“Boys,” began Mabel, somewhat solemnly, “we never gave this consideration until now. That is the others didn’t. But it has been in my mind since we thought of becoming Camp Fire Girls. I don’t see why we can’t go off in the woods this summer. It would be jolly,—I think.”
“I’ll go if the others do,” conceded Alice.
“We’d have to have a chaperone,” remarked Marie.
“Mrs. Bonnell, our Guardian, would come, I think,” suggested Mabel.
“Then let’s accept the boys’ challenge!” exclaimed Natalie. “I don’t see why we can’t make a fire as well as they. As for cooking, there is so much that comes canned now that it’s really no trouble at all. We always live on canned things when our girl leaves.”
“Then it’s decided!” echoed Mabel, clapping her hands. “We’ll become real Camp Fire Girls. Now I must be going. Don’t forget—come over this evening. And, Phil, bring that Indian book.”
“Say, do you think they will go camping?” asked Jack, as his two chums took their leave, while his sister led her girl friends to her room to show a new dress she had bought.
“Never!” cried Blake. “They’re just bluffing.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad plan for us to go camping ourselves this summer,” remarked Phil.
“He means he’ll go if the girls do,” put in Jack. “Well, I’ll see you this eve.,” and with that he pretended to dig into some of his Academy studies, for he and his friends, as did the girls, went to the same institution in the little semi-country town of Middleford.
“Did you really mean what you said, Mabel, about going camping?” asked Natalie, as the three walked away from Marie’s house, some time later, having in the interim found many matters about which to chat.
“I didn’t at first—but when I saw how the boys took me up I did. I don’t see why we can’t do it—and be real Camp Fire Girls.”
“There goes a real Camp Fire Girl now,” added Natalie in a low voice, as she indicated, walking slowly down the village street ahead of them, a figure clad in rather a gaudy skirt, a Zouave jacket, and a sash of oriental hues.
“Yes, there is an encampment of them just outside of town,” went on Natalie. “One came to our house the other day, wanting to tell fortunes. It’s romantic, in a way, I suppose, but she didn’t tell our girl anything that I couldn’t have told her myself.”