"Well, we can all laugh at it now," said Eleanor. "Are you going back to the city to-night, Charlie?"
"No, I guess I'll be held up here until about noon to-morrow," he answered. "I've got to appear against that poor chap, and there are one or two other matters I want to attend to while I'm here. I'll see you on your train in the morning, and I'll try to look out for myself when you're gone."
It was an enthusiastic and eagerly curious crowd of girls that welcomed them back to Long Lake the next day when, in the middle of the morning, the well-remembered camp appeared. Miss Drew, who had taken Eleanor's place as Guardian, laughed as she greeted her friend.
"I don't know how you do it, Nell," she said. "I never saw anything like these girls of yours. They did their best not to let me know, but I managed to find out, without their knowing it, that you did about everything in a different way from mine—and a much better way."
"Nonsense!" said Eleanor. "I've made a few changes in the theoretical rules of the Camp Fire. All Guardians are allowed to do that, you know. But it's only because they seemed to suit us a little better—my ideas, I mean."
"You know," said Anna Drew, thoughtfully, "I think that's the very best thing about the Camp Fire. It doesn't hold you down to hard and fast rules that have got to be followed just so."
"If it did, it would defeat its own purposes," said Eleanor. "What we want to do—and it's for Guardians, if they're youngsters like you and me, as well as for the girls—is to train ourselves to attend to our jobs properly."
"Why, what jobs do you mean?"
"The job every girl ought to get sooner or later—running a home. It's a lot more of a job, and a lot more difficult, and important, too, than waiting on people in a shop, or being a stenographer, and yet no one ever thinks an awful lot about it before it comes along."
"That's so, Nell. I never thought of it just that way. But you're right. We get married, and a whole lot of us don't have any idea at all of how to look after a house."