“I can see all sorts of jolly times ahead of us!” exclaimed Alice. “We will get to know ever so many nice girls—really we four are too much by ourselves.”
“We always have been,” said Mabel. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t continue to go together. Just because we have joined the Camp Fire Girls doesn’t mean that we’re going to separate, I hope. Shall we make new friends and lose our old ones?”
“Not at all,” went on Alice. “But we are too—too—what was it Professor Battell said in class to-day—too inscribed—no, that wasn’t it——”
“Circumscribed,” put in Natalie.
“That’s it. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you for a memo. pad, Nat!” and once more Alice embraced her chum.
“Why so pensive?” asked Marie, as, to give entrance for her friends she opened the door of the little cottage, over which she presided as mistress. “Has anything happened, Natalie? Did you miss in Latin to-day?” and Marie, dropping her books on a chair in the hall ushered her chums into the little library. The girls were on their way home from the Academy and from class had gone to a meeting of the Camp Fire Girls Association, which had recently been started in their town. They had been initiated as “Wood Gatherers” of the Dogwood Camp Fire, which name Mrs. Pierce Bonnell, the Guardian, had chosen for the group.
“No, nothing has happened,” said Natalie slowly. “I was just thinking what delightful fun we would have this summer if we could really gather around a camp fire of our own, out in the open.”
“Well, why couldn’t we?” asked Marie. “Let’s think about it, anyhow. I’m going to ask Nellie to make tea. It’s real chilly, even if the bluebirds are here and the flowers almost out. Oh, I have it, I’m going to choose the name Bluebird—I wonder what that is in Indian?”
“Che-no-sag-ak!” exclaimed a guttural voice, as Marie opened the door of the dining room. “Che-no-sag-ak! Wah! Pale face maiden heap talk much. Ugh!”
“Oh Jack! How you startled me!” cried Marie, shrinking back, with her hands to her breast, as she beheld her brother and his two intimate chums, Phil Anderson and Blake Lathrop, calmly seated at the dining room table, luxuriously regaling themselves on water crackers and old cheese, with some ginger ale which they had evidently smuggled in from the corner grocery.