The other Blue Birds were having lovely times frolicking all over the road, chasing b.u.t.terflies and picking flowers and playing with the dog.

Florence found it rather stupid to sit in solitary grandeur on a stretcher, and listen to what Winona and Adelaide, before her, and Marie and Edith, behind her, were saying about their own affairs. So at the first stop to change bearers she wanted to get down. But Mrs. Bryan was firm.

"No, indeed," she said, "the first thing Blue Birds must learn is to obey orders and keep promises. You promised to stay up there till evening, Florence, and you must do it."

Florence pouted, but she stayed. She really had lost quite a little blood in her adventure with her sister's penknife, and, though Mrs.

Bryan did not tell her so, the walk might have been too much for her.

She wriggled and yawned, and once sat up straight, till her bearers requested her to lie still. But presently she had a companion in misery.

It was nearly the end of the journey, and the farmhouse where the girls planned to stay the night was in sight. Winona, strolling on ahead, saw a small gray kitten prowling along the side of the road. It was a most unhappy kitten; it looked as if it hadn't had a square meal since it could remember, and there was an ugly-looking place on its side as if something had worried it. It limped a little, too, poor little cat, and altogether a more forlorn animal would have been hard to find. But Winona pounced on it.

"Oh, you poor little cat!" she cried. "Look, Helen, some horrid dog has hurt it."

"Oh, don't pick it up!" said Marie. "It may have something awful."

"Smallpox, maybe?" inquired Winona sarcastically. "Nonsense, Marie, the poor little thing's been worried by a dog, and it hasn't had enough to eat, that's all. I'm going to adopt it."

And in spite of Marie's protests she picked it up and wrapped it in her handkerchief, and carried it back to Florence, who was wriggling on her stretcher, and wishing that she hadn't demanded that evidence of invalidism.

"Here, Florence," said Winona, "hold this kitty till we get to the farmhouse."

"Oh, a kitty! Poor little thing!" cried Florence, adopting the cat on the spot, and letting it cuddle down by her, which it was willing enough to do, for it seemed to be as tired as it was hungry.

"Are you sure--" began Marie again.

Marie's father was a professor in the high-school, and as a result she knew about more kinds of germs than the rest had ever heard of.

"Mother lets us bring in hurt animals, always, and look after them,"

said Winona. "Germs can't get you if you're careful. We can wash our hands in disinfectant as soon as we get to the farmhouse. I have some in my first-aid kit."

"And what are you going to do with the cat?" asked Louise, coming up to the other side of the stretcher and surveying the much-discussed animal without great affection.

"Keep it, if Mrs. Bryan doesn't mind, as it doesn't belong to anyone,"

said Winona coolly. "It ought to make a good camp mascot."

Louise eyed the kitten again-they were nearly at the farmhouse by this time.

"It isn't exactly my idea of a mascot," she said candidly. "What about Puppums? I thought he was elected to the position."

"Well, then, the kitty can be the under-mascot," said Winona undauntedly. "Anyway, when I get through nursing her she'll be a perfectly good cat-see if she isn't!"

"I doubt it!" said Louise and Marie together, as if they had been practising a duet.

"Wait!" said Winona as they mounted the steps.

There were plenty of rooms, for the farm people took boarders all August; but even so, there were not enough for nearly twenty people.

However, Mrs. Norris, the farmer's wife, had been prepared beforehand for the descent, and she had extra cots made up and ready in all the rooms, and unlimited hot water for baths.

Winona did not come in when the others did. She sat down on the porch floor, pulled out her first-aid kit for the second time that day, sent Florence in for a basin of warm water, and set about doctoring the kitten. She sponged off the torn place in its side, and the little hurt in one of its hind legs that had made it limp. This last was only a scratch, but it had stiffened. She rubbed salve in the hurt places. Then she bandaged the cat's leg very successfully. But when it came to tying up the side-for the cat would certainly have licked the salve off if she could-it wasn't so simple. There wasn't anything to fasten the bandage to. Finally she wound it round and round the meek little animal, and sewed it up on top. The cat looked as if it had on a large and fashionable sash, but it did not object. Then Winona gave it some evaporated cream out of a can in her knapsack, watched it while it ate, which it did till the belt tightened dangerously, and took it into the house with her. Florence took the basin back to the place she had gotten it from.

"Does this kitten belong to you?" Winona asked the landlady, who was hurrying about a long table in the dining-room, putting dishes full of steaming things on the table.

