Winona of the Camp Fire.

by Margaret Widdemer.

CHAPTER ONE

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 surrept.i.tiously.

"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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEY MADE HER TELL THEM ALL SHE KNEW ABOUT CAMP FIRES]

"Regular dues and meetings?" asked Helen, p.r.i.c.king 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."