When the four girls came down and put on the supper they found a surprise waiting for them. Beside the large table the little sewing-table had been moved in, spread with a white cloth and set; and around it, very flushed and important, sat Florence, Bessie Lane, Frances Hughes, and Edith Hillis’s little sister Lucy. Before Frances, who was the oldest, sat a big dish of creamed potatoes, a platter of Hamburg steak, and in front of each girl steamed a bowl of tomato soup.

“Well, where——” began everybody. All the small sisters answered at once.

“We cooked ’em on the gas-stove in the back parlor!”

“All but the soup,” added conscientious little blonde Lucy. “We dumped that out of a can.”

“Well, we cooked it, too, didn’t we?” inquired Frances.

“So that was what was in the package Puppums wanted!” said Winona. “Where is Puppums, anyway?” she added as she set down her scalloped meat.

“I d’no,” said Florence carelessly.

But just at that moment Puppums accounted for himself. He came in from the direction of the half-open back door, in his mouth a neatly done up package.

“Oh!” cried Winona and Florence in one despairing voice, “he’s been stealing again! Drop it, you little wretch!”

Mrs. Bryan went around to Puppums, who was proudly sitting up on his haunches over his spoils.

“It isn’t ours,” she said, opening the bundle.

“What is it?” asked Winona. “I might as well know the worst.”

“Chops,” answered Mrs. Bryan briefly. “Two pounds of very nice lamb chops, with nothing at all to tell where they belong!”

“Oh, Puppums!” said Winona and Florence together tragically. The rest were all laughing but to Puppums’s family it was far from a laughing matter.

Puppums Merriam was a splendid watch-dog. He was sweet-tempered and intelligent and obedient and cheerful, and everything a family dog should be. But he had one fault. He would occasionally snoop around back porches in search of anything the butcher might have left. The fact that he got three good meals a day, and was losing his figure far too fast for such a young and sprightly dog did not matter to him at all. Neither did he mind the fact that he got a good whipping every time Tom caught him at it. Happy indeed was the week wherein the Merriams did not have to apologetically return roasts or steaks to furious owners; or—if the condition of the prey made it necessary—buy new ones. But this last did not happen very often, for Puppums rarely brought home the bills with him, and it is hard to trace anonymous meat.

So when he proudly presented his contribution to the feast there was nothing to do but to pick up the chops and put them away.

“I can’t spoil the fun by whipping him, and he always thinks my whippings are fun anyway, and wags his tail!” mourned Winona. “And we’ll never know whose chops they were!”

“They’re Puppums’s chops now,” said Louise. “Go on, give ’em to him, Winnie. If you went out and gathered chops you wouldn’t want to be scolded.”

“Well, I suppose he may as well have them,” said Winona still sadly. So, although it was very wrong, and as she explained to the dog, it didn’t create a precedent, soon the collector of chops was happily crunching them outside the back door, while the Camp Fire Girls ate made-over meat within.

“What about our camping out?” Louise demanded, after the first pangs of appetite were over. “What’s the use of being us if we can’t camp?”

“We can camp,” answered their Guardian as she helped Helen to some more salad. “This is lovely dressing, Adelaide. I didn’t know what good cooks all of you were. I have been looking things up, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t go in a short time now, if all of your parents are willing and can spare you.”

There was a great commotion over at the table where the Blue Birds sat, and then hurried whispers—

“You ask, Lucy.”

“No, you ask, Frances!”

Finally Florence spoke up.

“Can’t the Blue Birds go camping, too?”

“Why, of course they can!” said Mrs. Bryan cordially. “That is, just as with the Camp Fire Girls, if their mothers are willing.”

“Oh, then I can go, if we take Frances,” said Adelaide relievedly. “Father and Lonny can get along all right by themselves, but Frances couldn’t. Oh, I’m so glad!” Which was quite a good deal for reserved Adelaide to say.

“So are we glad,” said Helen heartily.

“I wonder whether we couldn’t go to that place up on the Wampoag River. Have you thought of any place, Mrs. Bryan?”

“None but there or thereabouts,” she said. “It’s the best camping-place for a long distance, and only about twelve miles off.”

“But won’t the boys want to camp there, too?” asked Helen.

“There’s plenty of room for everybody,” said her step-mother. “I’ve been talking it over with Mr. Gedney, the Scoutmaster, and he says their camp will be about two and a half miles from the place I’d thought of our going. Wampoag River is very long, you know, and there must be five miles of woodland along both sides. So we needn’t interfere with each other at all.”

“Then that’s all right,” said everybody.

“And oh, let’s hike there!” cried Louise. “We can do it in two days as easily as anything. Please, dear, nice, kind Guardian, let us hike there!”

