earn it."

"Earn it?" asked Winona, "How could we, in such a little while?"

"You'll have to work that out yourselves," replied Mrs. Bryan, as she
usually did.

"Well, I can't ask dad for _much_ money," Louise frankly confessed.
"Times are hard, and me poor father needs his gold for the lit-tul ones
at home!"

"Well, of course it's premature," hesitated Helen, looking up, "because
the rest aren't here."

"Go on, anyway," said the others eagerly.

"Well, I don't see why we shouldn't have a bread and cake and preserve
sale," she went on. "I'm treasurer, you know, and I'm sure we have
enough money on hand for materials. People will buy things to eat when
they won't buy anything else. I'm sure, too, that we could get Black's
drug-store to sell in."

"We'd need more than one cake-sale, wouldn't we?" asked Winona.

"We could have two--or even four!" asserted Louise boldly. "We needn't
go for two weeks yet, anyway. It will only be the last of July then. We
could have sales Wednesdays and Saturdays."

"And get orders beforehand, and make what people want!" said Louise,
"Oh, I'd love to do that!"

"Will it cost much?" asked Adelaide.

"The sale?" said Louise.

"No, the trip."

"Not a good deal," said Mrs. Bryan. "We have the land free, of course.
We shall have to buy tents--let me see, there are twelve in the Camp
Fire, aren't there? And there will be six or eight Blue Birds. We'll
need ten tents, and then there'll be the provisions. What they cost will
depend on how long you decide to stay. If you hike there and back there
won't be any railroad fare. As for clothes, you'll need blouses and dark
skirts or bloomers, and tennis shoes--but all that can wait till the
business meeting. Marie is secretary--she and Edith and Dorothy and Anna
Morris are going to be here getting luncheon to-morrow. There had better
be a meeting here to-morrow afternoon. I'll telephone Marie after
supper."

Eight very happy girls of assorted sizes cleared away the supper and
washed the dishes and made the kitchen shine. Even Puppums, bulging with
contraband chops, was more amiable than usual, and slept placidly in all
the places where he was most in the way.

"I'm going to take my banjo," planned Louise.

"I shall take pounds and pounds of modelling clay," said Helen
enthusiastically.

"Edith has a mandolin," volunteered Lucy Hillis.

"Everybody that has a musical instrument had better bring it," said Mrs.
Bryan.

"We'll contribute a very fine dog with a stunning howl!" said Winona
mischievously.

"That dog isn't a musical instrument, he's a famine-breeder!" said
Louise; then paused, for Mrs. Bryan went into the dining-room to
telephone Marie Hunter. Edith Hillis was at Marie's, and both girls were
as excited over the cake-sale idea as the rest.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Next afternoon the whole Camp Fire had a business meeting at Mrs.
Bryan's. Besides the girls who had originally belonged, five others had
joined. It was a very pleasant meeting, helped out with afternoon cocoa
and sandwiches that the lunch-getters had prepared. They discussed ways
and means till they could scarcely hear themselves think. Never was
there such an unanimous meeting. For everybody wanted to go camping, and
to go camping money is needed. So three committees were appointed, one
to buy materials, another to borrow an eligible drug-store for Saturday,
and a third to attend to advertising. The girls were to meet Friday, and
each take home what materials she needed. Saturday morning the materials
were to be returned to the drug-store in the shape of salable things to
eat. It even occurred to one genius to allot to each girl a certain
thing to make.

"It's a good thing to do," she said modestly--it was Dorothy. "Once our
Sunday-school class gave a sale, and every single girl brought chocolate
cake."

"I remember that," said Marie. "But it turned out all right."

"Oh, yes," said Dorothy laughing. "We hung a sign in the window,
'Chocolate cake sale!' and it all went. But it mightn't have!"

So Marie made out a careful list of what each girl was to make.

"I don't see how we'll ever sell all those!" she said, looking worried.

But they did. People always will buy bread and cake and muffins. At the
end of the first sale, on Saturday, Edith Hillis, who was on duty, put
seventeen dollars in her hand-bag to take up to Helen.

"There are orders, too," she reported. "We have eight dozen parkerhouse
rolls and two dozen and a half biscuits promised for different lunches
and suppers next week, beside jam orders. Here's the list."

"That ought to be five dollars more," counted Helen.

Edith forgot for once to smooth her dress and pat her curls in the
excitement of success.

"Three more as good and we'll have all the money we need!" she declared.

And, as a matter of fact, the three following sales were better than the
first. Adelaide developed a real talent for jelly-making, and the orders
for that alone helped a good deal. At the crowning sale, the next one to
the last, they made twenty-one dollars, and eighteen and nineteen at the
other two.

Mrs. Bryan went off to the city to buy tents, and was understood to have
come back with ten that were marvellous bargains. The Camp Fire darned
all its stockings, and tidied itself, and was collectively very good at
home, so as to leave a pleasant last impression.

Mrs. Merriam lamented that she was going to be very, very lonely, for
Tom was going out camping with the Scouts only a day or so later than
Winona and Florence were to go with Camp Karonya. As for Puppums, there
were many arguments about him, for Tom thought he would make a fine
mascot, and so did Winona and Florence. It was finally settled by the
fact that another of the Scouts owned a collie and was going to take
him; and Puppums, while he was a friendly dog in the main, and indeed
had quite a social circle of his own, bit collies whenever he saw them.
So there were bound to be fights if Puppums went with Tom, and it was
decided that the girls should have him.

Nobody thought there were going to be any more members added to the
Camp. But one afternoon, while Winona was out in her back garden with
Louise and Helen and a medicine ball, Nataly Lee from next door came
calling. The three girls were dusty and tousled; Helen's braid was
half-undone, the ribbon was off Winona's curls, and Louise, who had just
fallen full-length across the nasturtiums in a vain effort to get the
ball, had a streak of mould and grass-stain from her shoulder to the hem
of her skirt. Altogether, they were as badly mussed a trio as you could
wish to see, when Tom came out the back door toward them.

He said nothing whatever, but he bore high in his hand the very largest
tray the house afforded, and in its black and banged centre reposed a
small calling-card which said "Miss Nataly Lee. The Cedars." He made a
low bow, and held the tray toward his sister.

Winona took off the card, and the three girls looked at it together.

"Where do you suppose she keeps the cedars?" asked Louise in a stage
whisper. "There aren't any next door."

"Sh-h. That must be her ancestral estate," surmised Helen respectfully.
"Oh, dear, Winnie, I can't go in this way, to a call that has a card and
all that!"

"Of course you can," said Winona cheerfully. "I did worse than that when
I went calling on _her_. I didn't take any card at all. To be frank with
you, I haven't any. Anyway, she received me with her wrapper on, and
that's no better than grass-stains."

"Come on--be sports!" urged Tom, waving his tray. "I think she's come to
say that she's willing to be welcomed in your midst."

"How do you know?" asked all three girls at once.

"I don't know--I only think so, because Billy told me," said Tom.

"We certainly look dreadful!" mourned Helen, but they all brushed each
other off and straightened each other, and trotted into the house.

Nataly did not look as if she had ever seen a negligee. She had on white
gloves and a veil, and carried a card-case, and altogether, except that
her hair was down and her skirt short, she might very well have been
grown up.

"It's a charming day," she began when she had been introduced to Helen
and Louise.

"It certainly is," agreed Louise, "and a lot too nice to stay in the
house. Don't you want to come on out in the back yard with us and play
ball?"

But Nataly declined. She said she didn't think it would be good for her
gloves.

Then there was a pause, because nobody could think of anything to say.
Finally Winona began:

"Tom says you think you might like to join our Camp Fire, after all. Do
you think you would?"

Nataly looked as if she was about to take a dreadful plunge, but she
said, "Yes, I believe I would like to. The doctor says I ought to be out
in the open air, and you are, aren't you?"

"We certainly are!" said Louise. "That's where we were when you came to
call. Want to come?"

Louise was visibly fretting at having to stay indoors, and finally
Winona had to lead the way out to the back garden again. And, naturally,
the first thing to meet their eyes was the big black tray, with Nataly's
own card fatally conspicuous in the very middle of it. Winona tried to
steer her around it, but it was no use. Your own name is one thing you
are sure to see or hear before anything else. Winona, talking sixteen to
the dozen about everything she could think of, picked up the card
furtively and put it in her pocket. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to
pocket the tray.

However, they arranged with Nataly that she go camping with them. She
could not join till the next monthly ceremonial meeting, but there was
to be one soon after camp was pitched. So it was settled.

