Did anything ever taste as good as those hot weenie sandwiches, eaten there on the edge of Lake Michigan, with the fine lake air blowing in their faces and the sunshine warming them and making them forget the chill of the long winter? The Merrills thought they had never had so much fun and tasted such good things. Every weenie (and there had seemed to be far too many) was eaten up; every roll disappeared and cookies and pickles and sandwiches just vanished as though a warm breeze had melted them away.
Supper over, the sun going down reminded the children that they must get the fire ready for dark. They scampered up and down the broad beach, gathering together all the pieces of drift wood they could find. Later in the year wood along that beach would be hard to find. But in the early spring, before the driftings of the winter's storms had been burned up by picnickers like themselves, there was plenty to be had.
Linn and Ed put away the cooking rack in the case they had made for it, the two mothers packed up débris and burned it so the beach would be left clean and tidy, and all the others gathered wood. Such a lot as they did find! Linn piled it on high and by the time the sun went to sleep in the west, the fire was so bright that nobody noticed the growing darkness. They all sat around on the warm sand and sang--college songs that the children had learned from the fathers, school songs and popular songs that they all knew. It was fun to sit there close by the big lake, to watch the sparks fly upward, to hear the waves swish against the sand and to sing and sing as loud as they liked.
But when the darkness settled down enough so that mysterious shadows lurked over every shoulder and the stars helped the fire make a light, Ed announced, "Now let's play Indian."
So they did. Playing Indian, the Merrill girls found, meant a queer follow-the-leader game. Ed led off first and everybody had to follow. He ran round and round the fire, prancing and yelling like a wild man. And the point of the game was for everybody to do exactly as he did. They ran and jumped and yelled till everybody was breathless with exercise and laughter and was glad to sit down again and do nothing.
By this time the fire had again died down to a bed of coals.