“I think it would be a very good thing to do,” approved Mrs. Bryan. “But it isn’t for me to settle. You’ll have to have a business meeting to decide that, and to decide another thing that nobody’s thought of.”

“Ways and means?” ventured Adelaide, perhaps because they had been in her mind, too.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Bryan. “We haven’t enough in the treasury to pay expenses, even if we only stay a little while. It’s for you all to decide whether you want to get the money from your parents for the provisions, or whether you will earn it.”

“Earn it?” asked Winona, “How could we, in such a little while?”

“You’ll have to work that out yourselves,” replied Mrs. Bryan, as she usually did.

“Well, I can’t ask dad for much money,” Louise frankly confessed. “Times are hard, and me poor father needs his gold for the lit-tul ones at home!”

“Well, of course it’s premature,” hesitated Helen, looking up, “because the rest aren’t here.”

“Go on, anyway,” said the others eagerly.

“Well, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a bread and cake and preserve sale,” she went on. “I’m treasurer, you know, and I’m sure we have enough money on hand for materials. People will buy things to eat when they won’t buy anything else. I’m sure, too, that we could get Black’s drug-store to sell in.”

“We’d need more than one cake-sale, wouldn’t we?” asked Winona.

“We could have two—or even four!” asserted Louise boldly. “We needn’t go for two weeks yet, anyway. It will only be the last of July then. We could have sales Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“And get orders beforehand, and make what people want!” said Louise, “Oh, I’d love to do that!”

“Will it cost much?” asked Adelaide.

“The sale?” said Louise.

“No, the trip.”

“Not a good deal,” said Mrs. Bryan. “We have the land free, of course. We shall have to buy tents—let me see, there are twelve in the Camp Fire, aren’t there? And there will be six or eight Blue Birds. We’ll need ten tents, and then there’ll be the provisions. What they cost will depend on how long you decide to stay. If you hike there and back there won’t be any railroad fare. As for clothes, you’ll need blouses and dark skirts or bloomers, and tennis shoes—but all that can wait till the business meeting. Marie is secretary—she and Edith and Dorothy and Anna Morris are going to be here getting luncheon to-morrow. There had better be a meeting here to-morrow afternoon. I’ll telephone Marie after supper.”

Eight very happy girls of assorted sizes cleared away the supper and washed the dishes and made the kitchen shine. Even Puppums, bulging with contraband chops, was more amiable than usual, and slept placidly in all the places where he was most in the way.

“I’m going to take my banjo,” planned Louise.

“I shall take pounds and pounds of modelling clay,” said Helen enthusiastically.

“Edith has a mandolin,” volunteered Lucy Hillis.

“Everybody that has a musical instrument had better bring it,” said Mrs. Bryan.

“We’ll contribute a very fine dog with a stunning howl!” said Winona mischievously.

“That dog isn’t a musical instrument, he’s a famine-breeder!” said Louise; then paused, for Mrs. Bryan went into the dining-room to telephone Marie Hunter. Edith Hillis was at Marie’s, and both girls were as excited over the cake-sale idea as the rest.

Next afternoon the whole Camp Fire had a business meeting at Mrs. Bryan’s. Besides the girls who had originally belonged, five others had joined. It was a very pleasant meeting, helped out with afternoon cocoa and sandwiches that the lunch-getters had prepared. They discussed ways and means till they could scarcely hear themselves think. Never was there such an unanimous meeting. For everybody wanted to go camping, and to go camping money is needed. So three committees were appointed, one to buy materials, another to borrow an eligible drug-store for Saturday, and a third to attend to advertising. The girls were to meet Friday, and each take home what materials she needed. Saturday morning the materials were to be returned to the drug-store in the shape of salable things to eat. It even occurred to one genius to allot to each girl a certain thing to make.

“It’s a good thing to do,” she said modestly—it was Dorothy. “Once our Sunday-school class gave a sale, and every single girl brought chocolate cake.”

“I remember that,” said Marie. “But it turned out all right.”

“Oh, yes,” said Dorothy laughing. “We hung a sign in the window, ‘Chocolate cake sale!’ and it all went. But it mightn’t have!”

So Marie made out a careful list of what each girl was to make.

“I don’t see how we’ll ever sell all those!” she said, looking worried.

But they did. People always will buy bread and cake and muffins. At the end of the first sale, on Saturday, Edith Hillis, who was on duty, put seventeen dollars in her hand-bag to take up to Helen.

“There are orders, too,” she reported. “We have eight dozen parkerhouse rolls and two dozen and a half biscuits promised for different lunches and suppers next week, beside jam orders. Here’s the list.”

“That ought to be five dollars more,” counted Helen.

Edith forgot for once to smooth her dress and pat her curls in the excitement of success.

