The room they called the Den in Winnie Merriam's house was dark, except
for the leaping wood-fire in the big stone fireplace. Around the fire
sat and lay five girls. They had been toasting marshmallows, but they
were past the point where you eat the toasted ones with pleasure, or
even steal the raw ones--which don't taste burnt--to eat
surreptitiously.
"Helen Bryan, you've been feeding Puppums all your marshmallows for the
last ten minutes," accused Winnie, sitting up. She had been draping
herself along a pile of cushions for the last fifteen minutes--thinking,
evidently, for she had been quiet--a very unusual thing for chattering
Winnie.
Winnie Merriam was fourteen, but people usually took her for a year
older, because of her slim height. She had big blue eyes in a face that
was not regularly pretty, perhaps, but so gay and pink-cheeked and
quick-smiling that people always _said_ she was pretty--which does quite
as well.
Her chum, Helen, defiantly fed a last marshmallow to the fat
near-fox-terrier in the centre of the circle, who didn't particularly
seem to want it.
"I've got to be polite to my hostess's dog, haven't I?" she retorted.
"And he asked for them so pathetically!"
"I expect the poor old pup will look more pathetic this time to-morrow,"
said Winnie. "He'll probably look like Buster Brown's Tige in the last
pictures--both paws up over his aching head. Then you'll have to come
back here and hold ice on his fevered brow, won't she, Puppums?"
"Or yours, maybe," suggested Marie Hunter, the quiet brown girl in the
corner. "What's the matter, Win? You haven't said a word for ages. I've
been watching you."
"I've been _thinking_!" explained Winnie, nodding her curly brown head
with dignity.
"For the first time?" suggested Helen. "Don't do it if it hurts, honey."
"No," said Winnie placidly, "I've often been known to do it."
"Well, what were you thinking?" asked Edith Hillis, lifting her yellow
curls from Marie's lap. Edith was the fluffy member of the crowd, small
for her age, yellow-haired and blue-eyed and rather too much dressed.
She was supposed to care more for her complexion than for anything else
on earth except Marie Hunter, but she was as sweet-tempered as she could
be, and everybody liked her. "You looked as if you were thinking about
something awfully interesting."
"Well," said Winnie slowly, "I was thinking about _us_. We know each
other very, very well, and go together, and have gorgeous times--I was
thinking that it would be nice if we made ourselves into a club, or some
sort of a society."
"Oh, say! That's a perfectly gorgeous idea!" exclaimed chubby,
red-haired Louise Lane, from behind Helen. "I vote we _be_ a club, right
away!"
"But is five enough?" asked Marie doubtfully. Marie was always the one
who thought of things. She was a good deal of a bookworm, and did a
great deal of beautiful embroidery, and never said much. But she was the
one the girls were apt to ask advice of if they needed it badly. She was
nearly a year older than Winnie and Edith. Louise wasn't quite fourteen,
and Helen would be fifteen in two months.
"I think five's plenty," said Louise.
"I don't, exactly," demurred Winnie. "Seems to me there ought to be
seven or eight anyway, or we'd be like an army all major-generals."
"All right," came from Helen sleepily. "But that can wait. I think the
thing to make up our minds about first is--what would it do if it was a
club? I mean clubs have to have some object."
"Why!" exclaimed Winnie blankly, "I never thought of that!"
"Well," still opposed Louise, "I don't see why we have to have an
object. Just meet, and have a president and secretary and things, and
enjoy ourselves."
"What about an embroidery club?" suggested Edith. "Marie and I like to
embroider."
"I _don't_," said Louise flatly.
"Nannie was telling me about a walking-club she belonged to," Helen
suggested pacifically.
Nannie was Helen's step-mother--not at all like the step-mothers in the
fairy-tales, but a pretty, gay woman of about twenty-eight, who was
great friends with her step-daughter and the step-daughter's chums.
"A hiking-club?" asked Winnie. "That would be fun. Why couldn't we
combine both those things in one?"
"Lovely!" jeered Louise. "I can see myself trotting along up a mountain,
embroidering as I go!"
"Listen to Louise being sarcastic!" said Helen. "I think the idea of
combining two or three things is a splendid one."
"What's splendid?" asked a bright voice from the darkness at the other
end of the room.
"Oh, are you there, Nannie?" called Helen. "We're planning a club--a
very fine combination club where you do everything."
"It sounds like a Camp Fire," said Nannie. "Your father's downstairs,
Helen. I ran up to tell you that we're ready to go whenever you are."
"Oh, not yet, please!" begged Winnie. "What is a Camp Fire, Mrs. Bryan?
Do come sit down by us, and have some marshmallows."
"It corresponds to the Boy Scouts," Mrs. Bryan explained, dropping down
among the girls, "and it includes doing about everything there is to do.
