Followed next the mid-day meal. Then more pleasures of the woods or water, receiving visitors, or making calls on new acquaintances.
They did not lack for enjoyment in the evenings. Either they went to their brothers’ camp, or the boys, their forces augmented by such of their friends as they condescended to ask, called. Then there were dances over to the “Point”, the place where a cluster of stores were located. Then to bed, with the assurance of a sound sleep in that healthful air. It was an ideal sort of existence.
On occasions they held the regular Council Camp Fires, with all the prescribed ceremonies. There was the lighting of the fire, the singing of the songs and the Indian music;—the song of the “Sky-blue Water.”
Sometimes it rained, and they could only sit in the tent, though when it did not pour too hard they put on their bathing costumes, and went out in the canoe.
“Who’s turn to get dinner to-day?” asked Marie one morning, as they came back from a launch ride, bringing some dainties to supplement the regular camp-fare.
“Mine, I think,” spoke Natalie. “What would you like?”
There were four different kinds of meals ordered, and each one insisted on something different until breath-of-the-pine-tree exclaimed:
“Now I shall have to make up my own bill of fare. All of you go off in the woods, and when it’s ready I’ll give our call.”
“All right, Natalie,” they assented and off they trooped.
Natalie, in her Camp Fire suit, which wonderfully became her, with her dark braids down her back, and with a golden bandeau confining the locks over her broad forehead set about her task.