"I wonder who she'll be friends with specially?" said Helen after she
had gone. "She doesn't seem to fit into us, somehow."

"We'll have to make her fit," said Winona gayly. "To tell you the truth
Helen, she reminds me of a kitten I knew once. It belonged to three old
maiden ladies. It didn't know how to be a kitten at all--the poor little
thing thought it was a cat!"

"Well, perhaps Nataly'll turn out a kitten, but I doubt it, even with
you helping," said Louise. "Come on, let's finish our game."




CHAPTER TEN


As the clock struck eight-thirty Monday morning, on the last week in
July, one Guardian, one dog, thirteen big girls and seven small ones
lined up for their long-anticipated hike to Camp Karonya. They planned
to walk half the distance that day, sleep at a farmhouse about half-way
to the woods, and finish the next day at their destination. They were
all in middies, with dark skirts, and the most comfortable slippers
money could buy--it hurts to hike in tight shoes. They had hats, of
course, but Edith Hillis, in addition, carried a parasol. Each girl
carried her own night-things and drinking-cup and luncheon. The
provisions, and the rest of the baggage, had gone over to the
camping-place in Mr. Bryan's automobile and Louise Lane's father's
delivery-wagon.

Early as it was, quite a lot of people were out to see the girls off,
and even Puppums curvetted proudly as he noticed the attention he was
getting, for he was a very vain dog. He might well be vain, because
Louise had attached a large label to his collar which said "Camp Fire
Dog," and he was not allowed to chew it off.

They walked slowly, and it felt very much like going to a picnic
guaranteed to last forever. Presently someone started a marching song,
and everyone joined in. They walked easily on, having a very good time
as they went; and before they knew it noon had come, and it was time to
have lunch.

They were near a meadow by this time, a big green meadow with trees at
its edge, and they all sat down under the trees and unpacked their
sandwiches and ate. Some of the girls had thermos bottles with them,
with hot cocoa, but most of them preferred the concentrated lemonade
Mrs. Bryan had brought along, mixed with water from a nice little brook
which had been kind enough to flow quite near them.

"If it's all going to be like this, won't it be lovely?" said Winona,
her eyes shining, as she took a large bite of sandwich, and then fed a
generous share of the rest to Puppums, who lay quiveringly near her.

"It is nice," said Helen more quietly. "I hope we'll have weather like
this the whole time ... gracious, what's that?"

"That" was a distant squeal. Winona looked hastily around her to see
what the Blue Birds were doing. But there were no Blue Birds there. The
seven little girls were out of sight, but not out of hearing, for it was
evidently one of them who had made the noise.

Winona and Adelaide jumped up and ran, but Louise and Edith sat placidly
on.

"They _will_ howl," said Louise. "There's no use always chasing after
them."

But when Winona and Adelaide arrived at the place the squeals had come
from they were very glad they had done the "chasing."

Florence, with little Lucy Hillis holding her, was sitting on the ground
screaming steadily. The other girls were huddled together in a
frightened group a little way off.

"What is it? What is it, Lucy?" cried Winona, frightened. Florence was
making such a noise that it was no use asking her. Lucy Hillis, who was
one of those quiet, old-fashioned little girls who always keep their
heads, looked up, still holding Florence's wrist.

"Florence's cut herself," she said. "I'm afraid it's a bad cut. I don't
dare let go of it."

Winona flung herself down by Florence and put her hands above Lucy's
shaking little ones, which then, and not till then, let go.

"Get me a stick, Lucy, quick--a strong one!" she said.

Lucy was back with the stick before Winona was through speaking. Winona
pulled off her tie, that useful silk scarf of hers which had helped
Edith out of the water, and bound it above Florence's cut, twisting it
tight with the stick. Then she asked Adelaide to tie Florence's wrist
again, below the cut. She did not want to take any chances, and she did
not know yet whether it was a vein or an artery that Florence had hurt.

Then she sent Lucy flying for Mrs. Bryan, while she and Adelaide made
Florence keep still.

"That Lucy child keeps her head," said Adelaide approvingly.

"It wasn't _her_ wrist that got cut!" said Florence indignantly,
stopping her sobs.

"How did it happen, Florence?" asked her sister. "Tell us--but don't
stir. Nobody knows what will happen if your wrist starts bleeding
again."

"Well, we were being Indian chiefs," began Florence, "an'--an' I was out
on the warpath, going to scalp Molly Green. And I ran, and Molly ran,
an' I fell over a tree-root and the knife cut my wrist."

"The knife!" said Winona, for nobody had mentioned a knife before.
"Where did you get a knife?"

Florence hung her head.

"I--I borrowed your penknife out of your knapsack when you laid it on
the grass to get lunch out of it."

"The knife? I didn't."

"No; the knapsack," said Florence meekly. "An'--an' oh, _dear_ sister,
I'm so sorry!"

Winona could scarcely help laughing, worried as she was. When Florence
had been naughty she always became suddenly very affectionate. At other
times she wasn't, especially.

"I'm sorry, too," she said gravely. "I don't know what Mrs. Bryan will
say to you, nor mother, when she hears about it."

"Let me see," said Mrs. Bryan behind them. She had hurried over at
Lucy's summons.

"Oh, is it--is it an artery?" breathed Winona, as Mrs. Bryan bent over
the wounded arm.

Mrs. Bryan laughed. "Nothing of the sort, you foolish child," she said.
"It's only a deep cut. It didn't even strike a large vein."

"Oh, I'm _so_ glad!" said Winona, drawing a long breath.

She ran off to get her First Aid kit out of her knapsack, and, coming
back, presently had Florence bandaged up scientifically, and much
impressed with the importance of what she had done.

"Will I have to be carried on a stretcher?" the little girl wanted to
know.

"Not a bit of it," said Mrs. Bryan briskly. "You will have to walk on
your own two feet, like any other naughty little girl."

"Oh, was I naughty?" said Florence cheerfully. "I forgot that!"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Bryan, "you were very naughty. I think we shall
have to confine you to camp for two days, when we get there."

"All right," said Florence complacently, "but now please can't I be
carried on a stretcher? I should think I might!"

"All right, let's," said Louise, who had come up along with the rest of
the girls, in Mrs. Bryan's wake. "Only remember, Florence Merriam, once
you get up on that stretcher you have to stay there."

"Of course!" said Florence indignantly.

By this time all the girls were clustered about the interesting invalid,
and the stretcher idea struck them all as a very fine one. It would help
them to put the Wood Craft they had been learning into practice. Winona
picked up her gory penknife, and began to wash it in the brook before
she started to cut wood with it.

"Oh," said Florence plaintively, "I thought you'd always keep it that
way, to remember me by!"

"I'll have chance enough to remember you without that," replied Winona
feelingly, and went off to look for poles with the others. Edith Hillis
pulled her embroidery out of her knapsack and mounted guard over the
Blue Birds, who were, however, a rather subdued flock by now.

Meanwhile the rest of the girls picked out four saplings which grew at
the edge of the wood beyond the meadow, and nicked them at the bottom
patiently till they fell. The next thing was to tie them together. But
nobody had anything to do it with, till Mrs. Bryan remembered a bunch of
leather thongs she carried.

"I always have at least two along for extra shoe-laces, when I'm
camping," she explained, "and they always come in use for something else
before the time is over. An old guide up in the Adirondacks told me to
do that, and it's always a good thing for campers to do."

The thongs bound the saplings into a frame, and Louise secured them to a
knot that was newly learned, and the pride of her life.

"That can't come out," she said, surveying it with pleasure, for
learning to do it had earned her a much-valued bead.

For the covering of the stretcher Adelaide produced an old gray shawl
from her knapsack.

"Father made me bring it," she explained rather shamefacedly.

"Just the thing!" said Mrs. Bryan heartily.

They wrapped it round the frame, and it went around three times, being
large, so that a couple of pins held it fast. Then they lifted the
gratified Florence on to it and started off down the road again. They
had cleared up the fragments of their luncheon first, and buried neatly
all the scraps and debris, so that there were no excursiony-looking
boxes and crusts littering their resting-place.

The girls took turns carrying the stretcher, and as there were fourteen
of them, counting Mrs. Bryan, many hands made light work. As Louise had
prophesied would happen, after a little while Florence became restless.
The other Blue Birds were having lovely times frolicking all over the
road, chasing butterflies and picking flowers and playing with the dog.
Florence found it rather stupid to sit in solitary grandeur on a
stretcher, and listen to what Winona and Adelaide, before her, and Marie
and Edith, behind her, were saying about their own affairs. So at the
first stop to change bearers she wanted to get down. But Mrs. Bryan was
firm.

