A few moments before six the next morning Nathalie opened her eyes, yawned drowsily, and then rolled over to see Helen staring at her from the opposite bed with wide-open eyes.
“Oh, I have had such a delicious sleep,” she cried. “I don’t believe I wakened from the time I touched the pillow. Helen, isn’t it just too lovely up here in these woods? Did you hear that whippoorwill toot just after we got into bed? And these bough beds, aren’t they the coziest—”
“Well, you’ll get coziest with a vengeance, Blue Robin,” was Helen’s terse reply, “if you don’t get into your bathing-suit—” Helen ended with a shrill scream as the bugle’s blast sounded with startling clearness in the still morning air.
But Nathalie was already half-way into her suit. The last button was caught. “There, I’m ready before you, Miss Poke!” she taunted gleefully, as the second call sounded. The two girls tripped lightly across the open space in front of the tents thickly strewn with pine needles and thus on down to the boathouse pier.
Just a moment and a slim figure was seen leaping through the air, then Nathalie arose like a mermaid from the sea, blowing and puffing the water from her mouth as she floated for a moment on her back and swam gracefully back to the bank. As she reached shallow water she stood up and waved her hand to a group of shivering ones on the bank crying, “Oh, come on, kiddies!
“Sure, it’s cold!” she nodded to a faint remonstrance from a timorous one, “but you’ll get heated if you’ll take the plunge!”
Out from her dip, with the wish that it could have been longer, she hurried to her tent; after a rub came the dressing, the picking up of her clothes, the putting her bed to air, and then the call for breakfast.
After this meal came the event of the day, the naming of the camp, the tents, and the boats. Camp duties were soon disposed of and then there was a general stampede to Mrs. Morrow’s bungalow, where the Sport, as chairman of this committee, stood waving the Stars and Stripes on the roof of the veranda.
A cheer arose a few moments later when its bright colors fluttered gently to and fro in the morning wind from the flag staff that had been hoisted over the Director’s abiding-place, and the girls, quickly forming in line, gave the flag salute. The Star Spangled Banner was then sung with a heartiness that found its echo in the woods, the very leaves on the trees seeming to rustle in reverence to the country’s honored emblem.
The campers now gathered before Mrs. Van Vorst’s bungalow, where, from a high flagstaff erected by Peter, a white flag fluttered gracefully to the breezes, disclosing in red letters the words, “Camp Laff-a-Lot.” Beneath this flag curled a smaller one, also white, bearing in blue letters, “The Girl Pioneers of America.”