“Oh, let’s tell things from the beginning!” interrupted some methodical girl from the farther end of the porch.
“Oh, but I told Miss Page—” Helen stopped, for her hostess was looking at her with beseeching eyes, clearly due to the formal title.
“Won’t you please call me Nathalie?” the owner of that name ventured with a coaxing little smile.
“If you will say Helen,” replied the girl with evident delight.
The girls both laughed, shook hands on it, and then Helen continued. “Yes, I told Nathalie all about the tests for the third-class Pioneer. Well, to become a second-class Pioneer it is necessary to have been a third-class Pioneer for at least a month. Then you have to know how to cook a piece of meat properly—”
“Boil a potato as it should be done!” interrupted Lillie Bell. This was impressively said, and followed by a chime of laughter from the girls.
“And make a coal fire in a cooking-stove—ye stars!” ejaculated Grace, “when I made my first, I literally smoked every one in the house to a ham—but when I made my first out-of-door fire—”
“You didn’t do any better,” cried Lillie Bell irrelevantly, “for you sooted the whole bunch of us.”
“Oh, Lillie,” cried Grace in dismayed tone, “that wasn’t from making the fire, for I was the only one who made it with a single match, but it was from putting it out.”
“Now girls, don’t tell tales; for, as Mrs. Morrow says, we are all breakable and no one should cast the first stone,” called out their leader.