"No, indeed," she said, "the first thing Blue Birds must learn is to
obey orders and keep promises. You promised to stay up there till
evening, Florence, and you must do it."

Florence pouted, but she stayed. She really had lost quite a little
blood in her adventure with her sister's penknife, and, though Mrs.
Bryan did not tell her so, the walk might have been too much for her.
She wriggled and yawned, and once sat up straight, till her bearers
requested her to lie still. But presently she had a companion in misery.

It was nearly the end of the journey, and the farmhouse where the girls
planned to stay the night was in sight. Winona, strolling on ahead, saw
a small gray kitten prowling along the side of the road. It was a most
unhappy kitten; it looked as if it hadn't had a square meal since it
could remember, and there was an ugly-looking place on its side as if
something had worried it. It limped a little, too, poor little cat, and
altogether a more forlorn animal would have been hard to find. But
Winona pounced on it.

"Oh, you poor little cat!" she cried. "Look, Helen, some horrid dog has
hurt it."

"Oh, don't pick it up!" said Marie. "It may have something awful."

"Smallpox, maybe?" inquired Winona sarcastically. "Nonsense, Marie, the
poor little thing's been worried by a dog, and it hasn't had enough to
eat, that's all. I'm going to adopt it."

And in spite of Marie's protests she picked it up and wrapped it in her
handkerchief, and carried it back to Florence, who was wriggling on her
stretcher, and wishing that she hadn't demanded that evidence of
invalidism.

"Here, Florence," said Winona, "hold this kitty till we get to the
farmhouse."

"Oh, a kitty! Poor little thing!" cried Florence, adopting the cat on
the spot, and letting it cuddle down by her, which it was willing enough
to do, for it seemed to be as tired as it was hungry.

"Are you sure----" began Marie again.

Marie's father was a professor in the high-school, and as a result she
knew about more kinds of germs than the rest had ever heard of.

"Mother lets us bring in hurt animals, always, and look after them,"
said Winona. "Germs can't get you if you're careful. We can wash our
hands in disinfectant as soon as we get to the farmhouse. I have some in
my first-aid kit."

"And what are you going to do with the cat?" asked Louise, coming up to
the other side of the stretcher and surveying the much-discussed animal
without great affection.

"Keep it, if Mrs. Bryan doesn't mind, as it doesn't belong to anyone,"
said Winona coolly. "It ought to make a good camp mascot."

Louise eyed the kitten again--they were nearly at the farmhouse by this
time.

"It isn't exactly my idea of a mascot," she said candidly. "What about
Puppums? I thought he was elected to the position."

"Well, then, the kitty can be the under-mascot," said Winona
undauntedly. "Anyway, when I get through nursing her she'll be a
perfectly good cat--see if she isn't!"

"I doubt it!" said Louise and Marie together, as if they had been
practising a duet.

"Wait!" said Winona as they mounted the steps.

There were plenty of rooms, for the farm people took boarders all
August; but even so, there were not enough for nearly twenty people.
However, Mrs. Norris, the farmer's wife, had been prepared beforehand
for the descent, and she had extra cots made up and ready in all the
rooms, and unlimited hot water for baths.

Winona did not come in when the others did. She sat down on the porch
floor, pulled out her first-aid kit for the second time that day, sent
Florence in for a basin of warm water, and set about doctoring the
kitten. She sponged off the torn place in its side, and the little hurt
in one of its hind legs that had made it limp. This last was only a
scratch, but it had stiffened. She rubbed salve in the hurt places. Then
she bandaged the cat's leg very successfully. But when it came to tying
up the side--for the cat would certainly have licked the salve off if
she could--it wasn't so simple. There wasn't anything to fasten the
bandage to. Finally she wound it round and round the meek little animal,
and sewed it up on top. The cat looked as if it had on a large and
fashionable sash, but it did not object. Then Winona gave it some
evaporated cream out of a can in her knapsack, watched it while it ate,
which it did till the belt tightened dangerously, and took it into the
house with her. Florence took the basin back to the place she had gotten
it from.

"Does this kitten belong to you?" Winona asked the landlady, who was
hurrying about a long table in the dining-room, putting dishes full of
steaming things on the table.

"Bless my soul, no!" she answered, stopping with a pan of baked beans
poised in mid-air. "Why, I do believe that's the kitten that belonged to
Medarys, down the road, and they moved away last week. Well, poor little
thing, the dogs must have got after it. It's a mercy it got away at
all."

"People who abandon cats that way ought to be left out in a wilderness
themselves, without anything to eat," said Mrs. Bryan warmly, as she
came up behind them.

"Ain't it so?" said the landlady. "I'll get somebody to drown the poor
little thing to-morrow."

"Oh, no! I'll keep it if it's nobody's," Winona said eagerly. "You don't
mind, do you, Mrs. Bryan?"

"If it hasn't mange," said Mrs. Bryan prudently.

"It hasn't," Winona and Florence assured her together. "It's only hurt."

"Very well," said the Guardian; and the Merriams ran off to wash their
hands in disinfectant and straighten themselves generally for supper.
They left the cat in their room.

That certainly was a supper. When you have walked all day in the open
you feel as if you could eat a house, if nothing tenderer offers itself.
Even Nataly Lee, who was genuinely tired to death, was hungry. The girls
stood behind their chairs for a moment, saying one of the Camp Fire
graces softly in unison. Then they sat down, and ate as if lunch had
been only a dream.

After supper the hostess showed them her long parlor and invited them to
make themselves at home. But they were all too sleepy to frolic. Louise,
who was untirable, did indeed unsling her banjo from across her shoulder
and try to sing, but she interrupted herself in the middle of "Nellie
Gray" with a gigantic yawn. The Blue Birds were all asleep in their
chairs, and had to be marched off to bed half conscious. It was only
eight, but the elder sisters and cousins who took them up liked the
looks of the white cots very much, and--well, it seemed so useless to go
downstairs again, some way. So Winona and Adelaide and Louise and
Elizabeth, and Marie, who was looking after such Blue Birds as had not
sisters along, simply went to bed, too, when they had attended to their
charges. The other girls sat sleepily downstairs for awhile, waiting for
their friends to come back. And then they, too, came upstairs and went
to bed--and by eight-thirty there was nothing to be heard of seven Blue
Birds, thirteen Camp Fire Girls, a dog and a cat, but twenty even
breathings from as many cots, an occasional snore from the back porch
where Puppums was tied, and a loud, ecstatic purr from the corner of
Winona's cot, where the Medary's late kitten was privately spending the
night.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


Next morning by eight Camp Karonya was up and eating a large breakfast.
The girls sang a cheer to Mrs. Norris when they were done, and formed
for their march again. Most of them had brought enough food for two
lunches, but Mrs. Norris could not be brought to think so, and insisted
on piling up provisions enough for a regiment. They compromised, on
several slices of roast lamb apiece, and enough bread and butter to go
around and leave some over.

Winona slipped into the little general store near the farmhouse, and
bargained for some more cans of evaporated milk for her under-mascot,
the kitten. It was travelling in Florence's knapsack to-day, and
Florence's things were distributed between Winona and two of the other
girls. It proved to be a very frisky kitten by nature, now that its
fears of being hungry and homeless were gone. Winona had to sew its
bandage on again at noon.

"I don't know how it is," she said perplexedly. "It's certainly a fatter
kitten, and yet its bandage is too big!"

"Poor thing! Take it off altogether!" advised Helen. "Pussy will get
well just as soon without it."

So they ripped off the bandage, and the kitten seemed very grateful. Its
hurt looked like scarcely more than a scratch now.

"If she's going to be a camp mascot she ought to have a name," suggested
Florence.

Winona laughed. "I'm going to call her Hike," she said. "She was hiking
when we met her, poor pussy, and so were we."

So Hike the Camp Cat she became. And--to anticipate--when she had been
living on evaporated cream and other luxuries a few days, she turned
into a plump and handsome Maltese kitten with charming manners.

The girls arrived at their camping-place at about five that day. The big
limousine that belonged to Helen's father, and the big electric delivery
wagon which Louise's father had contributed, stood waiting for them on
the road nearest the clearing in the woods, where they were to make
their camp.

"Do you mean to say we're going to eat all that?" asked Edith Hillis
helplessly, as she caught sight of the piled provisions in the delivery
wagon.

"Well, we shan't have to eat the tents and cots in the limousine," said
Winona. "At least, I hope not. But I think we will manage the rest. I
was on the committee that figured out how much we would want for three
weeks of camping, and I'm sure there's no more here than we ordered."

