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CAMPFIRE GIRLS AT TWIN LAKES or, The Quest of a Summer Vacation

BY STELLA M. FRANCIS

M. A. DONOHUE & CO. CHICAGO NEW YORK

CAMPFIRE GIRLS' SERIES

CAMPFIRE GIRLS IN THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS; or, A Christmas Success Against Odds.

CAMPFIRE GIRLS IN THE COUNTRY; or, The Secret Aunt Hannah Forgot.

CAMPFIRE GIRLS' TRIP UP THE RIVER; or, Ethel Hollister's First Lesson.

CAMPFIRE GIRLS' OUTING; or, Ethel Hollister's Second Summer in Camp.

CAMPFIRE GIRLS' ON A HIKE; or, Lost in the Great North Woods.

CAMPFIRE GIRLS AT TWIN LAKES; or, The Quest of a Summer Vacation.

COPYRIGHT 1918

M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

INDEX

CHAPTER

CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT TWIN LAKES OR The Quest of a Summer Vacation

BY STELLA M. FRANCIS

ABOUT TEETH AND TEDDY BEARS.

"Girls, I have some great news for you. I'm sure you'll be interested, and I hope you'll be as delighted as I am. Come on, all of you. Gather around in a circle just as if we were going to have a Council Fire and I'll tell you something that will--that will--Teddy Bear your teeth."

A chorus of laughter, just a little derisive, greeted Katherine Crane's enigmatical figure of speech. The merriment came from eleven members of Flamingo Camp Fire, who proceeded to form an arc of a circle in front of the speaker on the hillside grass plot near the white canvas tents of the girls' camp.

"What does it mean to Teddy Bear your teeth?" inquired Julietta Hyde with mock impatience. "Come, Katherine, you are as much of a problem with your ideas as Harriet Newcomb is with her big words. Do you know the nicknames some of us are thinking of giving to her?"

"No, what is it?" Katherine asked.

"Polly."

"Polly? Why Polly?" was the next question of the user of obscure figures of speech, who seemed by this time to have forgotten the subject that she started to introduce when she opened the conversation.

"Polly Syllable, of course," Julietta answered, and the burst of laughter that followed would have been enough to silence the most ambitious joker, but this girl fun-maker was not in the least ambitious, so she laughed appreciatively with the others.

"Well, anyway," she declared after the merriment had subsided; "Harriet always uses her polysyllables correctly, so I am not in the least offended at your comparison of my obscurities with her profundities. There, how's that? Don't you think you'd better call me Polly, too?"

"Not till you explain to us what it means to Teddy Bear one's teeth," Azalia Atwood stipulated sternly. "What I'm afraid of is that you're trying to introduce politics into this club, and we won't stand for that a minute."

"Oh, yes, Julietta, you may have your wish, if what Azalia says is true," Marie Crismore announced so eagerly that everybody present knew that she had an idea and waited expectantly for it to come out. "We'll call you Polly--Polly Tix."

Of course everybody laughed at this, and then Harriet Newcomb demanded, that her rival for enigmatical honors make good.

"What does it mean to Teddy Bear one's teeth?" she demanded.

"Oh, you girls are making too much of that remark," Katherine protested modestly, "I really am astonished at every one of you, ashamed of you, in fact, for failing to get me. I meant that you would be delighted--dee-light-ed--get me?--dee-light-ed."

"Oh, I get you," Helen Nash announced, lifting her hand over her head with an "I know, teacher," attitude.

"Well, Helen, get up and speak your piece," Katherine directed.

"You referred to the way Theodore Roosevelt shows his teeth when he says he's 'dee-light-ed'; but we got you wrong. When you said you would tell us something that would 'Teddy Bear' our teeth, you meant b-a-r-e, not b-e-a-r. When Teddy laughs, he bares his teeth. Isn't that it?"

"This isn't the first time that Helen Nash has proved herself a regular Sherlock Holmes," Marion Stanlock declared enthusiastically. "We are pretty well equipped with brains in this camp, I want to tell you. We have Harriet, the walking dictionary; Katherine, the girl enigma; and Helen, the detective."

"Every girl is supposed to be a puzzle," Ernestine Johanson reminded. "I don't like to snatch any honors away from anyone, but, you know, we should always have the truth."

"Yes, let us have the truth about this interesting, Teddy-teeth-baring, dee-light-ing announcement that Katherine has to make to us," Estelle Adler implored.

"The delay wasn't my fault," Katherine said, with an attitude of "perfect willingness if all this nonsense will stop." "But here comes Miss Ladd. Let's wait for her to join us, for I know you will all want her opinion of the proposition I am going to put to you."

