Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer

by Rena I. Halsey

She dropped the ashes of Miss Dummy into the placid water.

Some of the unduly imaginative girls turned away, declaring that the effigy looked like some one of the girls in that suit in the reddened glare of the flames. But the rest joined hands with the scouts and leaped merrily about the blazing pyre, executing weird and strange gyrations, which they termed a fire dance, as a last farewell to their enemy, who finally, done to the death, tumbled to the ground a fiery mass of scarlet embers. A pail of water soon quenched the last of the spirits, when the ashes were gathered into a big pail and carried in a procession to the shores of the lake.

Here Helen, holding the pail carefully in her hand, stepped into a row-boat and was conveyed to the middle of the lake. By the light of the moon just peeping above the horizon she dropped the ashes of Miss Dummy into the placid water, and to the singing of a comic dirge, composed by one of the Orioles, was rowed silently back to shore.

CHAPTER XXV—GOOD-BY TO EAGLE LAKE

After Miss Dummy had been disposed of there was a return to the cheer fire circle, where the Sport performed the unusual feat of lighting three fires with one match. The giving out of merit badges and stars for the work performed during camp life and for the day’s sports now took place. These rewards of merit were each accompanied by camp gifts, the work of the girls done afternoons at their “trial by needle” hour, as some of the girls called it, when raffia and bead work, candle making, sewing, and many other crafts had occupied the Pioneers’ busy fingers, while some expert read of heroic deeds, or the girls chatted pleasantly of the pleasures that were, or that were to be.

Pioneer and Scout, each in turn, now told of some special good that had come to them from the life in the open, which Mrs. Morrow said would be food for thought on their return to the city. A rhyming contest made no end of merriment, as well as the games of menagerie, gossip, animal, blind man’s buff, and others of like character. The scout orchestra now varied the entertainment with a few musical selections which started the girls and boys dancing around the fire again, this time with the graceful swing and motions of the modern dances.

But they tired at last, and, some one starting a song, they all fell in and sang to their heart’s content one song after the other, rendering the old-remembered one of “Juanita” with undue emphasis, in honor to Miss Anita Van Vorst.

After Dr. Homer, with the assistance of a few scouts, had made a deal of laughter by his comic shadowgraphs, done by a flash-lamp placed in the rear of one of the big tents with the flaps closed, the time came to say good-by. A few protested that it was still early, but when reminded by Mrs. Morrow that they had already been allowed an hour longer than usual and that they would have a lot of work to do in the morning as they were to break camp to return to the city, the protests ended, and the good-nights were said.

The last day was a busy one, any number of camp rules were broken but the squads were lenient—they were still sleepy—so no reports were made, and the work of pulling down tents, packing the camp equipment, and making everything as clean and orderly as possible progressed.