“You have all done well, and deserved the honors you have been awarded on this, our final Council in the open,” began the Guardian. “Here, together in the woods, it has been easy to follow the law of the fire. We have found it so, I know.
“But now I want to tell you about a watcher of the Camp Fire who has been following the law without any of the helps we have. She gave up the camp and its good times, and went back to assume the duties of a woman—the tending of the real Fire of home. She had charge of the household. She kept a family of four beside herself, including an invalid mother, comfortable, well taken care of and happy, for one month. She made a pleasure out of her duties, and showed others how. Besides this, she collected girls who had not much social life and gave it to them. She led them for a month, three times a week. She told children stories and taught them sewing every other day for a month. And through it all she was happy, and made light for others wherever she went. She has carried the Torch of happiness and health and work and love, and passed it on undimmed to others. Winona, the Flashing Ray of Light, is just fifteen to-night. That is the earliest age at which anyone can be made a Torch-bearer—but I think she deserves the rank, Sisters of the Camp Fire. What do you say?”
Before the girls could answer Winona was on her feet with the kitten in her arms, scarlet and protesting.
“But I didn’t do all those wonderful things, Opeechee!” she cried. “I just did what there was to do. I like to plan things and have people have good times. I just wanted to get as good a time out of it all as I could. And I don’t believe I have enough honor beads to be a Torch-bearer.”
Mrs. Bryan paid her protest very little attention.
“What do you say, Sisters of the Camp Fire?”
The girls burst out into cheering.
“Winona, Flashing Ray of Light, is to take the rank of Torch-bearer to-day,” repeated Mrs. Bryan inexorably. “Rise, Winona.”
And as Winona stood up again (she had sat down hastily after her first objection) Mrs. Bryan repeated the honors she had won, and that her mother and Florence had kept track of so faithfully. She had expected the honor for story-telling, but the one for marketing—and the one for folk-songs—and—why, that Alice Brown pantomime had meant an honor bead! So had bringing in and arranging her mother’s invalid-tray, and the Porch Club and the story-hour had given her a double right to the Torch-bearer rank, which requires leadership of a group. Then, of course, the wood-craft honors she had won before she went home—she had known about those. But to think that everything, even that hilarious ten-course dinner she and Louise had planned, had been good for a bead! Winona had far more than the fifteen required honors for the highest rank of the Camp Fire.
“Repeat the Torch-bearer’s Desire, Winona,” said Mrs. Bryan, and Winona, half in a dream, said,