“I ought to be drowned!” said Adelaide ashamedly. “But if you girls will wait till I get bathed and dressed, I’ll wash all the dishes to pay for this!”
“You won’t do any such thing,” said the others.
So they sat sociably outside Adelaide’s tent till she was dressed and joined them. Then they started out valiantly for the cooking-place.
When they reached it a very cheering surprise awaited them, for there was Mrs. Bryan seated on a pile of kindling, with a box of matches on her lap and a pleasant smile on her face.
“I thought you mightn’t know just where to begin,” she said, “so I thought I’d come help, this first morning. The first thing is the fire. Do any of you know how to make a cooking-fire in the open?”
Adelaide didn’t, neither did Elizabeth. Winona thought she knew, but wasn’t sure, and Lilian had once seen it done, but had forgotten how.
“I’d better show you all, then,” said their Guardian briskly. “The first thing you do is to get together two big green logs that won’t burn. Roll them together so they form a big V.”
“Logs that won’t burn! What a queer beginning!” said Winona, whose idea of building a fire was heaping a bonfire up with sticks till it flamed high.
But they tugged and pushed till they had a couple of newly-felled trees at angles to each other, in a hollow place protected from the wind.
“Now, you build your fire inside that V,” explained Mrs. Bryan, “and, you see, you can put the cocoa-pan up at the beginning of the crotch, and the portable oven and the frying-pan down where the division is wider.”