"I have the list," said Helen.

"Then check the things off, dear, as the men lift them out," said Mrs.
Bryan.

So Helen read from her list as the barrels and boxes were carried away,
and the girls listened in awe, for this is what she read:

  One and a half barrels of flour.
  Fifteen pounds shortening.

("It's a special kind," explained Helen. "You can use it for cakes, as
well as frying and other things.")

  Fifteen pounds rice.
  Fifteen pounds beans.
  Five pounds baking-powder.
  Three sides of bacon.
  Sixty-five pounds of sugar.
  Ten pounds of cocoa.
  Case and a half of evaporated milk.

("And the extra cans Winnie bought to support the cat on," interrupted
Louise. "We can steal those if the worst comes to the worst.")

  Two barrels of potatoes.
  Six jugs of molasses.
  One dozen cans each peas and corn.
  Eight pounds of salt pork.

"All present and accounted for," said Mrs. Bryan, as the men who had
been loaned with the wagon rolled the barrels and carried the boxes off
to a little tarred shack near the spring. "We'll have to buy butter and
eggs and fresh fruit and vegetables as we go along. They'll keep in the
spring, for it seems to be ice-cold."

"And did just things to eat for us cost all that beautiful eighty
dollars we made at all the cake-sales?" asked Florence indignantly. She
had helped make fudge for those sales, and she felt as if they had been
her personal venture.

"It came to about fifty-five dollars, wholesale," said Helen, looking
down at the itemized list she held. "We figured out that the other
thirty dollars would just about keep us in the green things and dairy
things we had to have. The corn and peas are in case we're weatherbound
and can't get fresh vegetables."

"And how long did you say we could live on that perfect mountain of
food?" inquired Nataly Lee's mournful voice from where she was lying on
the grass with her knapsack under her head.

"Three weeks, no more," said Helen briskly. "If we want to stay we shall
have to earn more money."

"I think we could," mused Winona thoughtfully.

"But what about the tents?" asked Elizabeth curiously. She was a quiet,
competent little thing. "I don't see where the money for them comes in."

"That's the most splendid thing of all," smiled Mrs. Bryan, as the men
began to slide ten dusty-looking tents out of the wagon. "Mr. Gedney,
the Scoutmaster, called up Mr. Bryan just before I was going shopping
for tents, and told me about these in case we wanted them. They belonged
to the National Guard, and the State had condemned them, because they
were shabbier than some politician or other liked them to be. So the
Scouts were offered them at a ridiculously low price, if they would only
take enough. Rather than let such a bargain go by the Scouts took them
all, though there were more than they needed. And Mr. Gedney says we may
use these, and needn't pay for them till next winter."

The girls agreed that it certainly was luck, and followed on down to see
the tents put up--ten little brown tents in a row, with two cots and a
box-dressing-table in each.

"You'll have to stow your clothes underneath the cots," explained Mrs.
Bryan. "And I expect each of you to learn how to put up and take down
her own tent."

"Beads!" exploded Louise.

"Exactly," said Mrs. Bryan.

"We only have extra under-things," said Marie, "and one dress-up frock
apiece, besides our camp clothes and ceremonial dresses. We don't need
much room."

By the time the tents had been assigned and the cots made up, supper was
ready, and Mrs. Bryan summoned them to it by blowing a clear little
whistle she wore. The girls had expected to turn to and get their own
supper. So they were very much surprised to find Mrs. Bryan's black maid
Grace, and Mrs. Hunter's Jenny smiling behind the long trestles in the
mess-tent, setting steaming dishes up and down the table.

"This is a special treat," explained Mrs. Bryan. "We're all tired
to-night, and we hadn't time to do any cooking ourselves anyway, so I
let Grace and Jenny do it. But to-morrow morning camp life begins. We'll
draw lots for assignment to duties, after supper."

The girls stood up behind their seats for a moment and said grace, then
sat down, and ate as if they had never seen food before. It was a very
civilized meal, soup, roasts and dessert, all sent over by the mothers
in the tonneau of the Bryan car, as the cooks and the provisions had
been. It tasted good, but everyone looked forward with joy to real camp
cooking.

"Wait till you see how I can broil venison steak," threatened Louise, as
she ate a very large helping of despised roast beef from a mere
unromantic cow.

"Where'll you get the venison? Pick it?" called back Winona from the
other side of the table.

"No, she's going to grow it!" said Elizabeth.

"Nothing of the kind!" said Louise cheerfully. "All you do is to go out
with a gun, and stalk till you find a magnificent moose feeding
peacefully among the underbrush."

"Suppose there isn't any underbrush?" inquired Edith's languid voice
from the table's other end.

"Then you carry some out with you and scatter it around for the deer to
eat out of," said Louise undisturbed. "Don't interrupt the lesson on
natural history, please. You stand, moved by the beauty of the sight,
for a long time. Then, recalled to yourself by the thought of the seven
starving little Blue Birds at home, you draw your revolver to your
shoulder and are about to fire."

"Sure it's a revolver?" asked Winona skeptically.

"Well, your pistol, then--they're all the same thing. Just then the
moose lifts his head and looks at you mournfully out of his large,
deer-like eyes. You almost relent. But you nerve yourself and fire--one
crashing shot between the eyes. Then you throw the moose across your
shoulders and carry it home--and there's your venison steak."

"It sounds more like a venison mis-steak to me," said Winona. "I suppose
you're going hunting to-morrow morning, Louise?"

But Louise had just arrived at her dessert.

"I scorn to reply," was all she said as she retired into her ice-cream.

After supper the girls lay about on the grass, while Winona and Marie
and Mrs. Bryan put slips of paper in a double boiler. The girls drew
lots to decide which should be camp cooks and camp orderlies for the
first week: four for the cooking, four for buying provisions and
policing the camp, and four for the dish-washing and preparing
vegetables.

"That leaves one girl over," spoke up Adelaide, sitting up under a tree.

Mrs. Bryan shook her head. "No," she said, "it doesn't, because somebody
has to look after the Blue Birds every week. I'm going to appoint Marie
Hunter, because she hasn't any small sisters, and it won't be such an
old story to her to look after little girls. So there are just enough
people to go around. Rise up and draw lots out of the boiler, girls!"

"I'd rather wash every dish in camp than chaperon the infants!" said
Louise aside; and drew a slip marked "Dish-Washing" on the spot. "If I
got all my wishes as quickly as that, how nice it would be!" she sighed,
and lay down with her arm around little Bessie. Louise had not a passion
for washing dishes.

Then Adelaide drew a cooking slip. So did Winona and Elizabeth and
Lilian Brown, one of the girls who had joined later. Anna Morris,
Dorothy Gray and Edith Hillis drew the other dish-washing slips and
Helen Bryan, Nataly Lee, Gladys Williams and the other Brown sister,
Gertrude, were assigned the police and provision duty. At the end of the
week everybody was to shift to something else.

"It seems to me the camp orderlies have the best of it," said Helen,
yawning. "What do we do, Nannie?"

"You see that everyone remembers to make up her bed in the morning, you
sweep out the camp, carry water from the spring. You have to see, too,
that the camp is kept in fruit and vegetables--in other words, walk to a
farmhouse about a mile away every other day to buy provisions. We
mustn't break into our canned goods except in an emergency. You are
really the people who are responsible for the camp's running smoothly."

"Carry water!" said Nataly with a gasp. "Won't we get our clothes wet?"

"Wear a waterproof, love," said Louise. "I'm going to ask to have Nataly
assigned to bring me all my water for dishes," she whispered to Winona,
beside her. "I'm sure it will have an elevating effect on her
character."

"Oh, don't, Louise!" whispered Winona back. "Suppose you'd spent your
young life on a sofa, reading 'Beautiful Coralie's Doom,' you wouldn't
feel able to carry water either!"

"Then I wouldn't go Camp Firing," said Louise conclusively.

Next morning the camp cooks were up at six. Breakfast was to be at
seven-thirty, but the girls were so afraid of being too late that they
devised an elaborate system of strings, whereby the earliest awake was
to jerk her strings, and wake all the others. Winona, Lilian Brown and
Elizabeth were on the ground by a quarter past six, but, although they
had all jerked their strings faithfully, no Adelaide appeared. Finally
they descended in a body on the tent which held Adelaide and her little
sister Frances.

"Well, would you look at that!" said Winona in an indignant whisper.

The other girls cautiously lifted the tent-flap and stuck in their
heads.

