“It’s all nonsense and mummy says so, for us to want hot and cold water all the time,” she declaimed from her perch on a stump where the towel was clear of the ground. “And this is good for us. Will make——”
“Men of us,” finished Cleo, who always loved to tease chubby, baby Madaline.
Corene had charge of breakfast, Julia was fireman, this picturesque duty appealing to her imaginative nature, and as she poked the embers in the stone furnace (of her own building) and sang, “Boil and bubble, toil and trouble,” she must have imagined the witches in Macbeth were stirring things up with their forked wands.
“Hungry! I’m starved!” declared Margaret. “Can’t seem to remember when I ate last. Please send me down that dish of apples.”
“Let us adhere to something of our regular table manners, girls,” said Miss Mackin from her place at the head of the board. “We don’t want the home folk to be blaming us for lost manners, when we go back. I know it does seem like fun to be free from most restrictions, but habits are so easily formed, and we can’t blame the home people for wanting us to go back to them better in every way.” Miss Mackin never dictated, she just “put things up to the girls” in a very pleasant manner.
Corene was serving the cereal while Julia kept things hot over the picturesque stone furnace.
“If you have enough cooked now we will all eat together, Corey,” said the director. “Just bring your coffee pot over here. I’ll pour!” She smiled broadly at that use of the social term.
“Let me cook the bacon,” begged Cleo. “I’ve heard daddy talk so often of camp bacon.” Her request was granted, and presently the bacon was sizzling from its wire string that ran from one end to the other of the furnace, each end being hooked on the iron poles, little gas pipes set up in the stones, with homemade hooks of tightly wound wire, the entire contrivance representing Julia’s idea of a camp “skillet” or “dangling spider.”
The bacon broiled very quickly, for the embers had reached a point of concentrated heat, and when Cleo forked her bacon off the wire its aroma might easily have attracted envious comments from the girls at Camp Norm.
“Did anything ever taste so good?” exclaimed Margaret.