“Girls,” interrupted Miss Gordon, “it really is growing late. Let’s gather up our scraps now and put out the fire. We’ll discuss the camping trip later on.”
Connie brought water from the spring to throw on the coals. Eileen and Rosemary gathered up the paper plates and disposed of them in the garbage can provided by the park. The blackened cooking can also was discarded.
“Our camp now is as tidy as when we came,” said Miss Gordon. “Best of all, we have very little to carry home.”
“Except ourselves,” sighed Rosemary, who had eaten entirely too much.
Hiking back toward Rosedale, Connie fell into step with Veve. She noticed that her friend seemed very downcast.
“What’s wrong, Veve?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t really mean it when you said you didn’t care about going to camp?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Veve said, a trifle crossly. “I don’t have to decide now, do I?”
Actually, the little girl was afraid she never could earn five dollars as her share of the camp money. Though she had tried hard, she never had been able to save enough to buy her own Brownie uniform.