"Oh, if you put it that way, it'll be lots of fun," Marie exclaimed eagerly. "I'd just like to catch 'em with their fists all-all-smeared!"
She brought the last word out so ecstatically that everybody laughed.
"I'm afraid you have fallen into the pit that I warned you against," Miss Ladd said, addressing Marie. "You mustn't start out eager to prove the persons, under suspicion, guilty."
"Then we must drive out of our minds the picture of the fists smeared with jam," deplored Marie with a playful pout.
"I fear that you must," was the smiling concurrence of the Guardian.
"Very well; I'm a good soldier," said Marie, straightening up as if ready to "shoulder arms." "I won't imagine any jam until I see it."
"Here comes Hazel," cried Julietta, and everybody looked in the direction indicated.
Hazel Edwards had taken advantage of this occasion to go to her aunt's house and thence to the city Red Cross headquarters for a new supply of yarn for their army and navy knitting. As she emerged from the timber and continued along the edge of the woods toward the site of the camp, the assembled campers could see that she carried a good-sized bundle under one arm.
"She's got some more yarn, and we can now take up our knitting again," said Ethel Zimmerman, who had proved herself to be the most rapid of all the members of the Camp Fire with the needles.
Although the business of the meeting was finished, by tacit agreement those present decided not to adjourn until Hazel arrived and received official notice of what had been done.