“Three more as good and we’ll have all the money we need!” she declared.

And, as a matter of fact, the three following sales were better than the first. Adelaide developed a real talent for jelly-making, and the orders for that alone helped a good deal. At the crowning sale, the next one to the last, they made twenty-one dollars, and eighteen and nineteen at the other two.

Mrs. Bryan went off to the city to buy tents, and was understood to have come back with ten that were marvellous bargains. The Camp Fire darned all its stockings, and tidied itself, and was collectively very good at home, so as to leave a pleasant last impression.

Mrs. Merriam lamented that she was going to be very, very lonely, for Tom was going out camping with the Scouts only a day or so later than Winona and Florence were to go with Camp Karonya. As for Puppums, there were many arguments about him, for Tom thought he would make a fine mascot, and so did Winona and Florence. It was finally settled by the fact that another of the Scouts owned a collie and was going to take him; and Puppums, while he was a friendly dog in the main, and indeed had quite a social circle of his own, bit collies whenever he saw them. So there were bound to be fights if Puppums went with Tom, and it was decided that the girls should have him.

Nobody thought there were going to be any more members added to the Camp. But one afternoon, while Winona was out in her back garden with Louise and Helen and a medicine ball, Nataly Lee from next door came calling. The three girls were dusty and tousled; Helen’s braid was half-undone, the ribbon was off Winona’s curls, and Louise, who had just fallen full-length across the nasturtiums in a vain effort to get the ball, had a streak of mould and grass-stain from her shoulder to the hem of her skirt. Altogether, they were as badly mussed a trio as you could wish to see, when Tom came out the back door toward them.

He said nothing whatever, but he bore high in his hand the very largest tray the house afforded, and in its black and banged centre reposed a small calling-card which said “Miss Nataly Lee. The Cedars.” He made a low bow, and held the tray toward his sister.

Winona took off the card, and the three girls looked at it together.

“Where do you suppose she keeps the cedars?” asked Louise in a stage whisper. “There aren’t any next door.”

“Sh-h. That must be her ancestral estate,” surmised Helen respectfully. “Oh, dear, Winnie, I can’t go in this way, to a call that has a card and all that!”

“Of course you can,” said Winona cheerfully. “I did worse than that when I went calling on her. I didn’t take any card at all. To be frank with you, I haven’t any. Anyway, she received me with her wrapper on, and that’s no better than grass-stains.”

“Come on—be sports!” urged Tom, waving his tray. “I think she’s come to say that she’s willing to be welcomed in your midst.”

“How do you know?” asked all three girls at once.

“I don’t know—I only think so, because Billy told me,” said Tom.

“We certainly look dreadful!” mourned Helen, but they all brushed each other off and straightened each other, and trotted into the house.

Nataly did not look as if she had ever seen a negligee. She had on white gloves and a veil, and carried a card-case, and altogether, except that her hair was down and her skirt short, she might very well have been grown up.

“It’s a charming day,” she began when she had been introduced to Helen and Louise.

“It certainly is,” agreed Louise, “and a lot too nice to stay in the house. Don’t you want to come on out in the back yard with us and play ball?”

But Nataly declined. She said she didn’t think it would be good for her gloves.

Then there was a pause, because nobody could think of anything to say. Finally Winona began:

“Tom says you think you might like to join our Camp Fire, after all. Do you think you would?”

Nataly looked as if she was about to take a dreadful plunge, but she said, “Yes, I believe I would like to. The doctor says I ought to be out in the open air, and you are, aren’t you?”

“We certainly are!” said Louise. “That’s where we were when you came to call. Want to come?”

Louise was visibly fretting at having to stay indoors, and finally Winona had to lead the way out to the back garden again. And, naturally, the first thing to meet their eyes was the big black tray, with Nataly’s own card fatally conspicuous in the very middle of it. Winona tried to steer her around it, but it was no use. Your own name is one thing you are sure to see or hear before anything else. Winona, talking sixteen to the dozen about everything she could think of, picked up the card furtively and put it in her pocket. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to pocket the tray.

However, they arranged with Nataly that she go camping with them. She could not join till the next monthly ceremonial meeting, but there was to be one soon after camp was pitched. So it was settled.

“I wonder who she’ll be friends with specially?” said Helen after she had gone. “She doesn’t seem to fit into us, somehow.”

“We’ll have to make her fit,” said Winona gayly. “To tell you the truth Helen, she reminds me of a kitten I knew once. It belonged to three old maiden ladies. It didn’t know how to be a kitten at all—the poor little thing thought it was a cat!”

“Well, perhaps Nataly’ll turn out a kitten, but I doubt it, even with you helping,” said Louise. “Come on, let’s finish our game.”