Frances slept placidly on one cot, her little freckled face half buried
in the pillow. On the other, quite as fast asleep, lay Adelaide--and
there was not a string tied to her anywhere!

"Well, if that isn't the _limit_!" said Elizabeth and Lilian in one
breath, and Elizabeth reached down to the pail of water which the
orderlies had faithfully set outside each tent door before they went to
bed. She tilted the cold water on her handkerchief, and dropped it wetly
on Adelaide's face. It wasn't a wet sponge, but it did nearly as well,
as an awakener.

"What--where--nonsense, Lonny, _don't_!" said Adelaide, waving her arms,
and finally sitting up.

"It isn't Lonny; it's us," said Winona coldly, "and why on earth did you
untie the strings, when all the rest of us had them to get up by?"

Adelaide looked ashamed.

"I couldn't sleep all tied up that way," she confessed. "I felt like a
spider or a fly or something. So I tied them on the cot. But I thought
when you pulled them the cot would jar, and wake me!"

"It might have," said Winona, "if you'd tied them on your own cot!"

Adelaide, looking in the direction of Winona's pointing finger, found
out why she had not wakened. In her sleepiness the night before, she had
fastened her strings to a large twig that grew out of the ground beside
her bed!

"I ought to be drowned!" said Adelaide ashamedly. "But if you girls will
wait till I get bathed and dressed, I'll wash all the dishes to pay for
this!"

"You won't do any such thing," said the others.

So they sat sociably outside Adelaide's tent till she was dressed and
joined them. Then they started out valiantly for the cooking-place.

When they reached it a very cheering surprise awaited them, for there
was Mrs. Bryan seated on a pile of kindling, with a box of matches on
her lap and a pleasant smile on her face.

"I thought you mightn't know just where to begin," she said, "so I
thought I'd come help, this first morning. The first thing is the fire.
Do any of you know how to make a cooking-fire in the open?"

Adelaide didn't, neither did Elizabeth. Winona thought she knew, but
wasn't sure, and Lilian had once seen it done, but had forgotten how.

"I'd better show you all, then," said their Guardian briskly. "The first
thing you do is to get together two big green logs that won't burn. Roll
them together so they form a big V."

"Logs that _won't_ burn! What a queer beginning!" said Winona, whose
idea of building a fire was heaping a bonfire up with sticks till it
flamed high.

But they tugged and pushed till they had a couple of newly-felled trees
at angles to each other, in a hollow place protected from the wind.

"Now, you build your fire inside that V," explained Mrs. Bryan, "and,
you see, you can put the cocoa-pan up at the beginning of the crotch,
and the portable oven and the frying-pan down where the division is
wider."

"Simple as anything," said Winona, "once you know how."

And they scattered to find wood. The sticks lay about in plenty--later
they were hard to find without going into the woods which encircled the
camping-place--and Mrs. Bryan showed them how to commence a fire by
laying small pieces of brushwood criss-cross at the bottom, and piling
on heavier wood till all was aflame. Presently they had a solid, roaring
fire. They sat back and let it burn down to coals. By then they had the
flour-barrel opened, the bacon sliced, and the water ready to put on the
cocoa. Winona made biscuits, it seemed to her, in mountains, while
Elizabeth got out the butter and knives and forks, and set the table.

"You can't cut out biscuits enough for twenty people with a cutter,
child!" advised Mrs. Bryan.

"Just take the butcher-knife, and cut the whole mass of dough into
squares, after you've laid it on the floured floors of the oven!"

But the bacon had to be sliced, and this took longer; and Adelaide's
job, looking after the cocoa, proved nerve-racking, because cocoa will
burn at the slightest chance. But everything came right, and by the time
the other girls were astir their breakfast was awaiting them, piping
hot; crispy bacon, hot biscuits and butter, with jam they had made
themselves, and cocoa.

"Jam's an extra," Mrs. Bryan warned them. "It happened to be left over
from the sales, so I brought it. You'll have to go to work and make some
more out of berries you pick."

After breakfast, Marie, the keeper of the Blue Birds' Nest, said that
she was going to put two Blue Birds to work at each of the camp shifts,
and leave the odd one to be Mrs. Bryan's personal Bird and attendant.
Mrs. Bryan was to choose her attendant, who was to run her errands for
her and help her generally. But she refused to do it.

"I like them all so much," she said, "that I can't pick out a special
one."

So they counted out for the honor, and the choice for the first week
fell on little Lucy Hillis. The others, as far as it could be done,
worked with their own sisters.

After breakfast, while the dish-washing brigade wrestled with the cups,
plates and spoons that twenty people leave behind them, the cooks held a
council. They decided that it would be easier if two girls got each meal
in turn: Winona and Adelaide the dinner, Elizabeth and Lilian the
supper, and so on. The camp police divided off the same way, and so,
eventually, did the dish-washers. Helen, who had the Camp funds in her
charge, talked with the girls who were going to market that day. There
was twenty-five dollars for three weeks of camp, she explained, and she
thought that the safest way would be to allow so much a day, which gave
them about a dollar twenty a day to spend. They thought so, too, and
presently Nataly and Helen went off in search of the farmhouse which had
promised to keep them supplied with perishable provisions.

Winona and Adelaide, freed of any further duties till supper-time, went
off exploring. It was a perfect day, bright and breezy and not too hot.
Winona half-danced along, singing under her breath. The sun glinted on
her pretty hair and lighted up her blue eyes. Adelaide looked at her
wistfully.

"I do wish I were you!" she said abruptly.

Winona looked at her in surprise. "Wish you were me? Why, on earth?" she
asked. "Isn't it just as nice to be you?"

Adelaide shook her head. "I don't like it much!" she said rebelliously.

"Why not?" asked Winona.

Adelaide shrugged her shoulders.

Winona slipped her arm about her, and pulled her down on a comfortable
looking log.

"Let's sit down and talk about it," said she cheerfully.




CHAPTER TWELVE


Adelaide turned and faced Winona.

"Well, go ahead and talk," she said. "It won't make things any less so."
Then suddenly she burst out, "You don't know what it's like. You don't
know how it feels never to have anything extra. If I go to a party I'm
likely to be the worst-dressed girl there. If I go to school and the
girls treat I have to say I don't want any because I can't pay back. I
can't invite anybody to meals, because I can't give them extra nice
things to eat. And, anyway, the flat's horrid--even the furniture and
the carpets are shabby. Lonny and Frances are good, and help, but
everything drags. And I just hate _everything_."

"Hate everything!" said Winona soothingly. "Why, of course you
don't--you just think you do!"

"It's all right for you to talk," murmured Adelaide miserably.
"Everybody's crazy over you--of course they would be. I am myself, and I
don't like people generally. You have something about you that would
make people like you even if you weren't sweet to them. Everything turns
out right for you. I don't see what you wanted to join the Camp Fire
for--its rules stuck out all over you before you ever joined."

"Oh, _don't_!" said Winona, blushing. "What rules do you mean? I never
kept any rules."

"You know the Law of the Camp Fire: 'Seek beauty; give service; pursue
knowledge; be trustworthy; hold on to health; glorify work; be happy.'"

"I don't do all those things," said Winona. "Wish I did! But anybody
seeks beauty, and as long as you have to work the only way to get fun
out of it is to glorify it. As for the rest, I think they're only rules
for getting all there is out of living. I'll tell you,
Adelaide,"--Winona sat upright, as if a new thought had struck her--"why
don't you see how many of the rules would apply to getting fun out of
the things that worry you? When things go wrong at our house mother
always says to Florence and Tommy and me, 'Can't you turn it into a
game?'"

"Turn shabby furniture and stews and no money into a game?" said
Adelaide, as if she thought Winona was crazy.

"Yes!" said Winona undauntedly. "To begin with the stews--well,
Adelaide, you don't know one single thing about cooking. There's any
amount of things beside stew that you can make out of stewing meat. And
don't you remember the cold things we got out of Mrs. Bryan's
refrigerator? That was a good supper, wasn't it? If you know how,
cooking's fun, or nearly anything."

"If we have more cooking-classes I suppose I could learn how to do more
things with the meats and vegetables, or maybe market better," said
Adelaide. "But that would only help that one thing."

"You can figure out keeping house just like anything else," said Winona.
"All you have to do's to _think_!"

Adelaide laughed. "Do you suppose I could think the furniture new?" she
asked. "You ought to see it--horrid old brown rep, and a carpet that's
worn into white spots!"

