wakens," she whispered imploringly.

Then disappearing inside her tent, she knelt by a bed of hemlock
branches covered with soft blue blankets. "Princess," she whispered
again.

A sleepy voice answered. "Polly child, please go back to bed, it must
be the middle of the night and I ache all over from carrying water and
digging trenches. Who could have supposed camping would be such a lot
of work!"

"Or such a lot of joy!" Polly laughed. "Ah, Betty, I thought you were
yearning to be useful; think of the honor beads you mean to earn! But
come now and be useful to me; do let us have a swim together."

Betty was never proof against her friend's pleading. "All right," she
agreed, searching about near her bed for her sandals while Polly wrapped
a light woolen gown about her, "I don't know whether Miss McMurtry will
like our going off by ourselves, but I don't remember her having said we
should not, though Camp Fire life does mean doing things together."

The two girls had been talking in the lowest possible tones and were now
tiptoeing softly out of their tent, when another voice from another bed
interrupted them.

"Betty and Polly, you are sneaks!" Mollie O'Neill exclaimed indignantly.
"Just because I can't swim as well as you do and Esther can't swim at
all, you are going off without us. You are fine Camp Fire girls; please
bring our bathing suits here, too."