It's national, though, and you're affiliated with headquarters."
[Illustration: THEY MADE HER TELL THEM ALL SHE KNEW ABOUT CAMP FIRES]
"Regular dues and meetings?" asked Helen, pricking up her ears. "Oh,
stay here, Nannie, and tell us all about it!"
They surrounded Mrs. Bryan, and made her tell them all she knew about
Camp Fires, which was a good deal.
"I like it!" announced Louise when Mrs. Bryan was done. "Me be heap big
chiefess--wahoo-oo!"
She jumped up as she spoke and waved Helen's best hat above her head for
a hatchet.
"Oh, my hat!" cried Helen, making a wild dive for it. Puppums thought it
was all a game for his special benefit, and dived after them--and the
meeting broke up in disorder. But not before the girls had decided to
_be_ a Camp Fire, and made Mrs. Bryan promise to act as their Guardian.
Winnie, after the girls had gone, returned alone to the fire, and sat
down by it, thinking over the things she had been hearing.
"It's going to be heaps of fun," was the first thing she thought, and
then, "It's going to take lots of time!"
Then she got up and shook herself. "Anyway, I love it!" she decided.
Then she put the lights out and went to bed.
Helen Bryan was over early next morning.
"Oh, Winnie!" she called up to her friend's window.
"Come on up!" called Winnie back. "I've just had my bath, but I haven't
finished dressing."
Helen came in by the open back door, spoke to Mrs. Merriam, who was
getting breakfast, and tore up the stairs to Winnie's room.
"Oh, there's such heaps to tell!" she announced before she was well
inside the room. "Rings and bands and dresses and ceremonies
and--everything! Only we will have to take more girls in. You have to
have at least seven to start with."
Helen stopped for lack of breath, and dropped on the bed. Winnie, who
was doing her hair before the mirror, turned around.
"It's like the Boy Scouts, only it's girls," she decided thoughtfully.
"Helen, I don't see why we can't have just as good times as they do.
Tom's always telling about the glorious times his patrol had last
summer, camping up near Wampoag. I don't see why we shouldn't go
camping, too, and have heaps of fun!"
"Why, of course we can!" agreed Helen. "None of your mothers will mind
if Nannie goes along, and she'll have to if she's Guardian."
"Come on down and have breakfast with us," invited Winnie, straightening
up from her last shoe-lace. "You haven't told me half the things there
are to tell."
"Well, I've had breakfast," said Helen, "but----"
"Oh, you can eat some more," insisted Winnie. "We're going to have
flapjacks and maple syrup."
"Well, all right," said Helen, weakening. Flapjacks and maple syrup did
sound good. So they went down together to the breakfast table.
Winnie's family, her father and mother and her brother Tom, and
eight-year-old Florence, had to be told all about it.
"Can't I be a Fire Camp Girl, too?" demanded Florence on the spot.
"I don't know yet," said Helen. "We'll have to find out."
"I will be, whether you find out or not," said Florence, who was a
determined young person, and something of a tagger.
"Well, thank goodness, to-day's Saturday," and Winnie changed the
subject cheerfully. "We have all day to find out in, and there's
scarcely any home-work to do. Have you any, Helen?"
"Only a little history," said Helen, "and I can do that to-night."
"Such heaps of good times coming!" sang Winnie rapturously as she sprang
up from the table, to get a fresh supply of flapjacks.
"If you have as good a time as the Scouts do you'll have fun, all
right," said Tom. "But I don't see how you can--just girls!"
Helen laughed, but his sister flew up.
"We can, and better, too," she flashed. "Just you wait and see!"
"Seeing's believing," said Tom mischievously, passing his plate for the
flapjacks as Winnie brought in the heaping plate that had been keeping
hot in the oven.
"That's true," said his father gravely, putting a pile of buttered
quarter-sections on his son's plate. "At least, nobody who hadn't seen
it would believe you could eat so many flapjacks and not explode!"
Everyone laughed; but Tom calmly went on eating.
"They're awfully good, mother," he said. "I'll tell you, Winnie, if you
could learn to make as good flapjacks as mother with your Fire Camping,
as Florence calls it, you'd be doing something worth while."
"Oh, I don't suppose there's anything about flapjacks in it--do you
think there could be, Helen?" asked Winnie.
Mrs. Merriam laughed a little.
"Well, do you know, my dears," she said, "I have a strange feeling that
there _is!_"
"I don't see how," doubted Winona. "But maybe, if I get time, Tom, I'll
learn how to make them. Come on, Helen, let's go back to Nannie and ask
her all the questions we can think of."
The two girls ran out hand-in-hand.
"Are there flapjacks in it, mother?" asked little Florence.
Mrs. Merriam laughed again as she began to clear the table.
"There are, and a great deal besides, or I'm much mistaken, dear!"