But though she laughed, she looked to Winona for the answer with real
eagerness.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'd do," suggested Winona thoughtfully--"I
don't suppose you would, you're such a haughty Lady Imogene--I'd make a
furnishing bee of it, and have a party, and invite all the girls to help
you do the flat over. Your father and Lonny would help, wouldn't they?"

"Oh, I guess so," she said.

"Well, then, the girls would help you cover the furniture and stain the
floor, and even paper, maybe. And if your father or Lonny could paint
the wood-work--or would the landlord?"

"No," said Adelaide, "he won't make repairs. It's not in the lease. And
where would I get money for the paint and paper and stain and covers?"

"Earn it!" said Winona. "There are lots of ways. That jam you made for
the sales--you could get heaps of orders for that, I know. Oh, I should
think it would be lovely to do. I tell you, Adelaide, you may think I'm
crazy--but everything's fun, if you'll only remember that it _is_ fun!"

"I wonder!" said Adelaide. "But I believe I could make money with jams
and preserves if I worked hard at it."

"We've all got to earn some more money soon if we want to stay in the
camp longer than three weeks," said Winona, "unless Louise can feed us
all on the venison steaks she was talking about last night. If you can
make money for the camp you can for yourself!"

Adelaide turned impulsively--they had risen and were going on through
the wood--and threw her arms around Winona.

"You certainly are the most comforting girl!" she said. "I don't wonder
everybody does what you want them to."

Winona didn't know what to say. It's pleasant to have people say such
things to you, but it is embarrassing, too.

"People like you just as much as they do me," said she. "Come on, let's
go see if we can find the river we've heard so much about."

They caught hands and ran on through the trees.

The river was not hard to find. Above them it was a broad stream, but
just here it wasn't very wide, just a pretty, clear, clean-looking
stream, with green banks and some sort of a dock to be seen a little way
beyond them. On the dock, when they reached it, was seen to be an
elderly native with a pipe, and beside him was moored a rowboat which
looked as if it could be rowed. He looked up from his fishing as the
girls appeared.

"Morning," he said sociably, "you little girls going down to the
village?"

"Good-morning," said Winona. "No, we hadn't thought of it. We might,
though. Is there anything we could get for you if we went?"

"Well," said the old man, jerking in his line with a good-sized fish on
it, "ye-es, there is. I want an ad put in the paper. I guess I could
trust you with a quarter to do it with."

"I guess you could," said Winona, smiling. "Will this afternoon do? I
don't believe we'd have time now to get there and back before
dinner-time." She looked at her wrist-watch. "No, we won't," she said.
"It's eleven now."

"Well, this afternoon would do," he said.

So, while the girls looked at the rowboat wishfully, and wondered if
they couldn't get enough fish for supper if they had some tackle, the
old man adjusted his spectacles, pulled an old envelope out of his
pocket, and wrote on it laboriously.

"Do you mind if I read it?" asked Winona, when he was done and had
handed it to her.

"Seein's that's what it's for, I dunno's I do," he grunted, grinning
pleasantly. Winona and Adelaide took each a corner, and read as follows:

  For sale, one rowboat in good condition, with oars. No reasonable
  offer refused. Apply to John Sloane, R. F. D. 3, village.

They looked at each other, then at the boat. Then both girls exclaimed
with one impulse, "Is it this boat?"

"This very rowboat," said Mr. Sloane, eying it with affection. "I don't
use it no more. I've got a motor-boat, and them Boy Scouts up the river
has got a fine young flock of canoes, so they ain't likely to want to
hire it. Anyway, she ain't so young as she was. Good boat, though!"

"And what would you call a reasonable offer?" inquired Winona. "The
reason I want to know is that I have just six dollars, and if I could
buy a rowboat that way I would."

"Six dollars, hey?" said Mr. Sloane slowly. "That ain't much for a good
boat."

"It's all I have to spend on rowboats," said Winona placidly.

"We-el," decided Mr. Sloane, "guess I might's well let you have it!"

And he proceeded to make out a receipt on the spot, on the other half of
the envelope he had used for the advertisement.

"It certainly pays to advertise!" he remarked, as he turned his
attention again to his fishing-line.

Adelaide and Winona jumped into their boat with delight, and rowed
downstream for half a mile. There they were stopped by the beautiful
sight of a lot of huckleberry bushes, full of fruit, along the edge of
the stream. They both filled their hats, and when these would hold no
more they pinned up Winona's skirt in front and filled that--Winona
sitting very still thereafter in order not to smash any berries. Then
Adelaide rowed back and tied their newly-acquired property to the dock,
the use of which was thrown in, and went back to camp with berries
enough for dinner. Just before they came within hearing of the others,
Adelaide whispered:

"Winona, I'm going to try to--to feel that way about things."

Winona squeezed her hand, but there was no time to say anything more,
for a horde of small pirates descended on them and carried away the
berries.

After dinner the girls lay on the grass and made plans, more or less
wild, for getting money to prolong their vacation.

"We can't have a cake-sale," said Marie practically, "because the
farmers' wives in the village make all their own baked stuff, and the
people at the summer-resort are mostly boarders."

"Oh, please don't let's have any more cake-sales, whether they're
profitable or not," said Louise pathetically. "I sold eats for those
sales till I used to go to sleep at night and dream I was a wedding-cake
myself."

"All right, then," soothed Helen, "you shan't ever have such dreadful
dreams again, you poor little thing!"

"Well, what shall we do, then?" asked Edith Hillis pulling her yellow
curls over her shoulder and examining them as if she had never seen them
before.

"When you want money," remarked Mrs. Bryan, "you have to sell something,
either your services, or your manufactures, or your talents."

"In other words," said Winona, "work for people, or make things to sell
them, or have an entertainment."

"Precisely," said the Guardian.

"Then let's start at the beginning," offered Winona, "and everybody try
to think what she can do best in the way of work, and whether anybody'd
want them to!"

"One thing," reminded Marie, "we can't live by taking in each other's
washing, so to speak. We'll have to scheme to get some of their
hard-earned butter-and-egg money away from the farmers' wives, or else
prey on the summer-resorters."

"We expect to give it right back to them for butter and eggs," said
Adelaide. "Whatever we do we might as well take it out in trade!"

After that nobody seemed to have any more ideas. Everyone sat silently
and thought very hard; till Louise jumped up with a yelp of impatience
that woke Puppums from his after-dinner nap, and made even Hike the Camp
Cat open one green eye.

"Don't let's waste this gorgeous day thinking!" she said. "My head isn't
used to it, and it hurts. Come on, anybody that wants to--I'm going to
walk down to the village to buy something, I don't care what. Who'll
come?"

Winona, Helen and Nataly dropped into step beside Louise, and the four
marched off singing "In the Land of the Sky-Blue Water," which they were
trying to learn.

"That song really sounds better to Opeechee's ceremonial drum than
anything else," remarked Louise.

"Real Indian music always sounds better if you pound something while you
sing it, even if it's only a dish-pan," said Winona.

"Please don't mention dish-pans," begged Louise, "they're a tender
point. I just parted from mine half an hour ago."

"All right," said Winona good-humoredly, "I have something else
interesting to tell you. I bought a rowboat to-day."

"Oh, good!" cried Helen. "Marie's canoe and mine will be up in a day or
so, but a canoe wiggles so when you try to fish from it. Now we can all
go fishing. Elizabeth brought tackle, but we thought we couldn't do much
good, fishing from the bank."

"And the Blue Birds can go out in it till they learn more about canoes,
too," said Winona. "I'm going exploring myself in it as soon as I can.
What are you really going to the village for, Louise--or don't you
know?"

"Benzine for my burnt-wood outfit," said Louise. "I had some thinks, and
that was one. Little Louise is going to make some nice burnt-leather
things for the neighborhood. Pillows and table-covers, and heaps of
things for the farmers' wives to buy. Lessons in the art if they want
them. I brought my outfit, and some skins, and colors."

"I thought I'd model some vases and pots and bowls, and fire them," said
Helen. "They might sell, too. Have you thought of anything, Winona?"

"Not a blessed thing, for myself," said Winona. "You know, I'm not
particularly clever about doing things like that, except making baskets,
and Florence does those better than I do. But I have thought of one
thing--how to sell our wares after they are made."

"That's quite a useful thing to know," said Louise. "About the most
useful thing there is, in fact. Well, how?"

"We'll have to peddle them," said Winona calmly. "The farmers' wives
won't come out here to buy unless we advertise a lot, and we can't
afford that. The thing for us to do is to get some sort of a thing to
carry the goods in, and make it look awfully arts-an-craftsy, and pull
it round and sell things at the houses."

"A soap-box on wheels is what I _think_ you're hinting at," said Louise,
"but I hope not."

