A cheer fire was in progress, and a noisy one at that. The Pioneers had spent the afternoon and evening of the previous day over at the camp across the Lake at an entertainment called Scout Day, given in their honor by their friends.
Certainly it had been a most wonderful Scout Day, for there had been scouts saluting the colors, giving calls, making signals, lighting fires, and building shacks, tepees, and miniature log huts. Scouts, too, had engaged in all kinds of drills, contests, and races, such as tilting jousts, hand-wrestling, spear fighting and sham battles. And the games! They were a revelation to the girls in the uniqueness and cleverness of the ideas displayed. They had found, too, that scouts knew how to cook the very things dear to a camper’s heart, and sing—well, about every war and camp song known.
The Camp Circus presented the ludicrous side of these knights of chivalry, as they did clown stunts, causing the girls to laugh immoderately. After supper had come a firefly dance, which made strong appeal to the weird and mystic in every girl’s nature, as they watched the scouts swing about the blazing light in strange and grotesque evolution.
Perhaps the best was the scouts on the water, when, with a flotilla of row-boats and canoes decorated with the figures of paper animals, and brilliantly aglow with Japanese lights they glided over the water, the motion of the boats making the lights look like fireflies dancing in the air.
The jolly times given by the scouts must be returned! When, how, and where, were the three questions causing no little agitation, when Carol, with a white, frightened face, leaped into their midst crying, “Oh, girls, the baby has a fit!”
On hearing this startling statement some of the girls began to cry, others jumped up and wrung their hands frantically, while a few made a wild dash for Mrs. Van Vorst’s bungalow. Helen fortunately kept cool, and, perceiving that a panic would ensue, seized her bugle and blew it quickly.
This halted the stampede, arrested the hysterical ones midway between a sob and a cry, and caused a sudden quiet to fall, as she cried, in a loud clear voice, “Girls, keep perfectly still. Nathalie Page, Edith Whiton, and Lillie Bell, I appoint a committee of three to go and see if Carol’s report is so, and whether our services are needed. And please, Pioneers,” she called out as the three girls sprang on their feet, “one of you girls come back and let us know how things are progressing, as we shall all be anxious to know.”
The next moment the three girls were running swiftly after Carol, who, immediately after delivering her news, had started to run back to the bungalow.
“Now, girls,” continued Helen, “let us go on talking. Of course we are all worried, for we just love that baby!” she paused for a second, “but we can’t all help. Mrs. Morrow will let us know if we can do anything, so in the meantime, let us go on thinking up ideas.”
A cheer greeted this speech as a tribute to their leader’s level head and courage, for this was not the first time that she had preserved her poise, and held the scales when unduly weighted on the wrong side.