The girls clambered down the steep slope to the water, and Florence and Dorothy Trowbridge began at once to gather twigs and branches.

“How are we going to cook this bacon?” asked Peggy suddenly, “when we get our fire? Nobody brought a frying pan.”

“Frying pan!” echoed Florence over an armful of nice dry chips and twigs. “We get sticks.”

Peggy saw that each girl was breaking a branch from a near-by tree, testing it to see that it was not “too floppy,” as Katherine put it, and would be green enough not to catch fire easily. Peggy found a delightful little branch, and began stripping the end, as she saw the others do. The fire was by this time crackling and it was a temptation to begin right away, for the walk had made them hungry—or, perhaps, they hadn’t needed the walk: healthy girls like healthy boys are always hungry. But Florence reminded them that their bacon would simply be burned to a crisp if they thrust it in the flames now, so they waited a few minutes, reluctantly enough, until the red and blue sparks sputtered down to a steady glow, hotter and hotter at the heart of the fire. Then the girls each pierced a piece of bacon with their pointed stick and held it gloatingly into the red glow. Peggy enthusiastically opened rolls, so that the crisp hot slices might go sizzling into place as soon as they were taken from the fire, and the roll might be clapped together upon them.

“Isn’t this comfy?” asked Florence, munching her first fiery sandwich. “If the rain and wind had never come, I suppose you could find the ashes, on this flat rock, left by every class that ever went to Andrews. Ouch!—Mercy!—Peggy, what did you let me bite that for, when the end was still burning?”

Peggy laughingly dipped up a cupful of water from the river and passed it to poor Florence, who was trying to wink back the tears from her eyes.

“If you drink that now you’ll smoke,” she warned delightedly. “Girls, girls,—fire!”

“I—don’t—care—” gulped Florence, waving the rest of her roll and bacon through the air to cool it. “Hot as that was, I guess old Mr. Huntington of Gloomy House, up there, would be glad to have it. If he can smell the smoke of this little feast—with that lovely amber coffee Dorothy is making—I guess he wishes he was a girl and could come down and get some. Just think,” she turned to Peggy, “in twenty years he’s never had any hot coffee—or more than enough to keep a bird alive.”

Peggy sat down on a stone and poised 

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