"My brother taught me; my only brother, Stud--Studley--Studart they nickname him in camp--I don't know why," was the fluttering response.
"A corruption of Stoutheart, I should say!" supplied the Guardian, now busily frying flapjacks. "Of all the Boy Scouts in my husband's troop, he's the lion-heart," laughingly. "So I understand!"
"Yes, oh! yes, but he's so-o nice, with it," cooed the merle's brown-eyed "mate." "He has never--oh! never--squeezed me out of anything, just because I was a girl; always said that two--two--could hunt together and make good headway!" softly.
"And so they can: and so they will, when it comes to the grandest quest of all, the hunt for truth and justice at the polls, voting side by side! Girls! Dear--girls!" The eyes of Tanpa, the Guardian, were ablaze now with more than the firelight's glow, as she tossed her browned cakes on to a platter. "_Dear_ girls! In the new, the wider future before us--soon to confront all of you--let us bring to it our Camp Fire hall-mark: the hall-mark of the woods: purity of the Pinnacle's breath, the 'pep' of the outdoor dawn--tenderness of the twilight, when we feel that God is near!... And now--and now! let us sing our grace, not for this food alone, but for the new manna which has fallen for us--the glorious manna of opportunity."
"If we have earned the right to eat this bread, happy are we, but if unmerited Thy blessings come, may we more faithful be!"
On wings of faith the moved chant floated forth, led by the girl-thrush in a sweet soprano, supported by the sonorous roll of the Pinnacle organ, the murmuring pine trees; and the voices of the slender tree choir, the slim, white-tunicked boy-birches, bore it aloft--aloft to Heaven.
"So you're not only gifted as a 'merle', you sing as a girl, too!" said Pemrose presently, nestling nearer to the maiden with the whistle in her green breast-pocket. "You must love birds very much in order to imitate a thrush-song like that."
"Well! my ceremonial name, as a Camp Fire Girl, signifies a little brown bird of the woods; so I thought it was 'up to me' to learn to converse with my kind!" was the half-shy, half-spicy answer. "My brother Stud and I have no end of fun, now in the early summer when the birds have just arrived, and are mating, calling them around our camp."