Mackey waited to try out their resources before interfering. Then she said:
“It’s lots of fun to build fires in the rain; that is if you don’t have to dry out too quickly after a long hike. We can always find dry wood inside of the old logs, and by scooping out some shavings we can easily start some of your nice, little cord pieces, that you have stocked under the tent. No, you can’t use artificial wood, boxes nor oil stoves. All that is against the camp system.”
“Then I think,” said Julia, the good housekeeper, “we had better add to our woodpile. We have had such splendid weather, rain must be about due.”
“We can go out wood hunting when the sun goes down, or cools off, late this afternoon,” agreed Mackey. “I think Corene had such a plan already fixed.”
“Indeed I did,” spoke up Corene. “I know what a time we had once at the big camp when the wood pile went low and the storm ran high. Unkink your muscles, girls; there’s a heap of chopping ahead.”
“And do you remember last year at the beach? We were donning our dimities about this time daily,” recalled Louise, with a well meaning sigh.
“I’m gaining pounds,” announced the willowy Julia. “I was weighed this morning.”
“Have I grown any?” joked Louise, giving one of her inimitable stretches.
“You do all seem to be taking to camp life like squirrels to nuts,” interrupted the director. “I shall have quite a record to my credit if you keep it up.”
Time passed so quickly that the call for their class in basketry seemed almost to overlap the rest hour.