“What do we do to break camp, as you call it?” inquired Effie.
“Oh, we must march around camp singing, then shake hands and go to bed. We needn’t keep it up all night the way the negroes do sometimes,” Mary Lee told her.
“We might get up a song for the occasion,” observed Ran. “Well, I think that is a pretty good programme, as much as we can get through. Nan, you and Jo can get up the jokes and things; Mary Lee and the rest can attend to the costumes; we boys will see about the speeches, the corn for the roast and the fireworks; that disposes of the whole business.”
Ashby wrote the list down and the party scattered, intent upon the immediate carrying out of their plans. Therefore very soon Nan and Jo had their heads together giggling over some absurd jokes, Ran was marching up and down with head bent, intent upon his speech, Mary Lee and the other girls were consulting their elders in the matter of costume while Hartley and Ashby started off for a forage for corn and fireworks.
Miss Marshall and Miss Lloyd never failed to further anything in reason, and proposed that the costumes be nothing more elaborate than the ordinary camp dress. “If you black up,” said Miss Lloyd, “you will be sufficiently prepared for a show of this kind and you can brighten your costumes by wearing different colored handkerchiefs. Are you all to take part in the minstrel show?”
“Oh, no, only the three boys, Nan, Jo and myself,” Mary Lee told her. “The rest want to be audience, so there will be only six to perform.”
“Quite enough considering the size of the audience. Very well, anything we can do to help, please believe we shall be glad to do.” So the flock went off to report to Nan and Jo.
They found these two cudgeling their brains for proper words to use in something they were writing. “Ate, state, fate.” Jo had her pencil poised. “Which sounds better, Nan? So from this good old camp we must be getting on a gait, or, For we must all be traveling just as sure as fate?”
“Oh, Jo, the first is so slangy and the second isn’t much better. Let me see. Why not say: We must be departing for the season’s waxing late?”
“Departing is so formal. We don’t want a song to be sung on a college platform before a row of professors. I object to departing. Why not say: Now we must be going for the season’s getting late?”