“Gibbering about Wood-gatherers, Fire-makers, and what not,” went on the irrepressible brother. “She’s been looking in the back of the dictionary for something or other—I thought she had fallen down on her Latin, and was trying to work off a condition.”
“I was looking for Indian words,” declared Marie, “only I couldn’t find any. You know we can each choose an Indian name,” she went on to her girl chums, ignoring the three boys. “It may be anything, only it ought to mean something in English. But my dictionary doesn’t have any Indian information in it.”
“I have an Indian book at home,” said Blake Lathrop quietly, speaking to all, but looking rather more intently at Natalie. “I think it has a lot of names such as ‘bluebird’ in it. If you girls want to pick out titles for yourselves I’ll bring it over.”
“Oh, will you, really?” cried Mabel. “I want an Indian name, too, if the rest are going to have them.”
“Say, what is this Camp Fire Girls’ racket, anyhow?” asked Phil. “I’ve heard you talking about it, Mabel, but I thought it was one of the Academy societies.”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” declared Alice, while Natalie went to the piano and softly played a weird Indian song, in a haunting minor key.
“Well, what is it?” asked Jack, finishing the last of his crackers and cheese, and gallantly offering Alice what was left of the ginger ale.
“No, thank you,” interposed his sister. “I’m going to ask Nellie to make us some tea. We’re all shivering.”
“The Camp Fire Girls is an organization something like the Boy Scouts,” went on Alice.
“I used to belong,” remarked Blake, as he walked over ostensibly to look at the picture on the wall—the said picture being very close to the piano at which Natalie was softly playing.