“Maybe it isn’t so much of a pity, though,” she said. “I tell you one thing–a girl isn’t going to make any the worse wife for being self-reliant, and knowing how to take care of herself a little bit. And that’s what we want to make of our Camp Fire Girls–girls who can help themselves if there’s need for it, and who don’t need to have a man wasting a lot of time doing things for them that he ought to be spending in serious work–things that she can do just as well for herself.”
She stood before them as she spoke, a splendid figure of youth, and health and strength. And, as she spoke, she plunged her hand into a capacious pocket in her skirt.
“There!” she said, “that’s one of the things that has kept women helpless. It wasn’t fashionable to have pockets, so men got one great advantage just in their clothes. Camp Fire Girls have pockets!”
“You say that as if it was some sort of a motto,” said Charlie, laughing, but impressed.
“It is!” she replied. “Camp Fire Girls have pockets! That’s one of the things you’ll see in any Camp Fire book you read–any of the books that the National Council issues, I mean.”
“I surrender! I’m converted–absolutely!” said Jamieson, with a laugh. “I’ll admit right now that no lot of men or boys I know could have put this camp up in this shape in such a time. Why, hullo–what’s that? Looks as if you were going to have neighbors, Nell.”
His exclamation drew all eyes to the other end of the cove, and the surprise was general when a string of wagons was seen coming down a road that led to the beach from the bluff at that point.
“Looks like a camping party, all right,” said Trenwith. “Wonder who they can be?”
Eleanor looked annoyed. She remembered only too well and too vividly the disturbance that had followed the coming of the yacht, and she wondered if this new invasion of the peace of Plum Beach might not likewise be the forerunner of something unpleasant.
“They’ve got tents,” she said, peering curiously at the wagons. “See–they’re stopping there, and beginning to unload.”