"Yes. And I think the idea is for their troop of Boy Scouts and our Camp Fire to make a march on the same day, going about the same distance, and doing everything without any help at all; cooking meals, finding water, making camp, getting firewood, and everything of that sort. A certain time is to be allowed for eating, and we are to make smoke signals when we reach the camping place, and again when we leave. There aren't to be any matches; all fires are to be made by rubbing sticks together. We're to cook just the same sort of meals, and the party that gets back to the starting point first wins."
"We're not to go together, then?"
"No. Won't it be much more exciting? You see, we won't know how nearly finished they are. And they won't be able to see how fast we are working. So each side ought to work just as fast as it can. It's a new sort of a race, and I think it will be great sport."
"Oh, so do I! We're each to spend the same amount of time eating?"
"Yes, because if we didn't, one side could hurry through its meal, or eat almost nothing at all, and get a start that way. And there's no object in eating fast. It's to see how quietly we can march and prepare our food and clean up afterward that we're having the test. It isn't to be exactly like a race. The idea is to get as much fun and good exercise out of it as anything else."
"Still it really will be a race, because each side will want to win. Don't the Boy Scouts have contests like that among themselves, sometimes?"
"Oh, yes. That's where the idea came from, of course."
"My, Bessie, but I'm glad everything is so quiet around here now! It doesn't seem possible that we've had such exciting times since we've been here, does it?"
"You mean about the gypsy who mistook you for me and tried to kidnap you?"
"Yes. I think he's safe for a time now. Did you see Andrew, the guide, when he came in to tell Miss Eleanor about how they'd taken those gypsies down to the town, where the sheriff took hold of them?"