Miss Harriet Ladd, Guardian of the Fire, bearing a large bouquet of wild flowers that she had just gathered in timber and along the bank of the stream, joined the group of girls seated on the grass a minute later, and then all waited expectantly for Katherine to begin.

A SPECIAL MEETING CALLED.

Fern hollow--begging the indulgence of those who have read the earlier volume of this series--is a deep, richly vegetated ravine or gully forming one of a series of scenic convolutions of the surface of the earth which gave the neighboring town of Fairberry a wide reputation as a place of beauty.

The thirteen Camp Fire Girls, who had pitched their tents on the lower hillside, a few hundred feet from a boisterous, gravel-and-boulder bedded stream known as Butter creek, were students at Hiawatha Institute, a girls' school in a neighboring state. The students of that school were all Camp Fire Girls, and it was not an uncommon thing for individual Fires to spend parts of their vacations together at favorite camping places. On the present occasion the members of Flamingo Fire were guests of one of their own number, Hazel Edwards, on the farm of the latter's aunt, Mrs. Hannah Hutchins, which included a considerable section of the scenic Ravine known as Fern hollow.

They had had some startling adventures in the last few weeks, and although several days had elapsed since the windup in these events and it seemed that a season of quiet, peaceful camp life was in store for them, still they were sufficiently keyed up to the unusual in life to accept surprises and astonishing climaxes as almost matters of course.

But all of these experiences had not rendered them restless and discontented when events slowed down to the ordinary course of every-day life, including three meals a day, eight hours' sleep, and a program of tramps, exercises and honor endeavors. The girls were really glad to return to their schedule and their handbook for instructions as to how they should occupy their time. After all, adventures make entertaining reading, but very few, if any, persons normally constituted would choose a melodramatic career if offered as an alternative along with an even-tenor existence.

All within one week, these girls had witnessed the execution of an astonishing plot by a band of skilled lawbreakers and subsequently had followed Mrs. Hutchins through a series of experiences relative to the loss of a large amount of property, which she held in trust for a relative of her late husband, and its recovery through the brilliant and energetic endeavors of some of the members of the Camp Fire, particularly Hazel Edwards and Harriet Newcomb. The chief culprit, Percy Teich, a nephew of Mrs. Hutchins' late husband, had been captured, had escaped, had been captured again and lodged in jail, and clews as to the identity of a number of the rest had been worked out by the police, so that the hope was expressed confidently that eventually they, too, would be caught.

"Mrs. Hutchins is very grateful for the part this Camp Fire took in the recovery of the lost securities of which she was trustee," Katherine announced by way of introducing her "great news" to the members of the Fire who assembled in response to her call. "Of course Hazel did the really big things, assisted and encouraged by the companionship of Harriet and Violet, but Mrs. Hutchins feels like thanking us all for being here and looking pleasant."

"Let's make this a special business meeting," suggested Miss Ladd, who had already discussed the proposition with Katherine and Mrs. Hutchins. "What Katherine has to say interests you as an organization. You'd have to bring the matter up at a business meeting anyway to take action on it and our regular one is two weeks ahead. We can't wait that long if we are going to do anything on the subject."

It was a little after 10 o'clock and the girls had been working for the last hour at various occupations which appeared on their several routine schedules for this part of the day. In fact, all of their regular academic and handwork study hours were in the morning. Just before Katherine called the girls together, they were seated here and there in shaded spots on camp chairs or on the grass in the vicinity of the camp, occupied thus:

Violet Munday and Marie Crismore were studying the lives of well-known Indians. Julietta Hyde and Estelle Adler were reading a book of Indian legends and making a study of Indian symbols. Harriet Newcomb and Azalia Atwood were studying the Camp Fire hand-sign language. Ernestine Johanson and Ethel Zimmerman were crocheting some luncheon sets. Ruth Hazelton and Helen Nash were mending their ceremonial gowns. Marion Stanlock was making a beaded head band and Katherine Crane, secretary of the Fire, was looking over the minutes of the last meeting and preparing a new book in which to enter the records of the next meeting.

Everybody signifying assent to the Guardian's suggestion, a meeting was declared and called to order, the Wohelo Song was sung, the roll was called, the minutes of the last meeting were read, the reports of the treasurer and committees were deferred, as were also the recording of honors in the Record Book and the decorating of the count, and then the Guardian called for new business. This was the occasion for Katherine to address the meeting formally on the matter she had in mind.

A BOY AND A FORTUNE.

"Now," said Katherine after all the preliminaries of a business meeting had been gone through, "I'll begin all over again, so that this whole proceeding may be thoroughly regular. I admit I went at it rather spasmodically, but you know we girls are constituted along sentimental lines, and that is one of the handicaps we are up against in our efforts to develop strong-willed characters like those of men."

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