The Camp Fire Girls at School | Page 2

after that, and every time I flew to the sheltering arms of the dictionary, and she always made some approving remark out loud. Now she thinks I'm a shark and I have a better stand-in than ever with her. She told her Senior session room that there was a girl in the Junior room who was so keen after knowledge that no matter when she came into the room she always found her consulting the dictionary!"
Sahwah's imitation of the elderly and precise Miss Muggins was so close that the girls shrieked with laughter. Even Nyoda, who was a "faculty," and should have been the ally of the deluded instructor, was too much amused to say a word. "By the way, Sahwah," she said when the laughter had died down, "how are you coming on in Latin? The last time I saw you your Cicero had a strangle hold on you." Sahwah made a fearful grimace, and recited sarcastically:
"Not showers to larks more pleasing, Not sunshine to the bee, Not sleep to toil more easing, Than Latin prose to me!
"The flocks shall leave the mountains, The dew shall flee the rose, The nymphs forsake the fountains, Ere I forsake my prose!"
Nyoda laughed and shook her head at Sahwah, and "Migwan," otherwise Elsie Gardiner, looked up at the despiser of prose composition in mild wonderment. "I don't see how you can make such a fuss about learning Latin," she said, "it's the least of my troubles."
"But I'm not such a genius as you," answered Sahwah, "and my head won't stand the strain." Her mental limitations did not seem to cause her any anxiety, however, for she hummed a merry tune as she drew her tatting shuttle in and out.
Migwan leaned back in her chair and looked around the tastefully furnished room with quiet enjoyment. This library in the Bradford house was a never-ending delight to her. It was finished in dark oak and the walls were hung with a rich brown paper. The floor was polished and covered with oriental rugs, whose patterns she loved to trace. At one end of the room was a big fireplace and on each side of it a cozy seat, piled with tapestry covered cushions. Over the fireplace hung two slender swords, the property of some departed Bradford. The handsome chairs were upholstered in brown leather to match the other furnishings, and everything in the room, from the Italian marble Psyche on its pedestal in the corner to the softly glowing lamps, gave the impression of wealth and culture. Migwan contrasted it with the shabby sitting room in her own home and sighed. She was keenly responsive to beautiful surroundings and would have been happy to stay forever in this library. But beautiful as the furnishings were, they were the least part of the attraction. The real drawing card were the books that filled the cases on three sides of the room. There were books of every kind; fiction, poetry, history, travel, science; and whole sets of books in handsome bindings that Migwan fairly revelled in whenever she came to visit. Hinpoha herself was not fond of reading anything but fiction, and although she had the freedom of all the cases she never looked at anything but "story books." Before her parents went to Europe they had tried making her keep an average of one book of fiction to one of another kind in the hope of instilling into her a love for essays and history, but in the absence of her father and mother, history and essays were having a long vacation and fiction was working overtime.
"Let's play something," said Sahwah when the apples and popcorn had disappeared; "I'm tired of sitting still."
"Can't somebody please think of a new game?" said Hinpoha. "We've played everything we know until I'm sick of it."
"I thought of one the other day," said Gladys quietly. "I named it the 'Camp Fire Game.' You play it like Stage Coach, or Fruit Basket, only instead of taking parts of a coach or names of fruits you take articles that belong to the Camp Fire, like bead band, ring, moccasin, bracelet, fire, honor beads, symbol, fringe, Wohelo, hand sign, bow and drill, Mystic Fire, etc. Then somebody tells a story about Camp Fire Girls, and every time one of those articles is mentioned every one must get up and turn around. But if the words 'Ceremonial Meeting' or 'Council Fire' are mentioned, then all must change seats and the story teller tries to get a seat in the scramble, and the one who gets left out has to go on with the story."
"Good!" cried Nyoda, "let's play it. You tell the story first."
Gladys stood up in the center of the room and began: "Once upon a time there were a group of