"Are you really in earnest?" asked Nataly, who had taken no share in the
talk so far.

"Why not?" asked Winona. "It's no worse than taking a horse and cart
down through the Italian quarter and selling rummage things to the women
there; and that's what the Ladies' Aid at our church did last winter."

"It's different," insisted Nataly, and nothing could shake her in her
ideas. So Louise poked Winona, as a hint not to argue any more. But when
Nataly went into the little general store to buy some picture post-cards
Louise whispered to the other girls, "I have a glorious improvement on
your soap-box plan, Winnie. If you girls will help me put it through
I'll tell you all about it."

"I'd like to hear about it first," said Helen doubtfully; for Louise's
plans were always original, but not always safe and sane. Before Louise
could answer Nataly was back again, and Louise began to tell her the
story of the reduced English gentlewoman who had to sell shrimps for a
living, by calling them up and down the streets. "And she was such a
perfect lady," finished Louise, "that whenever she called out 'Shrimps
for sale!' she'd add under her breath, 'I hope to goodness nobody hears
me!'"

"And did they?" Nataly asked innocently, while Winona tried to keep her
face straight.

"No, they didn't," said Louise sadly, "so she never sold any shrimps at
all. And so she died of starvation."

But Nataly, instead of grasping the moral, said only, "Well, why didn't
she eat the shrimps, then?"

At which Louise grunted disgustedly and went in to buy herself the
benzine.

After that day there was always a feeling in the village near Camp
Sunrise that every Camp Fire Girl's first object in life was cat-rescue.
And it was Winona who was responsible. To begin with, the day the girls
arrived at camp she had been seen by all the interested villagers,
walking near the head of the dusty procession, leading a small,
sash-bandaged gray kitten by a string. Hike had meowed for air and
exercise just as the village had been neared, and Winona had taken that
means of giving it to him, without risking his running off. The
villagers might have let that, by itself, pass. But when it was coupled
with Winona's performance of this afternoon--well, you can judge for
yourself.

It was after the girls had bought everything they came for, and were on
their way to camp. Out of a gate, across their road, bounded two small
boys, each of whom held a wriggling black kitten.

"Won't you hurt the kitty if you hold it by just one leg?" inquired
Winona of the nearest boy.

"It don't matter if we do hurt 'em--they ain't any good anyhow," he
explained. "We're going to drown 'em in a minute."

"Oh, _no_!" protested Winona.

"Well, will you take 'em?" asked the other boy. "Mother says she can't
keep any more cats."

Winona took the victims on the spot, and put them into the continuous
pocket all around the bottom of her Balkan blouse. The small boys went
back into their yard, where they were heard announcing, "Mother! A girl
took the kitties!" And Winona stood still with a kitten at each hip.

"You'd better give them back," said Nataly, who was afraid of cats.

"Oh, I couldn't!" said Winona. "It's so nice to be alive, even if you're
a cat--and there isn't really any Cat-Heaven, you know."

"Well, advertise them for sale, then," said Louise impatiently. "Good
home and kind treatment wanted for two black kittens--salary no object."

She wasn't in earnest, but Winona was.

"I will!" she said. "Not for sale, but to give away. Will one of you
take this notice to the paper, while I take the kittens to camp for the
night?"

"I'll take the kittens home!" volunteered Helen, Louise and Nataly with
a touching oneness of feeling.

Winona grinned. "Why, you very obliging people!" she said. "Please put
them in a box with netting, then, so they can't get away. I'll go and
advertise. I'm perfectly sure such good kittens as these will have lots
of applications!"

Louise and Helen, each with a kitten, accompanied by Nataly, kittenless,
went slowly campward in eloquent silence, while Winona sped back to the
office of the village paper. So the next day an advertisement appeared
in the _Press:_

  Wanted, to find homes for two black kittens, nice purrers, good
  mousers. Can be separated. Apply Box 2, _Press_ office, or at Camp
  Karonya, in person.

"I don't care if they do laugh," said Winona when she got back, to find
Camp Karonya howling at her in rows. "If they laugh they're more apt to
remember, and come get the kittens. I'll put them out of the way, poor
little things, if nobody answers in a day or two."

But--whether it was that cats who were "nice purrers" were a novelty,
whether it is true that there's a place for everything in this world if
we could only get in touch with it--the very next day there were five
applicants for those two black kittens. Indeed, Winona had great
difficulty in holding onto Hike the Camp Cat, who had grown by now into
a very presentable, if fat, Maltese kitten. People seemed to think that
it was Winona's duty to distribute cats as long as cats held out.

The only drawback was that for the rest of the time it was there the
village with one accord used Camp Karonya as a clearing-house for its
cats!




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


A couple of days later Winona took Florence and Puppums, and went
exploring in the rowboat. Louise and Helen were very busy making a
tree-house, but they promised to see that Hike the Camp Cat was looked
after and no belated advertisement answerer got him.

The Merriams rowed about a mile along the river, in the direction away
from the village, without finding anything more interesting than a
muskrat, who disappeared when Puppums barked at him. But just a while
after this thrilling incident they rounded a bend, and there in a red
canoe, placidly catching fish, sat Tom!

His back and that of the boy with him were turned to them, but there was
no mistaking him, nor Billy Lee. Neither of them saw the rowboat till it
was quite close, and Florence and Puppums howled together in greeting.

"Hello, kid! H'lo, Winnie--you've frightened the fish!" was his
brotherly greeting: while Billy, not being a relation, took off his hat
and said politely that he was glad to see them, and how was the camp?

"Oh, never mind the fish!" said Winona, when she had answered Billy with
equal politeness. "You can fish any day, but you haven't seen your
family since last week. How do you come to be up here so soon?"

"Captain Gedney worked it somehow--I don't know how," said Tom. "Anyhow,
we're here. Good fishing, too. See?" He held up a string of fair-sized
fish in proof.

"Where's your camp?" asked Florence, while Puppums almost had hysterics
and had to be handed into the canoe so that he could love Tom properly.
"Can I come see it?"

"Sure you can," said Tom. "No charge for the view. It's those tents
right over there."

"You know I don't mean that," said Florence, pouting. "I mean I want to
get out and go over."

"Oh, wait a day or so, can't you, Floss?" implored Tom, who plainly
didn't want to be detached from his fishing. "Wait and come over with
the rest of the bunch, and we'll give you a grand welcome, fifes and
drums and things. I tell you, though, girls, why can't you all come use
our swimming pool? We've just finished damming off a little branch
stream into a dandy pond--paved it and all. Started it last year. But
you'd have to give us warning, so we wouldn't be in it."

"Why, how lovely!" exclaimed Winona. "I know Mrs. Bryan will let us, and
all of us brought our bathing-suits."

"Good enough!" said Tom.

"How was mother--was everything all right at home when you left?" asked
his sister.

"Oh, fine and dandy. But what do you think, Winnie, that Children's Aid
child has come. Mother says she's glad it happened while we were out of
the way, so she'd have a better opportunity to get him running smoothly
without our help."

"Him!" said Winona. "Do you mean they sent a boy, not a girl?"

Tom laughed. "They certainly did--a darky about twelve, as black as your
hat, and a regular Topsy."

"Good gracious!" said Winona, laughing.

Mrs. Merriam had written to the Children's Aid Society a little while
before for a girl of about fourteen--black preferred--who could help
with the dishes out of school hours. She had heard nothing about it, and
the family had completely forgotten it till now.

"When did he get there?" asked Winona.

"The day before I came away," said Tom. "It was wash-day, and that
colored washerwoman mother has opened the door. First we knew she came
back and said: 'There's a white woman and a young colored gemman to see
Mrs. Merriam.' So mother went out, and came back in a minute with the
agent, an awfully nice sort of a girl, and the smallest, solemnest,
black boy you ever saw. Mother didn't want him at first, but the
agent-girl swore he had all the virtues, and needed a good home and
moral training. Then she walked off and left him sitting on a chair,
staring straight ahead. I tell you, it got sort of embarrassing after
awhile. So I asked him his name."

"What is it?" asked Winona.

"He said, 'Ah was christen' Thomas!'" returned Tom, grinning. "So mother
told him that I'd been christened Thomas, too, and asked him for his
last name. And he said, 'Ma las' name's Clay--but hit ain' ma callin'
name. Ma callin' name's Thomas. But yo'-all kin call me Mistah Clay if
yo' want to!'"

"Did mother want to?" asked Winona.

"She nearly exploded," said Tom, "but I think they came to some sort of
a compromise. I don't think he'll leave her time to miss us, for a week
or so anyway!"