"Bless my soul, no!" she answered, stopping with a pan of baked beans poised in mid-air. "Why, I do believe that's the kitten that belonged to Medarys, down the road, and they moved away last week. Well, poor little thing, the dogs must have got after it. It's a mercy it got away at all."

"People who abandon cats that way ought to be left out in a wilderness themselves, without anything to eat," said Mrs. Bryan warmly, as she came up behind them.

"Ain't it so?" said the landlady. "I'll get somebody to drown the poor little thing to-morrow."

"Oh, no! I'll keep it if it's n.o.body's," Winona said eagerly. "You don't mind, do you, Mrs. Bryan?"

"If it hasn't mange," said Mrs. Bryan prudently.

"It hasn't," Winona and Florence a.s.sured her together. "It's only hurt."

"Very well," said the Guardian; and the Merriams ran off to wash their hands in disinfectant and straighten themselves generally for supper.

They left the cat in their room.

That certainly was a supper. When you have walked all day in the open you feel as if you could eat a house, if nothing tenderer offers itself.

Even Nataly Lee, who was genuinely tired to death, was hungry. The girls stood behind their chairs for a moment, saying one of the Camp Fire graces softly in unison. Then they sat down, and ate as if lunch had been only a dream.

After supper the hostess showed them her long parlor and invited them to make themselves at home. But they were all too sleepy to frolic. Louise, who was untirable, did indeed unsling her banjo from across her shoulder and try to sing, but she interrupted herself in the middle of "Nellie Gray" with a gigantic yawn. The Blue Birds were all asleep in their chairs, and had to be marched off to bed half conscious. It was only eight, but the elder sisters and cousins who took them up liked the looks of the white cots very much, and-well, it seemed so useless to go downstairs again, some way. So Winona and Adelaide and Louise and Elizabeth, and Marie, who was looking after such Blue Birds as had not sisters along, simply went to bed, too, when they had attended to their charges. The other girls sat sleepily downstairs for awhile, waiting for their friends to come back. And then they, too, came upstairs and went to bed-and by eight-thirty there was nothing to be heard of seven Blue Birds, thirteen Camp Fire Girls, a dog and a cat, but twenty even breathings from as many cots, an occasional snore from the back porch where Puppums was tied, and a loud, ecstatic purr from the corner of Winona's cot, where the Medary's late kitten was privately spending the night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Next morning by eight Camp Karonya was up and eating a large breakfast.

The girls sang a cheer to Mrs. Norris when they were done, and formed for their march again. Most of them had brought enough food for two lunches, but Mrs. Norris could not be brought to think so, and insisted on piling up provisions enough for a regiment. They compromised, on several slices of roast lamb apiece, and enough bread and b.u.t.ter to go around and leave some over.

Winona slipped into the little general store near the farmhouse, and bargained for some more cans of evaporated milk for her under-mascot, the kitten. It was travelling in Florence's knapsack to-day, and Florence's things were distributed between Winona and two of the other girls. It proved to be a very frisky kitten by nature, now that its fears of being hungry and homeless were gone. Winona had to sew its bandage on again at noon.

"I don't know how it is," she said perplexedly. "It's certainly a fatter kitten, and yet its bandage is too big!"

"Poor thing! Take it off altogether!" advised Helen. "p.u.s.s.y will get well just as soon without it."

So they ripped off the bandage, and the kitten seemed very grateful. Its hurt looked like scarcely more than a scratch now.

"If she's going to be a camp mascot she ought to have a name," suggested Florence.

Winona laughed. "I'm going to call her Hike," she said. "She was hiking when we met her, poor p.u.s.s.y, and so were we."

So Hike the Camp Cat she became. And-to antic.i.p.ate-when she had been living on evaporated cream and other luxuries a few days, she turned into a plump and handsome Maltese kitten with charming manners.

The girls arrived at their camping-place at about five that day. The big limousine that belonged to Helen's father, and the big electric delivery wagon which Louise's father had contributed, stood waiting for them on the road nearest the clearing in the woods, where they were to make their camp.

"Do you mean to say we're going to eat all that?" asked Edith Hillis helplessly, as she caught sight of the piled provisions in the delivery wagon.

"Well, we shan't have to eat the tents and cots in the limousine," said Winona. "At least, I hope not. But I think we will manage the rest. I was on the committee that figured out how much we would want for three weeks of camping, and I'm sure there's no more here than we ordered."