“Yes, I know, but that is what she doesn’t want—mother-coddling. What she wants is to come out here and kick around as one of us in a rough and tumble way. Then she would get over her sensitiveness, but somehow I can’t seem to manage it.”
There was silence for a moment as both girls fell to thinking. All at once Helen bounced up in bed crying, “There, Nathalie, I have nailed it!”
“Nailed it?” repeated her companion. “Why—”
“Oh, you know what I mean, I mean about Nita. Now listen to Solon the Wise. You get Nita to come and sleep in this tent—”
“Where, on the floor?” inquired Nathalie teasingly.
“You know what I mean—on my cot. I’ll take her room. Then you drill her to take her part with the other girls, and so on, just as if she were one of us. In three days I’ll come back and take my turn with her, and you take my place. Then in three days again let Lillie take a turn, and so on until the turns have gone the rounds, each girl being her tent-mate for three days. In that way she will become acquainted and have a chance to get in with us.”
“Oh, Helen, you are the brightest—but suppose she won’t come?”
“Won’t be your tent-mate? Why, she worships the ground you walk on! That’s one thing that ails her, Nathalie, she’s jealous of the girls, because in a way she is outside of it all. Get her into harness like the rest of us and in ten days’ time she’ll be like another girl, or you can shut me up for a lunatic.”
Nathalie, as soon as possible after the morning conference, had a little talk with her Director, and finding that she agreed with Helen, sought Mrs. Van Vorst and laid before her the new plan. Of course she found that she had a number of objections to fight from that lady, but eventually she won, and it was decided that for the rest of the time in camp Nita Van Vorst was to be lost to her mother’s bungalow, for to her unbounded joy she was to be one of the girls!
It was bathing hour, and Nathalie, with bugle in hand, was patroling the beach, keeping her brain and eyes keenly alert, for some of the girls were careless, and would swim out beyond the raft.