“Gee! I thought we Boy Scouts were the ‘whole show’ when it came to new stunts, but I guess it’s as Captain Andy says, ‘Skirts go ahead!’” with a boyish laugh.
“Well! you’ll show them something by ’n’ by, when it gets dark, when you signal with lanterns or an old broom dipped in kerosene to our camp on the dunes across the river to say we’re safe here, for Captain Andy says he won’t let us row back there to-night,” spoke up the now drowsy Astronomer. “He says we can sleep in his tent—a bully tent, divided up into rooms—at the foot of a sand-hill; he was going to have his niece there, but he says she can bunk with the girls.” Tommy waved a fat hand in the direction of Kitty.
“I don’t care; that’s what I want to do,” spoke up little Kitty, erstwhile of “the bleeding heart,” rejoicing in the freedom of her green bloomers. “Morning-Glory—I can’t pronounce her Indian name—says I can sleep with her,” shyly. “And we’ll wake up early and watch the dawn across the river and I may help her cook the breakfast—she’s to be one of the cooks to-morrow.”
“Indeed, you may, but don’t mistake me for Mary-Jane Peg in your sleep; I don’t want to be taken for a pig in a poke!” laughed Jessica, otherwise Welatáwesit. “And now for Kullibígan! What question shall we ask it first?”
“Who’ll be married first?” suggested the Astronomer. “That’s what girls always want to know, isn’t it?”
And then the excitement of the night began in earnest.
The great burnished top, painted by firelight, was set to spinning madly upon a flat stone set in the sand, surrounded by a ring of sitting girls; it revolved dizzily for many seconds, then fell over upon its broad head, as if bowing to Kitty.
The laughter that followed this exploit of the guessing-top made dunes and sea ring; Kitty was to be wedded first, instead of prematurely departing this life.
“Let us ask it something sensible, something that might have an answer in the near future,” suggested Betty Ayres—gay little Betty, whose Camp Fire name was Psuti, the Holly—after sundry other riddles had been propounded to the Kullibígan top for divination—questions as distant in speculation and wild in their answer as the lot which had fallen upon Kitty. “Let’s ask who’ll be the first to attain the highest rank among the Camp Fire Girls, and become a Torch Bearer!”
“Good!” approved Gheezies, the presiding Guardian of the Fire.