“Oh, that would be fine! Shall I speak to Miss Eleanor? She’d be perfectly delighted, I know.”
“No, don’t speak to her yet. I’ve got a plan, or some of us have, rather, but it’s still a secret so I can’t tell you anything about it. But maybe I’ll have a great surprise for you the next time I see you.”
The time passed quickly and pleasantly, and all too soon Miss Eleanor had to give the word that it was time to start for the landing if they were to catch the little steamer that was to take them to the other end of the lake.
“I tell you what! We’ll all go with you as far as you go on the boat, and come back on her,” said Marcia. “That will be good fun, won’t it? I’ve got plenty of money for the fares, and those who haven’t their money with them can pay me when we get back to camp.”
All the girls from Camp Halsted fell in with her suggestion, delighted by the idea of such an unplanned excursion. It was easy enough to arrange it, too, for the little steamer would be back on her return trip early in the afternoon, even though she did not make very good speed and had numerous stops to make, since Lake Dean’s shores were lined with little settlements, where camps and cottages and hotels had been built at convenient spots.
“We’ve heard you singing a lot of songs we never heard before,” said Marcia to Bessie, as they took their places on the boat. “Won’t you teach us some of them? They were awfully pretty, we thought.”
“You must mean the Camp Fire songs,” said Bessie, happily. “We’ll be glad to teach them to you—and they’re all easy to learn, too. I think Dolly’s got an extra copy of one of the song books and I know she’ll be glad to let you have it.”
And so, as soon as Bessie explained what Marcia wanted, the deck of the steamer was turned into an impromptu concert hall, and she made her journey to the strains of the favorite songs of the Camp Fire, the Wo-he-lo cheer with its lovely music being, of course, sung more often than any of the others.
“We were wondering so much about that,” said Marcia. “We could make out the word Wo-he-lo, but we couldn’t understand it. It sounded like an Indian word, but the others didn’t seem to fit in with that idea.”
“It’s just made up from the first syllables of work and health and love, you see,” said Eleanor. “We make up a lot of the words we use. A good many of the ceremonial names that the girls choose are made that way.”