Winona of the Camp Fire Part 21

"Oh, don't, Louise!" whispered Winona back. "Suppose you'd spent your young life on a sofa, reading 'Beautiful Coralie's Doom,' you wouldn't feel able to carry water either!"

"Then I wouldn't go Camp Firing," said Louise conclusively.

Next morning the camp cooks were up at six. Breakfast was to be at seven-thirty, but the girls were so afraid of being too late that they devised an elaborate system of strings, whereby the earliest awake was to jerk her strings, and wake all the others. Winona, Lilian Brown and Elizabeth were on the ground by a quarter past six, but, although they had all jerked their strings faithfully, no Adelaide appeared. Finally they descended in a body on the tent which held Adelaide and her little sister Frances.

"Well, would you look at that!" said Winona in an indignant whisper.

The other girls cautiously lifted the tent-flap and stuck in their heads.

Frances slept placidly on one cot, her little freckled face half buried in the pillow. On the other, quite as fast asleep, lay Adelaide-and there was not a string tied to her anywhere!

"Well, if that isn't the _limit_!" said Elizabeth and Lilian in one breath, and Elizabeth reached down to the pail of water which the orderlies had faithfully set outside each tent door before they went to bed. She tilted the cold water on her handkerchief, and dropped it wetly on Adelaide's face. It wasn't a wet sponge, but it did nearly as well, as an awakener.

"What-where-nonsense, Lonny, _don't_!" said Adelaide, waving her arms, and finally sitting up.

"It isn't Lonny; it's us," said Winona coldly, "and why on earth did you untie the strings, when all the rest of us had them to get up by?"

Adelaide looked ashamed.

"I couldn't sleep all tied up that way," she confessed. "I felt like a spider or a fly or something. So I tied them on the cot. But I thought when you pulled them the cot would jar, and wake me!"

"It might have," said Winona, "if you'd tied them on your own cot!"

Adelaide, looking in the direction of Winona's pointing finger, found out why she had not wakened. In her sleepiness the night before, she had fastened her strings to a large twig that grew out of the ground beside her bed!

"I ought to be drowned!" said Adelaide ashamedly. "But if you girls will wait till I get bathed and dressed, I'll wash all the dishes to pay for this!"

"You won't do any such thing," said the others.

So they sat sociably outside Adelaide's tent till she was dressed and joined them. Then they started out valiantly for the cooking-place.

When they reached it a very cheering surprise awaited them, for there was Mrs. Bryan seated on a pile of kindling, with a box of matches on her lap and a pleasant smile on her face.

"I thought you mightn't know just where to begin," she said, "so I thought I'd come help, this first morning. The first thing is the fire.

Do any of you know how to make a cooking-fire in the open?"

Adelaide didn't, neither did Elizabeth. Winona thought she knew, but wasn't sure, and Lilian had once seen it done, but had forgotten how.

"I'd better show you all, then," said their Guardian briskly. "The first thing you do is to get together two big green logs that won't burn. Roll them together so they form a big V."

"Logs that _won't_ burn! What a queer beginning!" said Winona, whose idea of building a fire was heaping a bonfire up with sticks till it flamed high.

But they tugged and pushed till they had a couple of newly-felled trees at angles to each other, in a hollow place protected from the wind.

"Now, you build your fire inside that V," explained Mrs. Bryan, "and, you see, you can put the cocoa-pan up at the beginning of the crotch, and the portable oven and the frying-pan down where the division is wider."

"Simple as anything," said Winona, "once you know how."

And they scattered to find wood. The sticks lay about in plenty-later they were hard to find without going into the woods which encircled the camping-place-and Mrs. Bryan showed them how to commence a fire by laying small pieces of brushwood criss-cross at the bottom, and piling on heavier wood till all was aflame. Presently they had a solid, roaring fire. They sat back and let it burn down to coals. By then they had the flour-barrel opened, the bacon sliced, and the water ready to put on the cocoa. Winona made biscuits, it seemed to her, in mountains, while Elizabeth got out the b.u.t.ter and knives and forks, and set the table.

"You can't cut out biscuits enough for twenty people with a cutter, child!" advised Mrs. Bryan.

"Just take the butcher-knife, and cut the whole ma.s.s of dough into squares, after you've laid it on the floured floors of the oven!"

But the bacon had to be sliced, and this took longer; and Adelaide's job, looking after the cocoa, proved nerve-racking, because cocoa will burn at the slightest chance. But everything came right, and by the time the other girls were astir their breakfast was awaiting them, piping hot; crispy bacon, hot biscuits and b.u.t.ter, with jam they had made themselves, and cocoa.

"Jam's an extra," Mrs. Bryan warned them. "It happened to be left over from the sales, so I brought it. You'll have to go to work and make some more out of berries you pick."

After breakfast, Marie, the keeper of the Blue Birds' Nest, said that she was going to put two Blue Birds to work at each of the camp shifts, and leave the odd one to be Mrs. Bryan's personal Bird and attendant.

Mrs. Bryan was to choose her attendant, who was to run her errands for her and help her generally. But she refused to do it.

"I like them all so much," she said, "that I can't pick out a special one."

So they counted out for the honor, and the choice for the first week fell on little Lucy Hillis. The others, as far as it could be done, worked with their own sisters.

After breakfast, while the dish-washing brigade wrestled with the cups, plates and spoons that twenty people leave behind them, the cooks held a council. They decided that it would be easier if two girls got each meal in turn: Winona and Adelaide the dinner, Elizabeth and Lilian the supper, and so on. The camp police divided off the same way, and so, eventually, did the dish-washers. Helen, who had the Camp funds in her charge, talked with the girls who were going to market that day. There was twenty-five dollars for three weeks of camp, she explained, and she thought that the safest way would be to allow so much a day, which gave them about a dollar twenty a day to spend. They thought so, too, and presently Nataly and Helen went off in search of the farmhouse which had promised to keep them supplied with perishable provisions.

Winona and Adelaide, freed of any further duties till supper-time, went off exploring. It was a perfect day, bright and breezy and not too hot.

Winona half-danced along, singing under her breath. The sun glinted on her pretty hair and lighted up her blue eyes. Adelaide looked at her wistfully.

"I do wish I were you!" she said abruptly.

Winona looked at her in surprise. "Wish you were me? Why, on earth?" she asked. "Isn't it just as nice to be you?"

Adelaide shook her head. "I don't like it much!" she said rebelliously.

"Why not?" asked Winona.

Adelaide shrugged her shoulders.

Winona slipped her arm about her, and pulled her down on a comfortable looking log.

"Let's sit down and talk about it," said she cheerfully.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Adelaide turned and faced Winona.

"Well, go ahead and talk," she said. "It won't make things any less so."

Then suddenly she burst out, "You don't know what it's like. You don't know how it feels never to have anything extra. If I go to a party I'm likely to be the worst-dressed girl there. If I go to school and the girls treat I have to say I don't want any because I can't pay back. I can't invite anybody to meals, because I can't give them extra nice things to eat. And, anyway, the flat's horrid-even the furniture and the carpets are shabby. Lonny and Frances are good, and help, but everything drags. And I just hate _everything_."

"Hate everything!" said Winona soothingly. "Why, of course you don't-you just think you do!"

"It's all right for you to talk," murmured Adelaide miserably.