“Oh, they don’t have to see,” said Jessie, witheringly. “Anybody within a mile of you can hear you dance.”
“See here, Jessie Sanderson, that’s not fair,” Lucile broke in. “Evelyn’s one of the best little dancers I know, and I won’t have her maligned.”
“Have her what? I wish you’d speak United States, Lucy,” said Jessie, plaintively.
“Don’t talk and you won’t show your ignorance.” It was Evelyn’s turn to be scornful.
“Well, what does it mean?” Jessie returned. “You tell us.”
“Some other time,” said Evelyn, calmly. “You will have to excuse me now. I am so excited now that I really can’t bring my mind down to trivial matters.”
“I knew it,” Jessie was declaiming tragically, when a clear whistle sounded from the foot of the hill and Lucile exclaimed:
“There’s Phil; I wonder what he wants now.”
The three girls made a pretty picture as they stood there gazing eagerly down the slope, Lucile with her vivid gypsy coloring and fair-haired, blue-eyed Jessie, exactly her opposite, yet, withal, her dearest and most loyal friend; and last, but not least, Evelyn, short and round and polly, with a happy disposition that won her friends wherever she went.
Although it is generally conceded that “three make a crowd,” the rule was certainly wide of the mark in this case. The girls were bound by a tie even stronger than friendship, and that tie was the law of the camp-fire. The latter had taught them many brave lessons in the game of life, lessons in self-denial, in sympathy and 15 loyalty, and they were ever anxious to prove that they had learned their lessons well.