The tune was borrowed from “Smiles” and the words, though a little rough on the edges, fitted in pretty well. And this was the beginning of the campfire concert. Two ukes and two mandolins, besides a real melodious banjo, composed the orchestra, and the Norms sang everything campy and collegiate, until Mackey declared she would simply have to put her Bobbies to bed.
Regret as real and keen as that usually expressed in a nursery at the same order, answered the summons, but the director was inexorable, and the Norms finally left in a path of complimentary protestations.
The inspection finished (nothing was found out of order on this, the very first night), the little campers presently found themselves in their “bunks.”
Such tittering, giggling and whispering!
Someone’s bed “sagged like a hammock” while another someone’s “humped like a hill.”
“I’m going to try to grow tall,” whispered Louise to Julia, her nearest neighbor. “Do you suppose the pines and tamaracks can stretch one out?” and she thrust her feet beyond the blanket confines.
Julia didn’t care if she shrank, and she whispered that secret; and so it went around from cot to cot until Miss Mackin called a final warning. Then things settled down at last, and only the trusty lantern that hung behind a screen in a sheltered spot outside the door, stood sentinel over the sleepers.
And they slept. Little gasps and sighs told of girlish dreams, and if Louise kicked her feet down too decidedly perhaps she was trying to grow; also when Julia humped up her knees and spoiled the entire effect of her pretty blanket, perhaps she was trying to shrink.
Then the inevitable happened. As it couldn’t be avoided it has to be told, in spite of the usual first night scare banality.
Cleo had just said something unintelligible and Corene answered with an alto groan, when there was a scream! It came from the end cot where Margaret slept.