“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. “Thecroquettes 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 meshow 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 nowit 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.
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. “WhereisPuppums, 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?”
“Wecancamp,” 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 formuchmoney,” 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 itsstockings, 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-cardwhich 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 onher. 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 nextmonthly 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.”
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 asthey 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.
“Theywillhowl,” 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, wassitting 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’therwrist 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,dearsister, 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’msoglad!” 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 towash 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 hersister’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 amoment, 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.
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 littlebrown 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 theprovisions 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 thegirls 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 thelimit!” 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 thatwon’tburn! 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 goteach 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.