color deepened as, clasping her hands over her knees, she began slowly
swaying back and forth, her eyes fastened on Polly.

"I am dreadfully long in coming to my point," she confessed, "but it is
such fun to keep you guessing and I do so want you to be interested.
You see, I suppose you know about the Camp Fire Girls, everybody seems
to have heard except me, but now 'That light which has been given to me,
I desire to pass undimmed to others.' Will you, won't you, will you,
won't you be a Camp Fire Girl?" Her manner, which had been a queer
combination of fun and seriousness, now at last appeared entirely grave.
"Mollie and Polly," she continued quietly, "You know how often we have
talked lately of being dissatisfied, of feeling that here we are growing
older and older every day and yet not learning half the things we ought
to learn nor having half the fun we ought to have. Of course we read
novels all the time, because it is the only way for nice girls to learn
about romance or adventure, but we would like really to live the things
we think about just the same as boys do. They don't dream and scold
about the things they want to do; they go ahead and do them, teaching
one another by working things out together. They belong to things and
don't just have to have things belong to them' to make them happy like
girls do."

"Hear, hear!" cried Polly, not exactly seeing what Betty was driving at
and desiring to tease her into greater confusion.

But as Mrs. O'Neill shook her head encouragingly, Betty would not deign
to consider her tormentor.

"Oh, it is foolish for me to try to explain all the Camp Fire idea
means," she added simply. "I couldn't if I tried, for Esther Clark, the