Juliet Field, the older girl, had light brown hair and eyes, was rather pretty and had a plump girlish figure, round fat cheeks with a good deal of color and a piquant, turned-up nose, while Beatrice, whom everybody called "Bee," wore her curly dark hair cut short, had a melancholy brown face entirely unlike her character and was as slender and small and quick in her movements as a tiny wren.
The two sisters and Sylvia Wharton slept in the tent with Miss McMurtry, while the third tent sheltered Eleanor, Edith, Meg and, of course, "little brother".
When Miss McMurtry had wakened to discover that four of the Camp Fire girls had gone in swimming without the others, she had not been pleased, more because she felt that Betty and Polly were too much inclined to be leaders among the girls and to disregard her advice. They had not yet openly disobeyed her, so of course she had been unable to say anything to them, but now she made up her mind to hang in each tent the rules for each day's camp routine so that there could be no more uncertainty. Miss McMurtry had merely been waiting to decide what rules were wisest before making her schedule.
As soon as their first masculine visitor departed Eleanor, Meg and Juliet announced breakfast. At a comfortable distance from the kitchen fire a large white cloth had been spread on the grass and in the center stood the great basket of fresh strawberries just brought over by the young man to whom Polly had given such an uncomfortable reception. A big coffee pot and two jugs of milk stood at opposite ends of the cloth besides toast and a dozen boiled eggs in a chafing dish, while from the nearby fire came the most delicious food odor in the world: bacon fried before open coals. Nevertheless the girls did not sit down to breakfast at once although they were dreadfully hungry. Already they had established certain Camp Fire customs, and one was their morning habit of reciting some verse of thanksgiving in unison before beginning the real living of their day. The hymn, which first introduced Betty to Esther was always sung at the close of each day, but this morning verse had always to be original and one girl at a time was allowed to make the selection. To-day it had fallen to Polly's lot and she had taught it to the other girls over their camp fire the night before.
So now the ten girls with their guardian in the center stood in a semicircle facing Sunrise Hill. The sun had fully risen and the earth, as the Indians used to say, had "become white." Led by Polly they slowly recited this ancient chant:
"Shine on our gardens and fields, Shine on our working and weaving; Shine on the whole race of man, Believing and unbelieving; Shine on us now through the night, Shine on us now in Thy might, The flame of our holy love And the song of our worship receiving."
And when they had finished, Polly O'Neill, with a note of reverence in her voice that gave it an unconscious dramatic quality she would have vainly tried to have at any other time, added: "We Camp Fire girls worship not the fire but Him of whom in ages past it was the chosen symbol because it was the purest of all created things."
And then without further ceremony there was a sudden rush for breakfast.