"Some of the men I know who are interested in the Boy Scouts think the Camp Fire Girls are a good deal of a joke," said Eleanore, with a light in her eyes that might have made some of the scoffers she referred to anxious to eat their words. "They say we get along all right because we always have some man ready to help us out if we get into any trouble. So I planned this camp just to show them that we can do just as well as any troop of Boy Scouts ever did."
"I bet we can, too," said Dolly, eagerly. "Why, with such a lot of us to do the work, it won't be very hard for any one of us."
"Not if we all do our share, Dolly," said Eleanor, looking at her rather pointedly. "But if some of us are always managing to disappear just when there's work to be done, someone will have to do double duty—and that's not fair."
"I won't—really I won't, Miss Eleanor," said Dolly. "I know I've shirked sometimes, but I'm not going to this time. I'm going to work hard now to be a Fire Maker. I think I've been a Wood Gatherer long enough, don't, you?"
"You've served more time than is needed for promotion, Dolly. It's all up to you, as the boys say. As soon as you win the honors you need you can be a Fire Maker. You can have your new rank just as soon as you earn it."
"Bessie and I are going to be made Fire Makers together, if we can, Miss Eleanor. We talked that over the other day, at the farm, and I think well be ready at the first camp fire we have after we get home."
"Well, you'll please me very much if you do. It's time the other girls were getting up now—we've got to cook breakfast now. I'll call them while you two build a fire—there's plenty of wood for to-day, piled up over there."
AS Dolly had said, with each girl doing her share, the work of the camp was light. While some of the girls did the cooking, others prepared the "dining table"—a smooth place on the ground—and others pinned up the bottom flaps of; the tents, after turning out the bedding, so that the floors of the tents might be well aired. And then they all sat down, happily and hungrily, to a breakfast that tasted just as good as had supper the night before.
"Can we swim in the lake, Miss Eleanor?" asked Margery Burton.
"If you want to," said Eleanor, with a smile. "It's pretty cold water, though; a good deal colder than it was at the sea shore last year. You see, this lake is fed by springs, and in the spring the ice melts, and the water in April and May is just like ice water. But you'll get used to it, if you only stay in a couple of minutes at first, and get accustomed to the chill gradually. But remember the rule: no one is ever to go unless I'm right at hand, and there must always be someone in a boat, ready to help if a girl gets a cramp or any other sort of trouble."