"I'll go get it," said Florence. "You see, you need me already!"

She flew off, with the dog at her heels.

"Truly, I'm sorry, Mrs. Bryan," apologized Winona again, "but she would have felt so badly if I hadn't let her come!"

"You ought to sit on her more," suggested Louise, popping her head out of the kitchen door again. "I do on mine."

"Well, you have such a lot of brothers and sisters you have to," said Winona, for Louise was the oldest of six.

"Bessie wanted to come," said Louise, "but I put my foot down."

"On Bessie?" laughed Winona, as she ran to open the door for Adelaide.

"I hope you didn't hurt her."

"Did you bring your ap.r.o.n, Adelaide?" called Helen anxiously.

"There! She's asked every one of us that question in turn," said Louise, coming out into the living-room for the fourth time in five minutes. "I do hope you did!"

"Oh, yes, I did," said Adelaide. "I have it here under my arm."

"And here's Florence back with mine!" said Winona. "Now may we start?"

"It isn't quite time yet," said Mrs. Bryan. "If we plan for supper at six, one hour is a great plenty of time for supper-getting, especially with all of us at it. It's only four-thirty now, and I want to tell you a plan I have. Come here, Florence. It's about you and your friends."

"Oh, a plan about me!" said Florence. "That is nice!"

"You see, girls," went on Mrs. Bryan, "there are always little sisters or cousins of Camp Fire Girls, like Florence and Bessie and the rest, who want to play, too. They aren't old enough to belong to Camp Fires of their own, so the way we do is to make them an annex to ours, under the name of Blue Birds-the Blue Bird stands for happiness, you know. And we help them, and show them how to have good times, too, and-they don't have to tag any more."

"I didn't mean to tag," said Florence, looking a little ashamed. "I just wanted to-to come, too!"

"Well, if you will go and find Bessie Lane, and-Adelaide, you have a little sister about their ages, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Adelaide. "Frances is nine."

"Well, Florence, get Bessie and Frances if you can find them, and we'll discover something for our nest of Blue Birds to do."

"I think it's lovely, being a Blue Bird," said Florence, very much impressed by belonging to a society of her own.

"Well, if you're a bird, fly!" said Louise, giving her a little push.

The girls talked for a while longer, then donned their ap.r.o.ns and went out into the kitchen, where they stood and waited for further orders.

"There are four of you," said their Guardian. "There's the table to set, salad and dressing to make, meat and potatoes to prepare, and dessert.

Cocoa and cake, too. You're welcome to anything in the ice-box, but the game is to get supper without buying anything extra, unless something like bread or sugar gives out-some staple."

"That will be more fun," said Winona, who had had some experience lately with cooking. "It's much more interesting thinking out ways to make things out of other things, than when you cook straight ahead!"

Adelaide stared as if Winona had said a very strange thing. But then Adelaide always did look at Winona more or less that way.

"I think the most fun is eating out of paper bags," said Louise. "No washee dishee. However, I only think that-I wouldn't dare say it.

How'll we divide?"

"Decide that yourselves," said Mrs. Bryan.

"Let's see what there is in the ice-box, first," Winona suggested prudently, when Mrs. Bryan had left them alone. So they investigated.

"Eight large baked potatoes!" counted Louise. "How on earth did you miscalculate so badly as that, Helen, or are they there for our special benefit?"

"No, it just happened," said Helen. "Father was going to bring a friend home to dinner last night, and neither of them could get here after all."

There was also a large piece of cooked beefsteak, a head of lettuce, a dish of cooked peas and some beets. There were other things in the ice-box as well, but these were what the girls chose. They brought some apples up from down cellar, too, and stacked them in a row on the table with the other things.

"Now, Nannie said that the game was to use as many leftovers as possible and do everything as inexpensively as we could and yet have everything taste good and not seem warmed over," said Helen.

"That's something a lot of grown-up women never do," said Louise. "My aunt--"

Mrs. Bryan came from the living-room to say. "I'll show you anything you don't know about, girls, but you must do the actual work yourselves, or you won't know how."

"Yes!" said Louise. "Choose your poison, Ladies and Gentlemen!" She pulled her cooking-cap close down over her hair. "I'm going to do the potatoes. I think I know how to fix them."

"Cold baked potatoes?" said Helen. "There isn't anything, except creaming them."

"They're all right that way," said Louise, "but that isn't what I'm going to do."

"Well, I'll take the cake," said Helen. "I saw some sour milk in the ice-box, and spice-cake is the cheapest cake I know."

"I'll take the meat," said Winona. "There must be something I can do with a beautiful piece of steak like that, even if it is cooked."

Adelaide had not said anything.

"That leaves the salad for you, Adelaide," said Mrs. Bryan cheerfully.

"Louise, you'd better see about some fruit for supper, for your potatoes won't take you long."

Then Mrs. Bryan introduced them to the ways of the gas-range, and went back to lie in wait for her Blue Birds.

Helen collected spice and mola.s.ses and flour and shortening around her corner of the table, and went systematically to work on her spice-cake.

"It looks like gingerbread," said Winona, getting the bread-crumb jar.

"It is, really, only it hasn't much ginger in," explained Helen. "Lots of people don't like ginger. What are you going to do with your steak, Winnie?"

"Frame it!" advised Louise frivolously. "They say they have a four-pound steak under gla.s.s at the Metropolitan Museum, as a relic of the days when each family had at least one in a lifetime."

"If you want to frame your share of it you may," said Winona. "I'm going to eat mine."

"They're supposed to be eaten," put in Helen mildly. "But really, Winnie, I think you have rather a hard job. There's not nearly enough steak there for eight people. It was only intended for five in the first place."

"That's the game, isn't it?" said Winona placidly. "Besides, I'm going to send Florence home to supper. It's all right for her to attach herself to the party for the afternoon, but I draw the line at her inviting herself to a meal-don't you think so, Louise?"