"Well, I'm glad of that," said Winona. "Tommy, did you ever know of
anything I could do?"

"What on earth do you mean?" asked Tom, while Billy Lee, who had been
silently fishing all this time, looked interested.

"I mean something I could do that would earn money," she explained. "We
want to stay in camp longer than we have money for, so we must earn it."

"The thing you always were best at was darning my stockings," said Tom
cheerfully, and grinned.

"Oh, dear, I just knew you'd say that!" said Winona. "I can't go round
selling darns!"

Billy Lee lifted up his head from a tangle in his fishing-line as he
answered, "I don't see why you couldn't. I mean--why couldn't you do
mending for the Scouts? If you'd be willing to, I know we'd be glad.
There's an awful lot of holes in my clothes."

"And nobody to do them?" asked Winona, delighted.

"Not a soul," answered both boys at once.

"Oh, how perfectly splendid!" said Winona. "Mr. Gedney will know how
much I ought to charge for them, won't he?"

"Yes, or Mrs. Bryan had better tell you," said Tom.

"Oh, can I have them now?" asked Winona.

"Oh, bother!" said Tom. "Won't to-morrow do?"

"I'll get 'em," said Billy Lee, and made a flying leap out of the canoe
to shore.

He was gone a few minutes, and came back with a clothes-basket full of
garments of various kinds: also with the Scoutmaster, Captain Gedney.

"Good-morning, girls!" said the Scoutmaster. "This is fine! Billy tells
me we're going to get our mending done!"

"Oh, is it really all right?" quivered Winona.

"Yes, indeed, it's more than all right," answered Mr. Gedney
enthusiastically. "I was thinking of taking a trip to the village to see
if we could find somebody we could put at it, but this is better. Now
you get your Guardian to put a price on the work, either by the piece or
by the hour. I can promise you spot-cash, and a great deal of gratitude
into the bargain."

                   *       *       *       *       *

So the end of it was that Florence and Winona rowed happily back down
the river with what looked extremely like two weeks' wash in their boat;
also with the joyful certainty that Winona, at least, was going to be
able to earn her share of the expenses for the extra weeks of camping.

The boys promised to paddle down in a couple of days and get the mended
clothes, and--most important--the bill for them. Billy Lee wanted to see
his sister, anyway, he said.

When Florence and Winona got back nearly every girl in camp was seated
out in the open air, in a big circle, and nearly all of them were
talking at once, planning the ceremonial meeting for that night. There
was to be a ceremonial fire, a very high and beautiful one with a
central pole--this last an innovation which Louise was introducing. And
Winona and Marie Hunter were going to be made Fire Makers, Louise and
several of the others were going to be Wood-gatherers, and Nataly Lee
was going to join.

When Winona joined the circle she found that a good deal of the
excitement was being caused by the Book of the Count. Marie and Helen,
with paints and pen and brushes, were making the record of the days they
had spent in camp a very lively affair.

Winona sat down and looked on at what Marie was doing, and read on the
page they had open:

  On the second day, Winona,
  Ray-of-Light, the Cat-Collector
  Made her way unto the village,
  To buy post-cards at the village.
  With her went the cheerful Comet,
  Ishkoodah with flaming tresses;
  With her went the Star of Evening,
  Helen, gentle Star of Evening,
  And Nokoma, flower-giver--
  Nataly the flower-giver.
  Seeking post-cards, thus they wandered,
  But alas, the Cat-Collector
  Much preferred to bring home kittens,
  And to advertise those kittens.
  All next day the ad-replyers
  Tracked our camp with questing footsteps,
  Asked of us--"Where are those kittens?
  Give us several dozen kittens!"
  For, alas, those cats had vanished,
  Gone with the first two replyers
  To the ad Winona paid for.

  Still about our Camp come wailing
  Folk who seek the cats they heard of,
  Seeking several dozen kittens;
  Still the Ray-of-Light, Winona,
  Cannot give them any kittens,
  Cannot stop their wronged insistence
  On those kittens, on those kittens--

"Oh, good gracious!" asked Winona, beginning to laugh before she read
any further. "Who _did_ make all that up?"

"I did," said Marie proudly, "but we all helped."

"Do you mean to tell me that any more people have come catting to-day?"
demanded Winona.

"Only seven," said Helen. "Winnie, you'll never hear the last of this."

"Well, Mrs. Bryan, I've found some work to do that will earn money,"
said Winona, hastily changing the subject. "Florence and I went up to
the Scouts' camp, and Mr. Gedney gave us the boys' mending to do. He
said you were to put a price on it for us."

"Twenty to twenty-five cents an hour," supplied Mrs. Bryan promptly.
"You'd better have some of the other girls help you, too, dear, for
there's enough work there to take up a good deal of your time for three
or four days, and you don't come camping to turn yourself into a
sewing-girl, even for the good of the camp."

"Very well," said Winona. "Who hasn't picked out any special work to do
yet?"

"Nataly Lee," said someone.

"Neither have I," said Elizabeth. "I'll help, too."

A half-dozen of them went off to a sunny spot, produced a large
alarm-clock to time themselves by, and put in two hours of work
immediately. That is, all but Nataly. She got tired at the end of one
hour, and went off, she said, to lie down. The others got the mending
almost done, for many hands make light work. Then they piled up the
basket again, and went back to camp. It was Winona's turn to get supper
that night.

"There ought to be about four dollars' worth of work in that basket,"
said Helen thoughtfully when they all met at supper.

"It's probably more than we'll have next time," said Winona. "But
anyway, it's a steady income. Let's hope they'll be kind, and wear big,
awful holes in everything they have."

"They will, unless they've had a change of heart since last week," said
Louise.

                   *       *       *       *       *

After supper was cleared away the girls set about collecting wood in the
open space on the top of the little hill, for their ceremonial-fire. It
was the most happy and successful meeting they had had, and also, as
Louise expressed it, the most beadful. It ended in a ghost-dance around
the fire. After it was through the girls lay still and told stories,
which gradually became more ghostly than the dance. It was very pleasant
till bedtime came. Then even the bravest of them made dashes for their
tents; and Mrs. Bryan, making her rounds after the camp was asleep,
found five lighted candles keeping ghosts out of five tents in a row!




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


There were bathing and boating and tree-climbing in the days that
followed and there were hikes and folk-dances and various
entertainments, by themselves, and occasionally with the Scouts for
audience. The girls canoed all up and down the river, and borrowed the
Scout swimming-pool with rapture, and learned all sorts of swimming and
diving stunts. And everybody got brown and husky and cheerful. But in
between the good times the girls worked on steadily, each at her
appointed task, and in about ten days there was a promising collection
of material to be sold, for the virtuous purpose of giving Camp Karonya
some more weeks of life in the Wampoag woods.

Helen gave up modelling her beloved statuettes, and went soberly to work
at bowls and vases, and other such things that people would be likely to
find useful. She decorated them with motives she drew herself, and took
them up to Wampoag, the summer-resort, where there was a kiln, and had
them fired. Louise made burnt-leather pillows, which filled her hair
with such a fearful smell that for awhile she washed it every day, till
it occurred to her to wear a bathing-cap to work in. She also burned
mats and table-covers and napkin-rings to the limit of her purchasing
power; and when that failed she took to carving things out of wood she
picked up. The Blue Birds wove raffia baskets and table-mats, and Marie
and Edith crocheted bags and collars. Adelaide devoted herself to
canning. The rest helped her sometimes, but more of the time she took
pride in putting up the fruit all by herself.

There were embroidered tea-cloths and runners, and there was hammered
brass-work. The honor-counts rolled up like snowballs, for the girls
made nearly everything a girl is capable of making or decorating. There
was almost enough made to stop.

But still Camp Karonya held nightly discussions, having made these
various things, as to how to sell them. The plan most of them wanted to
adopt was that of going from house to house with them. Having a fair
meant hiring a room or store, or running the risk of having nobody come
to buy--for the camp was two miles from the nearest point of
civilization. The only alternative seemed putting them into some of the
resort shops to be sold on commission, and there was a large risk there
that the shops might not do properly by them. There was another
alternative, sending them home to be sold, but that seemed inglorious,
somehow.

One night, after everything had been argued over until everybody had
finished from sheer inability to think of anything more to say, and
begun to discuss constellations instead, Winona, lying on her back, felt
a pull at her sleeve. She rolled over, to see Louise stealthily working
herself down the hill, out of the moonlight. Winona rolled as stealthily
after her.

"What is it?" she asked, w

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