The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines
to end, as the hour for lunch had passed.

Among the experiences which Billy Webster was particularly enjoying at this time were his long walks back and forth from the place where he was spending his nights to the scene of his daily labors.

For, literally, he only spent his nights at the Sunrise camp. He arrived at home after the others had finished dinner, and rose and went away each morning just after daylight. But instead of the long, fatiguing walks, added to the unusual work of the war camp, injuring Billy's health—never had he appeared so strong and well.

Not that any one, aside from his mother, was paying particular attention to Billy's vagaries. Even Vera Lagerloff, for the first time in their long friendship, temporarily was neglecting Billy's welfare in her enthusiasm over the approaching production of "As You Like It."

However, Billy rejoiced in his new freedom.

He took pleasure in slipping out of his tent in the early morning, leaving Dan still asleep. Then he would prepare his own breakfast of coffee, fruit and eggs which were always left where he could readily find them. Afterwards, with his basket of lunch that his mother made ready the night before, Billy would move quietly off.

Even the dawns in this southwestern world were unlike the dawns Billy remembered in his own New Hampshire hills. Not that he would have claimed the New Hampshire hills as his possession because of a mere accident of birth. Billy cared infinitely more for the softness, the warmth and strangeness of this new country and climate than he had ever cared for the austerity of New England. It was awakening in him new strength and new purposes which so far he scarcely understood.

The way the dawn broke here in the western coast Billy particularly loved; it was so serene. There was not the drear, melancholy darkness and then the swift coming of light. But first a pearl-gray mist covered the sky, afterwards lavender and rose shone behind it and finally a pure gold, with the ocean as a mirror of the sky.

A part of the trip he could make by street car, nevertheless this left many miles to be traveled at either end of the line.

However, as Billy wished to think things out for himself, these walks afforded a wonderful opportunity. The difficulty of his life had always been due to his refusal to accept any judgment except his own. He honestly could not understand 
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