The pilot and the boy assistant took the heavier luggage while the girls carried the lighter articles and supplies. In this manner everything was transported to the camp site in about an hour. The pilot and the boy then assisted in the work of putting up the tents, and after this was finished they were paid and dismissed.
Everything went along smoothly while all this was being done. Not another person appeared in sight during this period, except the occupants of several boats that motored by. The Graham cottage was about a quarter of a mile to the south and farther up on the hill, but the screen of dense foliage shut it off from view at the girls’ camp.
All the rest of the day was required to put the camp into good housekeeper’s condition. The light folding cots had to be set up and got ready for sleeping, the kitchen tent also required much domestic art and ingenuity for the most convenient and practical arrangement, and a fireplace for cooking had to be built with rocks brought up principally from the water’s edge.
So eager were they to finish all this work that they did not stop to prepare much of a luncheon. They ate hurriedly-prepared sandwiches, olives, pickles, salmon, and cake, and drank lemonade, picnic style, and kept at their camp preparation “between bites,” as it were. In the evening, however, they had a good Camp Fire Girls’ supper prepared by Hazel Edwards, Julietta Hyde and the Guardian. Then they sat around their fire and chatted, principally about the beauty of the scenery on every hand.
But they were tired girls and needed no urging to seek rest on their cots as the sun sunk behind the hills on the opposite side of the lake. The move “bedward” was almost simultaneous and the drift toward slumberland not far behind. They had one complete day undisturbed with anything of a mysterious or startling nature, and it was quite a relief to find it possible to seek a night’s repose after eight or nine hours of diligent work without being confronted with apprehensions of some impending danger or possible defeat of their plans.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PLANNING.
Next morning the girls all awoke bright and early, thoroughly refreshed by their night’s rest. A breakfast of bacon, flapjacks and maple syrup, bread and butter and chocolate invigorated them for a new day of camp life in a new place.