“Oh, Natalie!” exclaimed Alice Lathrop, “you’re a dear, but you always did have the most remarkable remembrancer,” and, with a laugh she put her arms around her chum, whose dark, olive-tinted complexion, with that calm brow, and eyes, in the depths of which woodland pools seemed to lie, gave her the appearance of an Indian maid, especially when she plaited her hair in two, long black braids.
“It’s quite symbolic,” went on Mabel Anderson, as she looked at the silver ring on one of the slim fingers of her pretty hand, a hand of which she was perhaps a trifle vain—excusably so, in the opinion of some of her friends.
“And now we are really ‘Wood Gatherers,’” spoke Marie Pendleton. “It’s the first step. I wonder if we will take the others?”
“I intend to,” declared Alice. “It only takes three months to become a ‘Fire Maker,’ and three more to be a ‘Torch Bearer.’”
“Oh, but there are lots of things to do in that time,” sighed Mabel Anderson. “Think of the test of getting two meals for—for you girls!” and she looked with pretended dismay at her three pretty chums. “I—I don’t even know how to peel potatoes!” and she covered her face with her hands.
“It’s time you learned,” declared Marie, who, since the death of her mother kept house, with the assistance of a maid, for her father, and her brother Jack.
“I can see all sorts of jolly times ahead of us!” exclaimed Alice. “We will get to know ever so many nice girls—really we four are too much by ourselves.”
“We always have been,” said Mabel. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t continue to go together. Just because we have joined the Camp Fire Girls doesn’t mean that we’re going to separate, I hope. Shall we make new friends and lose our old ones?”
“Not at all,” went on Alice. “But we are too—too—what was it Professor Battell said in class to-day—too inscribed—no, that wasn’t it——”
“That’s it. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you for a memo. pad, Nat!” and once more Alice embraced her chum.
“Why so pensive?” asked Marie, as, to give entrance for her friends she opened the door of the little cottage, over which she presided as mistress. “Has anything happened, Natalie? Did you miss in Latin to-day?” and Marie, dropping her books on a chair in the hall ushered her chums into the little library. The girls were on their way home from the Academy and from class had gone to a meeting of the Camp Fire Girls Association, which had recently been started in their town. They had been initiated as “Wood Gatherers” of the Dogwood Camp Fire, which name Mrs. Pierce Bonnell, the Guardian, had chosen for the group.
