“I’ll have chance enough to remember you without that,” replied Winona feelingly, and went off to look for poles with the others. Edith Hillis pulled her embroidery out of her knapsack and mounted guard over the Blue Birds, who were, however, a rather subdued flock by now.
Meanwhile the rest of the girls picked out four saplings which grew at the edge of the wood beyond the meadow, and nicked them at the bottom patiently till they fell. The next thing was to tie them together. But nobody had anything to do it with, till Mrs. Bryan remembered a bunch of leather thongs she carried.
“I always have at least two along for extra shoe-laces, when I’m camping,” she explained, “and they always come in use for something else before the time is over. An old guide up in the Adirondacks told me to do that, and it’s always a good thing for campers to do.”
The thongs bound the saplings into a frame, and Louise secured them to a knot that was newly learned, and the pride of her life.
“That can’t come out,” she said, surveying it with pleasure, for learning to do it had earned her a much-valued bead.
For the covering of the stretcher Adelaide produced an old gray shawl from her knapsack.
“Father made me bring it,” she explained rather shamefacedly.
“Just the thing!” said Mrs. Bryan heartily.
They wrapped it round the frame, and it went around three times, being large, so that a couple of pins held it fast. Then they lifted the gratified Florence on to it and started off down the road again. They had cleared up the fragments of their luncheon first, and buried neatly all the scraps and debris, so that there were no excursiony-looking boxes and crusts littering their resting-place.
The girls took turns carrying the stretcher, and as there were fourteen of them, counting Mrs. Bryan, many hands made light work. As Louise had prophesied would happen, after a little while Florence became restless. The other Blue Birds were having lovely times frolicking all over the road, chasing butterflies and picking flowers and playing with the dog. Florence found it rather stupid to sit in solitary grandeur on a stretcher, and listen to what Winona and Adelaide, before her, and Marie and Edith, behind her, were saying about their own affairs. So at the first stop to change bearers she wanted to get down. But Mrs. Bryan was firm.